Comment by gf000
3 hours ago
Sure, though most of the time it's library-only, not language change (with the only exception I have in mind is new keywords, but those are pretty rare with java).
All in all, Java is pretty unique in the level of backwards compatibility it provides, I don't think any other language is comparable to this level. Especially that it is both source and binary compatibility.
> Sure, though most of the time it's library-only, not language change
While this distinction is often useful, here we have to think about it from the perspective of users: you press the button to upgrade your toolchain, and code that formerly worked stops working. If a language supported upgrading your compiler/interpreter separately from your standard library then that would be different, but generally a standard library version is considered tightly coupled to a language version.