- Jan 2023
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Agree, but we're stuck with API compatibility for a good while.
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- Sep 2020
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scolaire.loupbrun.ca scolaire.loupbrun.ca
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This code would work on any system with an x86 processor due to backward compatibility
Kittler a le souci de penser la compatibilité (et surtout la rétro-compatibilité) de son écriture, de sa production.
la pensée s'inscrit dans un médium, un médium qui évolue et qui, peut-être plus que jamais, soulève des enjeux d'archivage très importants (comme les œuvres artistiques qui reposent désormais sur des supports numériques à présent non supportés)
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- Aug 2020
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steve-yegge.medium.com steve-yegge.medium.com
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So let’s say Apple pulls a Guido and breaks compatibility. What do you think will happen? Well, maybe 80–90% of the developers will rewrite their software, if they’re lucky. Which is the same thing as saying, they’re going to lose 10–20% of their user base to some competing language, e.g. Flutter.Do that a few times, and you’ve lost half your user base. And like in sports, momentum in the programming world is everything. Anyone who shows up on the charts as “lost half their users in the past 5 years” is being flagged as a Big Fat Loser. You don’t want to be trending down in the Platforms world. But that’s exactly where deprecation — the “removing APIs” kind, not the “warning but permitting” kind — will get you, over time: Trending down. Because every time you shake loose some of your developers, you’ve (a) lost them for good, because they are angry at you for breaking your contract, and (b) given them to your competitors.
Twitter is a good example of this, and they've just created a shiny new API in an apparent attempt to bring developers back...
Wonder if it's going to be backwards compatible? (Probably not...)
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It’s a sure sign, when there are four or five different coexisting subsystems for doing literally the same thing, that underlying it all is a commitment to backwards compatibility. Which in the Platforms world, is synonymous with commitment to your customers, and to your marketplace.
This same sort of thing applies to WordPress for its backwards compatibility.
I wonder if there were some larger breaking changes in Drupal 7 and 8 that removed their backwards compatibility and thereby lost them some older websites?
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Successful long-lived open systems owe their success to building decades-long micro-communities around extensions/plugins, also known as a marketplace.
This could be said of most early web standards like HTML as well...
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In the Emacs world (and in many other domains, some of which we’ll explore below), when they make an API obsolete, they are basically saying: “You really shouldn’t use this approach, because even though it works, it suffers from various deficiencies which we enumerate here. But in the end it’s your call.”
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Backwards compatibility keeps systems alive and relevant for decades.
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