Comment by naetius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by naetius | Hacker News Reader

A word of advice: I'm well in my 30s but I often feel like an old ranting fart.

Every time I read of some new amazing framework like WinUI or SwiftWUI or whateverUI, I always stop and wonder: will applications written with this thing today ever run unaltered in 10+ years from now?

Microsoft has been doing an amazing job in these past 30+ years in keeping things working: stuff written on Windows 95 can still run without any particular issue on Windows 10. Sure, there's a bit of "cheating" here and there to keep the compatibility working but the bottom line is: there's retrocompatibility.

As an example: if a developer wants to use Win32 to write something on Windows, it's still possible and it _IS_ still supported, with APIs that basically didn't change for like... ever?

Apple seems to be on the far side of the spectrum: they have amazing technologies but - as a developer - I always feel I have an immense work to do just to keep up and allow my code to keep working as it used to.

So, the question for the community here is: how can we balance the "sugary" to make things as accessible and sustainable as possible with the "stability"?

Sadly, most OS X developers notice way too late that the constant pressure to support what feels like 100 different OS versions makes their app financially not viable.

At least that's been my experience: Plenty of OS X apps abandoned after each major update.

Can you name at least two apps that has been abandoned? That hasn't been my experience at all with macOS.

I don't have a single app that was abandoned. BBEdit, 1Password, Little Snitch, MailMate, Tweetbot, Typinator, Rocket, and many more are all still updated when need be. Key note is "need", stable apps do not need constant yearly updates.

In addition, you can say the same thing about Windows. Metro, UWP and previous attempts didn't go anywhere either, their MS Store is pretty much a flop. (Granted, MAS as well).

Linux...it's not bad but there are issues with various UI frameworks, stores, etc. GTK/QT, Flatpak, snap, etc.

Most painfully https://www.dragthing.com/

Also, the original Overdrive Mac app. I believe they still don't have a replacement Mac app.

The official ReadItLater app, the service is now called Pocket btw.

That Caffeine app to prevent the laptop from sleeping.

iTunes

Adobe Fuse

Google Picasa

You can replace Caffeine with Amphetamine.

Some minor aspects of Dragthing can be replaced with Siracusa’s app Switchglass.

As for Overdrive, does Libby work on the Mac?

I don't know. My library has since switched to the Tolino app.

And since most of my pro audio apps also stopped working on OS X and the USB dongle works the same with Windows and Mac, I myself also abandoned OS X for productive work.

As far as I know Caffeine still works, you just need to manually enable it in Preferences.app (I remember getting it to work on Mojave, but my MacBook has been on a shelf collecting dust since I updated it to Catalina two months ago)

will applications written with this thing today ever run unaltered in 10+ years from now

I wonder the same usually, but less when it's a fairly large/established framework from MS, exactly because of having Win32/COM/... in mind; they are known for many things but less for suddenly dropping backwards compatibility. We have 10+ years old WPF code which still does the same as it used to do and builds with the last IDE as it did with the first we used it on, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop functioning soon. But yes, it's not quite 30+, so only time will tell..

At my workplace (vaccine r&d), we're using software written for XP on W10. Like we actually just double click the original installer that came on a CD and it works out of the box. Basically, if you purchase software and the vendor goes out of business, or they want you to pay for Version 2 (so it works with OS Version 2), or if its an F/OSS app - the project is abandoned, etc, etc, that shouldn't affect your ability to still run the software you purchased, decades later. I don't believe any other platform comes even close to this kind of backwards compatibility. Not saying Windows is perfect, its just far far ahead of the others.

That's just Microsoft's business model though, it works great for businesses like in your scenario, but not too well when they spend a decade trying to abolish a crippled browser. No one comes close because no one is trying. Also, saying that Windows is far ahead in staying behind sounds oddly poetic.

I don't see how helping users maximize their investment in software is "staying behind". But anyway, can't really argue with an opinion. If it was some trivial $50-100 piece of software, then maybe an argument can be made. Some of the stuff we buy is expensive to the tune of $10,000, and even more sometimes. There is a lot of industry specific software that is super expensive. On the side, I don't care if they want to also peddle some new UI framework or whatever other snazzy thing that the kids want these days :P. Just let me use the software I bought for as long as humanly possible. Microsoft gets this more than any other vendor, and so they get our business, and maybe a small amount of good-will.

Not even Microsoft brags about their 30 years of bloated software, and their idea of mending their past mistakes is xkcd.com/927 every time. Microsoft maintains archaic software because it still means profit for them, not because of the developer experience. Realistically speaking no one wants to use or maintain — let alone brag about using or maintaining win95 software unless you have a serious case of stockholm syndrome. PS. Do you want to install updates? XP SP2 is ready to install.

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