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Comment by icameron | Hacker News Reader

Nobody has a better ecosystem of “industrial marine grade code rot resistance” than Microsoft. That I can run the same .NET web app code compiled 20 years ago on a new Server 2025 is an easy experience unequaled by others. Or the same 30 year old VBA macros still doing their thing in Excel 365. There’s a company that knows how to do backwards compatibility.

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I suspect this is true for a lot of software; a modern-day JVM can still run Java from 20 years ago as long as you didn't do anything weird, Linux hasn't significantly changed since then, the web is one of the most widely supported and standardized platform out there with the 1996 Space Jam website still working and rendering today as it was back then (your screen just got bigger).

Is software rot real? I'm sure, but it's not in the runtime. It's likely in the availability and compatibility of dependencies, and mainly the Node ecosystem.

As somebody who works on IBM mainframes, I disagree. IBM is probably the best at forward application compatibility.

People will laugh, but they should really look.

Yes, honestly, when you're talking about planning for 40 years and more of backwards compatibility probably nothing beats IBM systems, and not only the big mainframes but also the smaller systems like AS/400 (nowadays System i). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_i

I don't have experience with .NET. So that's nice to hear you've got a reliable setup. But, this has generally not been my experience with Microsoft.

There's tons of old programs from the Windows 95-XP era that I haven't been able to get running. Just last week, I was trying to install and run point and click games from 2002 and the general advise online is to just install XP. There was a way (with some effort) to get them working on Windows 7. But, there's no way to get them to work that I've seen on 10/11.

HellCopter in my case. Few years ago I still somehow manages to get some edition running, no luck this time. Rot is a thing and the retro gaming & archival communities a blessing.

I had the opposite experience. Tried out XNA one year for the Global Game Jam. Was somewhat pleased with it. It was gone the next year.

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