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Comment by mherkender | Hacker News Reader

'No Way To Prevent This', says only OS where this regularly happens.

Where what regularly happens? Wrong code coincidentally works and then doesn't? Which other OSes bend over backwards to the degree that Windows does in order to keep incorrect code working?

Which other OSes prevent this consistently?

Open-source Linux is great at updating old software.

Most other OSes (Android, MacOS, iOS, game consoles) rely on versioning, which makes it easier to provide compatibility layers or at least know when a piece of software just isn't supported anymore.

Personally I think Windows should have specialized VMs for old software, so they can be compatible forever even if they have bugs.

So other OSes prevent this by not even trying to run old software? Yeah, not particularly helpful

Better to have a strategy for software compatibility and evolution vs Microsoft's strategy of doing nothing.

Pretty much every game console ever made still works with every game for that console, but when it's Windows you never know.

> Microsoft's strategy of doing nothing.

Microsoft strategy is to maintain backward compatibility as much as possible.

Don't let old software break, don't use VMs/containers, don't use versioning: Pick two

Microsoft is the only company to pick all three. That's not strategy, that's indifference.

And yet Valve has to translate Windows APIs if they want to have games, because not even the studios targeting Android/Linux care about GNU/Linux, in spite NDK having the same audio and 3D APIs available as C and C++ libraries.

All because game developers prefer to target this OS full or warts than dealing with GNU/Linux fragmentation.

Windows is roughly 25% of the gaming market and I don't know why you're bringing up Linux. I haven't ever had a console unable to play a game built for it, just Windows.

Because HN is all about SteamDeck when complaining about Windows.

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