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Comment by valarauca1 | Hacker News Reader

The other option is they are elderly or just don't care. They have that E-Machines Pentium 3 future proof 256MB of RAM Windows98 computer and they'll use it until they die, because shouldn't everything that costs over $1,000 dollars last for 20-30 years?

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In the case of elderly users I don't think that many of them could even identify the browser that they use without prompting from others.

Sure they can. The usually use Google as a browser.

When I recently asked my grandfather about his browser preference, he said Yahoo. I came to realize that he believes Yahoo IS the web; it's his start page on IE.

No, IE is what he uses for the internet. His browser is Yahoo.

Yes, just like your car will last you 20 years. If you drive a car from 1994 you don't expect to be able to drive 90 mph or offroad without running into major issues. Should cities keep their infrastructure backwards compatible for people with old cars?

It's apples and oranges. In 1994 people went over 80mph all the time, and they still do. If you maintain a car well, it will continue to be able to do that. By contrast, though... a PC perfectly maintained from 1994 until now would be hopeless in today's infrastructure.

Yes, it's more like buying $1000 worth of apples and oranges.

> a PC perfectly maintained from 1994 until now would be hopeless in today's infrastructure.

Not if they upgraded both their hardware and software along the way. Even without upgrades, their computer might function just fine, but they should not expect to browse websites created with technologies that were not yet dreamed of when their computer was born.

People expect to make phone calls on their 5 year old phones, but it would be unreasonable for them to complain that they cannot download the latest version of snapchat on it. People with old browsers and hardware can expect old websites and software to work for them. It is unreasonable for developers to be required to create new websites that work for outdated and insecure browsers.

> Not if they upgraded both their hardware and software along the way.

The "upgrades" necessary would be a new computer in all but case, so unless your name is Theseus, you've got a new computer.

> Theseus

Or Trigger...

http://www.frequency.com/video/only-fools-horses-truth-behin...

I do that with a car from 1972.

The comparison doesn't hold though.

You likely have been upgrading and maintaining your car. Users with IE7 who expect the world to freeze with their hardware are like car owners who do not change their oil yet would be amiss when their car stops functioning after 10 years.

Strained car analogies are the 1999 Slashdot PT Cruiser of internet arguments.

I nearly spit water out of my nose. And probably the corner of my eyes.

Could be worse, as I've just found out; it could be hot coffee.

I don't think anyone running IE 7 honestly believes that. But the promise of the Web was you got to avoid minimum hardware requirements and things worked everywhere. HTML and CSS were supposed to be backwards-compatible by degrading gracefully. This point has been lost. There's really very little point in having an open standard if the only way to run anything is to update your browser every 6 weeks.

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