How important is backward compatibility?

Question

When you consider an update in a development tool, how important is backward compatibility with you? Will you still buy Visual Studio 2010 if it requires significant changes in the source code? Where is the tipping point for you in terms of backward compatibility for new features?

Answer 1

While you asked about this from the point of view of the developer, I think this will be a more interesting question regarding the software that you are developing. Therefore, I am going to answer this question. :)

Hardware and software that is backward compatible (and, more importantly, compatible with the future) ensures the security of your users, especially when buying or updating platforms such as Windows. If nothing else, Windows is known for its careful attention to backward compatibility. You can run programs written more than ten years ago in Windows Vista, with minor problems, provided that they are "well written" (i.e., they don’t use undocumented APIs).

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Answer 7

Define “material changes”. I would go for it if the changes could be made with carefully crafted “search and replace”, even if they were extensive.

However, what would I do. Any company I worked with will not modify the existing code.