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kidel001 • today at 8:50 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

I like that we are amazed by this. And yet all of my books from 34 years ago open up just fine (without cheating, no book opening emulator required!). I can even open a book on my shelf from 1896 without emulation. Not trying to troll too hard but I do think it is shocking how accustomed we've gotten to zero backwards compatibility in the world of software.


Replies

anthonypasq • today at 9:17 PM

a better example would be whether you could put a train from 1845 on a modern track, or fire a musketball from an M16

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eahhn • today at 9:36 PM

I guess this is one of those proverbial “I had to create an account to comment” messages:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

andai • today at 8:58 PM

https://xkcd.com/1909/

It is amazing, though. Wintel is basically a Matryoshka doll (Russian nesting dolls), where each version contains all the previous versions. (Just look at how a PC boots up!)

The dedication to compatibility is commendable, and you don't really see it on the other OS's. On that note, this is one of my favorite articles:

Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux

https://blog.hiler.eu/win32-the-only-stable-abi/

I think that's very funny. Speaking of which, EasyToon also runs in WINE, of course :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250809