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.
I guess this is one of those proverbial “I had to create an account to comment” messages:
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 :)
a better example would be whether you could put a train from 1845 on a modern track, or fire a musketball from an M16