Yep, I’ve flipped my view on this. For the projects I’m working on now, backwards compat is not worthwhile. And I wish Microsoft could see their way to that on some of their new projects.

To be fair, though, when we worked on .NET Compact Framework we didn’t have a choice. We would have had to call it “.NET Some Other Random Framework” if it wasn’t compatible to a high degree with the full .NET Framework and Visual Studio and the whole toolchain around that. We wouldn’t have been nearly as able to tap into that huge base of 6 million developers (!) who use Visual Studio. And, quite frankly, the team wouldn’t have been funded at all… so you and I would never have met. We did what we were chartered to do on .NET CF and I stand firm by that.

As for the projects you and I are working on these days… circumstances differ.

“As long as the Telco sees the rationale behind the breaking changes”: yes, that is critical. If you just focused on revenue as a sole measure of success you’d miss other key things like long-term profitability, customer satisfaction, and churn.

Thanks for getting back in touch.

osh

This is like satanic stuff coming out of your mouth. I remember you telling the malleable 19 year old (me), how important backward compatability was and how as a PM I had to design everything with app compat in mind.

I’ve since ditched the idea, pretty much saying that you and Mike Smith and Seth taught me wrong. At my current company, every new version breaks backward compat. We can upgrade and migrate (of course), but we actually see a revenue boost each time.

We sell to Telcos. Telcos hate upgrades (much like large companies). But what we notice is that when we install an application at a customer, and then threaten huge breakage with the next version, the Telco is forced to become less dormant about our product and really consider making another investment into the quality of service delivery, marketing, etc. of our application to their customer base. This yields one of two things – (a) they tell us to take a hike (oops) or (b) it truly strengthens the partnership. As long as the Telco sees the rationale behind the breaking changes.

Backward compat yields dormant behavior. Dormant behavior yields low revenues.

Very good points.

SRao
Your past .NET CF intern

Although much of the later points of this post went over my budding enthusiast’s head, I understood well and clear what is meant by getting rid of the old and inferior over the sentimentality for hanging on to things that don’t work as well as they could because of some time-honoured allegiance to never getting rid of anything, no matter how it may have dwindled as an asset or indeed become a liability. This is a common affliction in corporations, households, governments. Also with boorish guests who nonetheless continue to receive invitations no matter how many times they frustrate their hosts!