I was commenting specifically on Windows 95, and the idea that its ability to run its predecessor's software as being an achievement rather than something one should just naturally expect. Especially considering many of the successive difficulties in this respect were due to short-sightedness in design of the original APIs and then successive generations of API changes, each set meant to replace the last
I've used Quickbooks for my business accounting since 1998. Double entry accounting hasn't changed but I upgraded to Quickbooks 2004 when TurboTax stopped importing older versions with the 2003 Federal Tax season [but that's not where I am going with the API thing]. I still run TurboTax 2004 [see the aforementioned nature of double entry accounting][1].
Anyway where I was going is that as a user, I don't give a shit about API's and the quality of their design. I care about working software. The agile manifesto didn't invent the idea. Just pointed it out in order to change a world where "there are two types of people: programmers and their victims."
But as Faulkner might say, the past isn't even past.
[1]: It gets its own Win2k VM since it has some 16k code for backward compatibility. The VM doesn't connect to the internet because the world has changed.
I see your point about API design, but it's worth pointing out that everybody else was fighting a new revolution every five minutes and leaving behind heaps of the compatibility dead during that era. I imagine NeXT was probably the best of the lot when it came to making a lasting API and not breaking backward backwards compatibility, but perhaps someone who used it (and OS X) more could comment on that.
