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Comment by tcmb | Hacker News Reader

I agree that it's empathy for the user, but I'd say it's a workaround, and as such it's tech debt.

A workaround does not necessitate tech debt. "Workaround" is a conflated term - it basically implies something works differently than one might expect, which is subjective. Anyway, what is the alternative? Saying "that's not my problem"? Users don't care about who is technically at fault, they care about a well functioning product.

The alternative is to let it break and force developers to update their software.

Doing that allowed Apple to not have to maintain 32 bit compatibility which allowed Apple to make the operating system smaller (all shared libraries have to be duplicated including in memory) and allowed Apple to completely remove 32 bit support in the later ARM processors.

…and forced me to stop using some favorite iOS apps because they didn’t get updated — in one case because the developer had died. Windows is certainly more user-friendly in that respect.

So Apple should have kept 32 bit support in the chip and processor forever?

Libraries being able to consume less memory and being able to either reduce the die size or add more features is a direct consumer benefit.

Yes, absolutely. Memory is cheap, software is valuable, forcing everyone to churn constantly to satisfy some sort of aesthetic is a massive waste of resources.

Die space on a processor is definitely not cheap. Also memory takes energy to keep refreshed both die space and power are at a premium on mobile devices.

Shouid Apple also have kept PPC support in Macs forever? 68K support? OS 9 support? Why stop there, why not ship with Apple //e 65C02 support? I’m sure I lost some valuable AppleSoft basic programs over the years.

I would consider that wonderful. I'm no huge Microsoft fan, but it's very nice that I can run 90s and 2000s programs on my current windows box. Though I hear we're losing Win32...

"Tech debt" is doing things quickly now with the price that you have to clean up (i.e. invest more time) later, hence the word "debt". This is sometimes a good trade-off, just as financial debt is. Not everything that looks a bit ugly is "tech debt".

And yes, it's ugly, but reality is ugly so we have to deal with it.

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