"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Indeed, rather than the issue of the OS being upgraded I think the bigger issue is of the software running on there never being backward compatible for very long!
I've seen it so many times when upgrading Linux systems, ou suddenly find that several functions / commands no longer work and break what you're using. It's like rather than fix the underlying fault, the dev's just decide to bin various functions and create new ones. Bugs needs fixing of course, but if they were treated more like black boxes there wouldn't be this issue. Eg, leave the function name alone, maintain the same input and output values (or add to them while allowing the original to still work) and fix the errors within the function itself. People using the function don't need to know what's changed inside the function, just that it still works. Most things in Windows work happily like that, for instance IIS, SQL etc, the commands you call work the same as before, and you're unaware that under the hood things have been rewritten and changed without breaking your code.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
