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Discussion on: What is backwards compatible?

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John Peters

Welcome to the restrictions of published software. All changes need to ensure they don't break existing installs. Meaning anyone who upgrades to the new won't have to change anything in their code. All results should be the same except for bug fixes. Here's an example.. you put a fix out on a library that was downloaded 5k times. You find out quickly that a single variable name change for a spelling error, broke hundreds of customers who were using that variable in some way. Now their project won't compile.