Progress lies within Backwards Compatibility breaks

Abstract

Backwards Compatibility (BC) is the notion that practices and designs conceived under some prior status quo remain correct in the current context.

Breaking BC is making changes that alter the underlying design, often with cascading and disruptive downstream effects.
The benefits of maintaining compatibility are clear, so then why do various industries routinely break it?
In this talk we look at examples from various fields, to show how breaking backwards compatibility is often the necessary and unavoidable price of progress.