What facoters make a program last longer.

So some older programs and games still run on newer computers. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was released in 1998 and still runs perfectly fine on a new version of Windows. Rayman 2 which came out around the same time has trouble running on Windows XP, it also has trouble running on newer video cards.


So the question I want to ask today is what factors make software last longer?

• Luck - One never knows what future features hardware and software may change that may break your software. Microsoft introduced "sound acceleration" in Windows 98 which caused issues for "The Journeyman Project 3". The people who wrote the game could never have expected this to happen. 
• Deprecated functions -  Ok so for those who don't know a function is a piece of code, that goes off and does a task.  Sometimes a function is outdated at which point it becomes 'deprecated'. These functions are often removed or reworked thus using them is a bad idea. When functions become deprecated the documentation usually provides an alternative. 
• Using quirks - relying on some quirk of the hardware/software is never a good idea, as these are usually patched out.(as the also pose a security risk). 
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• DRM - Digital Rights Management is not only annoying but can also cause compatibility issues. So there is a piece of software called "Wine" which lets you run Windows programs on the Linux OS. Looking at several pieces of software in the database I found comments saying the program would work fine if the DRM was removed. I've read similar accounts with people trying to get the old software running on newer computers. It makes sense when you think about it as quirks are often used to program DRM. 

So if you want your software to last a really long time, try and follow the above practice. If you have a positive comment or something to add, please feel free to leave one.