I often wonder what if we decide to build a completely new, well thought out computing system (including network) that is totally separate from any legacy system and 100% backwards
incompatible. Not any bit less, 100% backwards incompatible and everything would be fresh. There would be no jpeg support (it would have its own image format), it would not have standard TCP/IP stack - a new protocol and network infrastructure, new display format, new IO ports, etc.
Why am I imagining this? I feel like computing systems as they've evolved, they've built stuff on layers upon layers and just like biological evolution, it is impossible (difficult) to undo because the marginal cost is too high to unwind and break backwards compatibility. We get stuck in local maxima at each layer and the critical energy required to escape out of it would be too large.
I am not saying backwards compatibility is bad, far from that, I am saying that if we force ourselves to cut the cord and completely build computing systems from scratch - I feel like we would have a hindsight to design it better, faster, and cheaper.
Why am I imagining this? I feel like computing systems as they've evolved, they've built stuff on layers upon layers and just like biological evolution, it is impossible (difficult) to undo because the marginal cost is too high to unwind and break backwards compatibility. We get stuck in local maxima at each layer and the critical energy required to escape out of it would be too large.
I am not saying backwards compatibility is bad, far from that, I am saying that if we force ourselves to cut the cord and completely build computing systems from scratch - I feel like we would have a hindsight to design it better, faster, and cheaper.