x86 CPUs, web browsers, popular operating systems, and so on are all examples of this problem. At some point I really wish we could do something different, practical reasons be damned. It's sad that as many cool, "new" things we have, some of the core, basic ideas and goals are implemented so poorly and we are effectively stuck with them. This is one reason I hate that almost all software and hardware projects are so rushed, and that standards bodies are the opposite, but with only the bad things carried over. The cost of our bad decisions often weighs for much longer than anyone could imagine, just ask anyone who has designed a programming language or something major in software ecosystems.
As much as I enjoy all the new, shiny stuff, it makes me sad thinking about BBSs and old protocols Gopher that represented the old guard, alternate routes, and the fact that we really haven't come that far. Overall things of course are a lot better, but in many ways I often feel like we're treating the symptoms and not the cause or just going around in circles.
I could go on, but the rant would be novel length.
I don't see any opportunity in the future for any person or company to take all the lessons learned in the last 50 years and build something new that takes it into account.
Same with browsers; It's only now that we kinda know what a browser really needs to be but there's no way to start from scratch with all those lessons and build a new kind of web browser. There is always going to need to be what they currently are and build on what was already done.
I understand why, but it's still kind of sad.
It's almost like saying Microsoft Word is cross-platform because I can RDP into a Windows machine from Linux. It's not really part of Linux, it needs a client to access an application running on a remote server. The only difference is how complex the client is.
The flip side of that equation is that poor practical choices never improve because there will only be more platforms to target.
If we made development decisions based on technological constraints alone, how is it supposed to improve?
Your whole multiplatform thing is disingenuous because back then there really was only 1 platform. Windows. So you've conveniently forgotten about the lotus suite, etc.
I also think you're vastly overestimating how far we've come in that timespan. Like v8 was pretty much 95% of the improvements, simply because you could do more than 1000 loops in JavaScript without killing the browser.
And yet today it is still harder to make a decent web app than it was in VB6 15 years ago.
> The idea o a web-based office suite on the web would have been laughable 20 years ago.
What's laughable is how much effort has gone into rebuilding something in this platform with a result that is nearly the same (but worse) as what existed 20 years ago.