From my experience script examples usually indicate what version they were made for and add-ons have to declare the minimum supported Blender version in their `bl_info`, which tells what API version it was implemented for. I know that at least on Blender's Stack Exchange the community tries to provide updated answers if anything relevant has changed in a new version.
I can see that older scripts for 2.79 and earlier may cause the issue you're describing, but this doesn't seem like a Blender specific issue. How did Maya handle API changes between versions? I would assume that there were breaking changes at some point that caused similar issues.
What is a problem, though, is that when you google an issue, and find a solution, you then have to upgrade that solution to your version of Blender. That is very annoying because unless you're familiar with Blender, you can't tell if the solution is wrong, or correct but outdated.