Bad analogy.

Car engines and transmissions are the heart of the vehicle, and those change frequently as well. Roads are a fundamental, static, landscape feature today. They're like telephone poles and fiber conduits, neither of which have changed much in recent times.

Software APIs change to match the features/needs of the users and developers. Part of this is based on the changing hardware, part on desired features. The hardware today is vastly different than when OpenGL 1.1/1.5 was available so why should we be constrained to use it in the same fashion?

In short, APIs shouldn't be static for now and forever, we'd only be limiting ourselves and ignoring the fact that sometimes things change and sometimes early decisions were wrong (or less effective than desired).

Roads still work because they are too expensive to replace. GPU's and bread are not, so your argument does not make sense.

Expensive things are more likely to work? I can tell you've not worked long in this industry, my friend.

I think that paraphrase was slightly closer to the opposite of what tinco said than what he did say.

>Cars are switching from petrol to hybrid to electric motors, but roads still work...

Yes, and this is what makes this a bad analogy.

He's got the whole analogy inverted. If roads were rapidly changing, we'd need dramatically different cars to handle the new roads.