alt Hacker NewsYou greatly under-estimate how much work it is to maintain old code, particularly to maintain in securely.
AFP and Time Capsules add attack vectors to the OS, which can be targeted even when few users actively using them. One dev could keep both basically functional, but to what end? User counts are already small, and people that aren't using them are still exposed by their mere existence.
Shrinking or removing code, in my experience, is one of the biggest single wins you can have in software development. Less to test, less to update, less to secure.
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> You greatly under-estimate how much work it is to maintain old code, particularly to maintain in securely.
cf Linux removing old network drivers this week for the same reason (without the hand-wringing that this Apple announcement is getting!)
Yes, writing and maintaining less code is great for a developer. We can follow this to the logical extreme and marvel at how easy it is to write and maintain a program whose only function is to print "hello, world" to the console. Nevermind the users, what do they matter?