Should developers phase out Windows XP support?

As with all things computer, it all goes obsolete sooner or later. This will be true of XP. Its time to move on or get left behind. Thats just a Fact! Forget XP!

With Windows 7 being such a great OS, I think it's time for everyone to move on the the latest & greatest. Now that we have something better than Vista to upgrade to. =)

To all the XP lovers out there, just be thankful that it's still supported now. As of now M$ has stated that XP will continue to be sold on netbooks until April 2011. Thats more than 10 years of XP. Longer than any other M$ OS (not counting the many iterations of DOS/MSDOS). And we still don't know when support for it will stop. Will M$ continue to release fixes and patches until 2015? No one really knows at this point.

Windows 98 was released in June of 1998.In July of 2006 all support was closed for that OS including all updates and technical support. 8 Years. And that was a very popular OS. And Microsoft's longest running up to that date (again not including MSDOS as Win98 ran on top of it).

So why all the anger surrounding XP's retirement? It's about time isn't it?

developers should offer windows xp versions of their code, or make certain features not work on xp if it isnt supported

No, please. No. I can't believe that they are even considering this.

Maybe people should realise that we aren't living in the stone age anymore?

I believe in upgrading, and always being up to date with the latest software, including an operating system. So in my opinion, developers have a right to discontinue support for XP. When Windows XP came out, I was 5. Now I am 14, almost 15, and XP is still being sold. Software that is almost a decade old shouldn't be supported, especially when many things today can't work on XP. So, yes, they should.

"Out with old in with the new!" xp had a grate run, I rember when XP came out in 2001, I could not wait to try it out. Now I will not touch it. Anyone that does not know, if we did not have XP, we would not have what we have today.

I think that they should not phase it out. For lower tech community's (Like mine) we still have XP. Even though that yes they should move on I am just saying that some people still use XP. Heck, I still have it on my server!

Developers should avoid denying XP users unless absolutely necessary. It's best to keep things portable. In the majority of cases, an app you develop for Windows 7 will be able to compile & run perfectly fine on Windows XP. It wouldn't make sense to deny access to those users.

If it is absolutely necessary, best practices are to establish a sensible modular approach such that the code that requires Windows 7 is separate from that which will run on XP. This way the code might be able to compile and the software might be able to use most of the features under Windows XP.