Building Universes from Code: The Friction Between Operating Systems

Tim Ellis
Dec 20, 2025
1 min read

Series: The Challenge of Cross-Platform Reality - Part 2

A stylised 3D character stands at the centre of several contrasting environments separated by glowing vertical panels, symbolising a single digital world existing across multiple operating systems.

When code moves from one platform to another, it encounters a kind of environmental resistance - not dramatic, not obvious, but persistent.

A file path that once resolved cleanly now breaks.

A graphics call behaves slightly differently.

A background process stalls under a new security model.

An input event arrives out of order, or not at all.

None of these are errors in isolation. Each platform is behaving exactly as it was designed to.

The difficulty lies in the fact that no operating system was built with your specific application in mind. They offer powerful abstractions, but each makes different assumptions about how software should interact with hardware, storage, and users.

And so, the engineer’s role shifts once again - from creator to interpreter. Code must be taught how to live in multiple worlds, each with its own constraints, expectations, and unspoken rules.

This is why cross-platform development is rarely solved by a single fix. It’s a slow process of observation, adaptation, and compromise.

In the final post, we’ll explore how stability eventually emerges - not by forcing uniformity, but by embracing difference.