In reply to Phillip Hawley.

What plugins/themes have you been using? I've been using WordPress for nearly 10 years now and have never had a site break when WP updated because of a plugin/theme. I haven't always been a developer either. There was a time when I was simply a user of the software, muddling my way through putting a site together.

If something breaks on update, more times than not it wouldn't be a backwards-compatible issue when it comes to WordPress. It's probably more of a problem of poor code. That comes down to education for developers, which I think WP is making great strides with on a number of fronts.