[skocznymroczny]

Imagine if you have a dependency on a third party library, and they only offer 32-bit DLL, or the company is out of business and you are stuck with the 32-bit dynamic library. You can't just "compile against x86_64" in this case.

[AstralStorm]

In many cases for small dlls you can thunk it and provide a compatibility standard library.

Essentially what wine does but cheaper. The ease of doing it is related to number of dependencies.

[grandinj]

Assuming that you know that those 3rd party extensions are sticking to the published API and not stuffing around by scratching around in Visual Studio's internal APIs and data structures......

Because Windows programmers have such a great track record of sticking to the published API....