10 years ago is giving Apple too much credit. They were using Intel processors then, ARM now. For now, you can still run Intel applications, but that won’t last much longer.
More importantly, a 10 year old application is likely to use Carbon instead of Cocoa. Unless it’s an extremely simple application (i.e. hello world), it is unlikely to run.
Then there’s the depreciation of resource forks, a new filesystem, tons and tons of extra security restrictions, etc.
Carbon wasn't that prevalent 10 years ago. 15, maybe. 20, definitely.
10 years ago, Carbon was already officially deprecated, and it had clearly been a second-class citizen for years before that. Most apps were already using Cocoa at that point.
They could've easily continue going the Catalina way (you can allow 32-bit programs to run after a warning if upgraded from an older OS), but they didn't.
I don't understand why they forced 64-bit on Big Sur, it breaks so many old, non-updated apps and they know that.