If you upgrade the engine every month when an upgrade is available, it’s only logical to expect breaking changes. The engine has been available for two years, it’s a high performance system that will always stick to the latest compiler / libraries because they bring better performance. If you’re a C++ developer, you can skip the compiler upgrade by compiling your own version of the engine (it still supports Visual 2013), but it makes sense for a new version to only support the latest Visual version. Just like it makes sense to have breaking API changes, because those are needed from time to time. That’s what versions are for.
EDIT : didn’t know about the date issue. Sorry 