I am developing an application for the Windows 7 platform and hope for stable performance on newer systems.
Is it possible for stable operation of applications compiled using Windows 7 or 8.1 SDK on Windows 10/11?
You could develop an application using the Windows 95 SDK and it would still work on Windows 11. As long as you are not using undocumented functions or hacks you should be very compatible with all later versions.
Installing the actual Windows 7 SDK on Windows 11, I don't know if that will work but you can also use newer SDKs, just remember to define WINVER and friends to 0x601. Targeting lower than Windows 7 with new SDK/Visual Studio is more painful. You need to use the XP toolset when available or just switch to the DDK/WDK to avoid the api-sets and the run-time mess.