4 ms·

The obligatory Joel post ... "Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he

The obligatory Joel post ... "Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here's the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn't working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn't free memory right away. That's the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html

rbanffy 11y ago
Changing Windows to work with legacy software is easy to do when you are the unchallenged market leader. That wasn't the case when Lotus running on DOS was something Microsoft (and Lotus) would care about. In that era, Microsoft faced competition from multiple directions. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a decision to sabotage Lotus 123 on some version of DOS, specially if that sabotage could drive the move to Windows and Excel. In all fairness, that Microsoft (they seem to have somewhat improved, as their power diminished) was known for not playing fair (something later demonstrated in court): http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_in... So, forgive me if I take this piece of history with a grain of salt. I started in this business at a time Microsoft made a BASIC interpreter and little more and I have observed a lot myself.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  I think what MS did to take on Lotus was to outdo them by being able to read the file formats perfectly. I seem to recall that after the MS Office file formats was documented as part of a MS-EU settlment, Joel pointed out how the Excel format carried at least two ways to do dates. One of them a replica of how Lotus 123 did it.

rbanffy 11y ago

Changing Windows to work with legacy software is easy to do when you are the unchallenged market leader. That wasn't the case when Lotus running on DOS was something Microsoft (and Lotus) would care about. In that era, Microsoft faced competition from multiple directions. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a decision to sabotage Lotus 123 on some version of DOS, specially if that sabotage could drive the move to Windows and Excel. In all fairness, that Microsoft (they seem to have somewhat improved, as their power diminished) was known for not playing fair (something later demonstrated in court): http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_in... So, forgive me if I take this piece of history with a grain of salt. I started in this business at a time Microsoft made a BASIC interpreter and little more and I have observed a lot myself.

digi_owl 11y ago
I think what MS did to take on Lotus was to outdo them by being able to read the file formats perfectly. I seem to recall that after the MS Office file formats was documented as part of a MS-EU settlment, Joel pointed out how the Excel format carried at least two ways to do dates. One of them a replica of how Lotus 123 did it.