4 ms·
More articles like this in Raymond's blog, which is full of anecdotes from his time at Microsoft. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://blogs.m
by mlex 11y ago
More articles like this in Raymond's blog, which is full of anecdotes from his time at Microsoft.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
- Vintila 11y agoGot a few good ones? I don't really feel like trawling through almost 5000 articles.
- djpowell 11y agoI love this one, about DirectX not trusting drivers responses to capabilities requests: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040211-00/?p=40663 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040211-00/?p=...
- Pxtl 11y agoI thought guids weren't based on MAC addresses anymore.
- CJefferson 11y agoThey aren't, but they were when this original "bug" in drivers was fixed.
- billpg 11y agoSo they wasted a perfectly good network card for nothing.
- periodontal 11y agoThey destroyed it ostensibly so that they had a stronger guarantee that that GUID would never be generated again. That said, I suspect they understood it wasn't strictly necessary and were looking for an excuse to have some fun. Note that even in the MAC-based generation algorithm, it is difficult (but not impossible) to accidentally generate the same one again even on the same hardware since there is a high resolution time component as well. Random UUIDs have a different encoded version number so it's actually impossible for a modern one to collide with the one they generated.
- discreditable 11y agoWhy was Pinball removed from Windows Vista? https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=...
- coldpie 11y agoA few good ones from my browser history: GetRandomRgn: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/06/18/10321212.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/06/18/10321... A good idea ruined by bad application programmers: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/11/03/55532.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/11/03/55532... How window minimization really works: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041028-00/?p=37453/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20041028-00/?p=... See you later. J: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060523-10/?p=31103/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20060523-10/?p=...
- Someone1234 11y agoCan I just point something out about the "Shell Folders key" article... So he whines that developers don't read documentation. So I went and got the "SHGetSpecialFolderLocation" docs[0] which say at the top: > [SHGetSpecialFolderLocation is not supported and may be altered or unavailable in the future. Instead, use SHGetFolderLocation.] Alright, so I go and get the SHGetFolderLocation documentation: > Deprecated. So neither SHGetSpecialFolderLocation or SHGetFolderLocation are still the correct function for this and I have no clue which is the correct win32 function here because on the "Deprecated" one they don't tell me? And all because I went to MSDN and actually tried to read the official docs. Microsoft always likes to blame crappy developers, but their documentation is terrible too. Instead of removing the documentation for the registry shell folder key, they should have left documentation and in that article explained why they exist and why you should not use them. Ultimately Microsoft, particularly in the 1990s, had terrible documentation and they're in no small part to blame for how badly software was written to the platform. [0] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762203(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb7... [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762180(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...
- coldpie 11y agoI agree MSDN's documentation isn't perfect, but trust me, it is far, far, far better than almost every other API's documentation that I've seen. I can't speak to its quality in the 90s. Also, your second link says """As of Windows Vista, this function is merely a wrapper for SHGetKnownFolderIDList. The CSIDL value is translated to its associated KNOWNFOLDERID and SHGetKnownFolderIDList is called. New applications should use the known folder system rather than the older CSIDL system, which is supported only for backward compatibility.""" (Fun Fact: I implemented much of the knownfolder and some of the old shell32 PIDL folder stuff in Wine :) )
- thoth 11y agoI've got a bunch I like, here are some of my favorites: Itanium processor overview (series) https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20150727-00/?p=90821 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20150727-00/?p=... Lock-free algorithms (series) https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110405-00/?p=11033 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110405-00/?p=... Undefined behavior (also see John Regehr's posts on this): https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140627-00/?p=633 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140627-00/?p=... Windows debugging specifics: Rescue broken stack trace: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110309-00/?p=11263 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110309-00/?p=... Underlying object behind COM pointer: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070424-00/?p=27143 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070424-00/?p=... View stack of user-mode thread when kernel stack is paged out: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20141114-00/?p=43613 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20141114-00/?p=... Identifying an object whose DLL is unloaded: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070425-00/?p=27123 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070425-00/?p=... Raymond also posts "little programs" occasionally, which are great small examples of various Windows techniques.
- pmelendez 11y agohis time at Microsoft? I had the impression he was still there last year.
- theoh 11y agoThe phrase doesn't necessarily imply that he has left.