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I bet someone at IBM found a bug, traced it back to some quirk in Windows that was hard/impossible to work around and the ticket got the attention of an enginee

by B-Con 9y ago

I bet someone at IBM found a bug, traced it back to some quirk in Windows that was hard/impossible to work around and the ticket got the attention of an engineer who figured out how to fix it in less than an hour. They decided the change was benign so they did it, commented it for posterity, and moved on. Microsoft actually has a reasonably close relationship with large companies that develop on their platform. eg, their plug fests for devs to come put their stuff onto the same machine and see how they all inter operate on new versions of Windows. I used to work semi-closely with someone doing Windows driver work. He knew a lot of quirks in the platform and even could escalate to the point of getting help from kernel engineers.

cesarb 9y ago
Windows 2000 is from a time when software distribution was still mostly in the form of physical media, and everything having an internet-enabled updater was not as common. The IBM software in the comment was probably written for a previous version of Windows, and if a new version of Windows wasn't compatible with that IBM software (as found in the box the user bought), it would present an obstacle to upgrading to the newer version of Windows for users of that IBM software. Users wouldn't be expected to upgrade every boxed software they had bought just because they upgraded Windows.
- mikeash 9y ago
  There’s also a psychological element. When a user upgrades Windows and some software breaks, they immediately think “the new version of Windows sucks!” and tell all their friends. They neither know nor care that it’s actually a bug in the software that didn’t manifest before.
HNSucksAss 9y ago
Microsoft was very cooperative with developers. Back when their support was done over CompuServe, a Microsoft engineer sent me some internal tools and special builds of Windows components on his own say-so. Very cool and very effective. Obviously not practical anymore, perhaps.

by B-Con 9y ago

cesarb 9y ago

Windows 2000 is from a time when software distribution was still mostly in the form of physical media, and everything having an internet-enabled updater was not as common. The IBM software in the comment was probably written for a previous version of Windows, and if a new version of Windows wasn't compatible with that IBM software (as found in the box the user bought), it would present an obstacle to upgrading to the newer version of Windows for users of that IBM software. Users wouldn't be expected to upgrade every boxed software they had bought just because they upgraded Windows.

mikeash 9y ago
There’s also a psychological element. When a user upgrades Windows and some software breaks, they immediately think “the new version of Windows sucks!” and tell all their friends. They neither know nor care that it’s actually a bug in the software that didn’t manifest before.

HNSucksAss 9y ago

Microsoft was very cooperative with developers. Back when their support was done over CompuServe, a Microsoft engineer sent me some internal tools and special builds of Windows components on his own say-so. Very cool and very effective. Obviously not practical anymore, perhaps.