6 ms·

I don't understand all the negativity in this thread. Is this Microsoft's crowning achievement? No, it's just a stupid little historic decision that someone re

I don't understand all the negativity in this thread. Is this Microsoft's crowning achievement? No, it's just a stupid little historic decision that someone remembered and decided to fix. They even took the time to enable admins and power users to use the old behavior. I too don't see who'd want it, but who knows? People do unexpected things sometimes. Why bash them for that? There are enough good reasons to bash Microsoft... There are Microsoft products that fill me with a fiery rage of a thousand suns. But they did something cute here, someone there deserves a good word.

andrewmcwatters 8y ago
The interesting thing is this change was almost without a doubt done by some random developer at Microsoft rather than an institutional luminary for certain, and yet here we judge the change based on the institution rather than who may have produced it.
- maltalex 8y ago
  The backwards-compatibility is probably an institutional thing. I've dealt with a Microsoft storage library for Java once that had an absolutely idiotic bug - you'd store a certain value, but would get something slightly different when retrieving it in 100% of cases [0]. I reported the bug and it was quickly fixed. But what amazed me was that the next version came out with a page long description [1] and analysis of the bug, its meaning for compatibility with other storage clients in different cases, the fix, and astonishingly a new flag you could enable if you want to keep retrieving screwed up values. [0]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/issues/30 https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/issues/30 [1]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/wiki/Java,-Android-Storage-Client-Library-Date-Bug-Resolution https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/wiki/Java,-Andro...
  - tossaway1 8y ago
    > The backwards-compatibility is probably an institutional thing. And the apparent routing of all bug reports and feature requests to /dev/null -- er, the recycling bin -- certainly seems to be an institutional thing. I have no doubt that thousands of their paying customers have complained about this to Microsoft over the years and it had to have been ridiculously simple to address.
- notatoad 8y ago
  I have a really hard time believing that this is the first time some random developer at ms has gotten fed up with notepad's lack of line ending support and tried to do something about it. This is the first time Microsoft has actually released it though. And that's an institutional thing.
ajross 8y ago
I think it's mostly humor. Bugsmithing and interoperability impedance of this form was almost Microsoft's raison d'etre in the 90's. Stuff that was simple and obvious everywhere else just didn't work on windows, even though the fix would be 100% trivial and probably result in better standards compliance. And MS liked it that way. So sure, this is good. It doesn't exactly undo all those decades of grief. So we're laughing grimly at the "progress".
- jameshart 8y ago
  It's a very parochial read of the 1990s that remembers Microsoft Windows as a place where 'obvious things' just 'didn't work'. From Microsoft's point of view, when they held >90% of the PC market, what would be the point of even thinking about interop?
  - ajross 8y ago
    Because PC's were maybe only 60% of the actual software development market and there were a lot of us hackers whose "parochial" needs involved getting stuff to work across both platforms. Were you actually there? I mean, Notepad is a silly thing, sure. But the crazy spec incompatibilities between MSVC and the C9x and C++03 standards were a huge source of grief for me personally. And the mess caused by Microsoft's "Java" implementation was straight up evil.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      I had lots of hair pulling fun trying to write portable C and C++ code across commercial UNIXes back then (hello aCC). Microsoft wasn't alone.
- KC8ZKF 8y ago
  To be fair, U*nix editors in the 90's had problems with line endings other than strictly newline. Even agnostic editors like Emacs had problems. It was a three-way mutually cultivated impedance.
- logicallee 8y ago
scrollaway 8y ago
I think it's hilarious this announcement is in the middle of 30 different huge GoogleIO AI and Machine Learning announcements. Confession: This is the one I care about.
- vatueil 8y ago
  I was more surprised and impressed by this than by any of the announcements at Google IO so far. Granted that's mostly because I already knew what to expect going into Google IO.
- dx034 8y ago
  And yet it'll probably have a bigger impact on many people than all those AI announcements.
j45 8y ago
I suspect some of the less positive comments are folks commenting are likely on their 15th or 20th laptops, over just as many years. When the death count gets that high - it's easier to call it buying the eventual death of a new laptop. Buying a new laptop has become a somber affair to go along with the eventual reinstall of your entire setup far too soon. Luckily there are tools today that make this much less painful. This particular bug, however, required use of Notepad++ instead for years. Repeat for every other missing or broken piece of MS tech. Vista was so bad I was willing to suffer on the spot switching to Mac. I'll accept this is as a symbolic peace offering - years of having to install a separate text editor and lots of other unnecessary won't get back that time. There's a lot of innovation coming out from MS, something we normally wouldn't have said even 3-4 years ago. Looking forward to the increased linux integration to continue, and have a good look. Until then, MacOS, despite it's aging warts, just works and stays invisible for the most part.
sangnoir 8y ago
> No, it's just a stupid little historic decision that someone remembered and decided to fix. Kudos to them, interoperability is always nice. Maybe they can acknowledge the existence of (and respect) other bootloaders, while they are at it.
- thomastjeffery 8y ago
  Now that would be wonderful. Unfortunately, it seems their hearts are set on running everything inside windows, including GNU/Linux minus Linux (WSL). Side note: I think we should just start referring to WSL as GNU/Windows.
  - sangnoir 8y ago
    If I didn't know any better, I'd say the new Microsoft is embracing and extending the Linux stack...
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      They might, but Google got there first.
spilk 8y ago
> There are Microsoft products that fill me with a fiery rage of a thousand suns. Sharepoint?
cannedslime 8y ago
Personally I think this should have been done decades ago. Its simply too little too late.

andrewmcwatters 8y ago

The interesting thing is this change was almost without a doubt done by some random developer at Microsoft rather than an institutional luminary for certain, and yet here we judge the change based on the institution rather than who may have produced it.

maltalex 8y ago
The backwards-compatibility is probably an institutional thing. I've dealt with a Microsoft storage library for Java once that had an absolutely idiotic bug - you'd store a certain value, but would get something slightly different when retrieving it in 100% of cases [0]. I reported the bug and it was quickly fixed. But what amazed me was that the next version came out with a page long description [1] and analysis of the bug, its meaning for compatibility with other storage clients in different cases, the fix, and astonishingly a new flag you could enable if you want to keep retrieving screwed up values. [0]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/issues/30 https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/issues/30 [1]: https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/wiki/Java,-Android-Storage-Client-Library-Date-Bug-Resolution https://github.com/Azure/azure-storage-java/wiki/Java,-Andro...
- tossaway1 8y ago
  > The backwards-compatibility is probably an institutional thing. And the apparent routing of all bug reports and feature requests to /dev/null -- er, the recycling bin -- certainly seems to be an institutional thing. I have no doubt that thousands of their paying customers have complained about this to Microsoft over the years and it had to have been ridiculously simple to address.
notatoad 8y ago
I have a really hard time believing that this is the first time some random developer at ms has gotten fed up with notepad's lack of line ending support and tried to do something about it. This is the first time Microsoft has actually released it though. And that's an institutional thing.

ajross 8y ago

I think it's mostly humor. Bugsmithing and interoperability impedance of this form was almost Microsoft's raison d'etre in the 90's. Stuff that was simple and obvious everywhere else just didn't work on windows, even though the fix would be 100% trivial and probably result in better standards compliance. And MS liked it that way. So sure, this is good. It doesn't exactly undo all those decades of grief. So we're laughing grimly at the "progress".

jameshart 8y ago
It's a very parochial read of the 1990s that remembers Microsoft Windows as a place where 'obvious things' just 'didn't work'. From Microsoft's point of view, when they held >90% of the PC market, what would be the point of even thinking about interop?
- ajross 8y ago
  Because PC's were maybe only 60% of the actual software development market and there were a lot of us hackers whose "parochial" needs involved getting stuff to work across both platforms. Were you actually there? I mean, Notepad is a silly thing, sure. But the crazy spec incompatibilities between MSVC and the C9x and C++03 standards were a huge source of grief for me personally. And the mess caused by Microsoft's "Java" implementation was straight up evil.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    I had lots of hair pulling fun trying to write portable C and C++ code across commercial UNIXes back then (hello aCC). Microsoft wasn't alone.
KC8ZKF 8y ago
To be fair, U*nix editors in the 90's had problems with line endings other than strictly newline. Even agnostic editors like Emacs had problems. It was a three-way mutually cultivated impedance.
logicallee 8y ago

scrollaway 8y ago

I think it's hilarious this announcement is in the middle of 30 different huge GoogleIO AI and Machine Learning announcements. Confession: This is the one I care about.

vatueil 8y ago
I was more surprised and impressed by this than by any of the announcements at Google IO so far. Granted that's mostly because I already knew what to expect going into Google IO.
dx034 8y ago
And yet it'll probably have a bigger impact on many people than all those AI announcements.

j45 8y ago

I suspect some of the less positive comments are folks commenting are likely on their 15th or 20th laptops, over just as many years. When the death count gets that high - it's easier to call it buying the eventual death of a new laptop. Buying a new laptop has become a somber affair to go along with the eventual reinstall of your entire setup far too soon. Luckily there are tools today that make this much less painful. This particular bug, however, required use of Notepad++ instead for years. Repeat for every other missing or broken piece of MS tech. Vista was so bad I was willing to suffer on the spot switching to Mac. I'll accept this is as a symbolic peace offering - years of having to install a separate text editor and lots of other unnecessary won't get back that time. There's a lot of innovation coming out from MS, something we normally wouldn't have said even 3-4 years ago. Looking forward to the increased linux integration to continue, and have a good look. Until then, MacOS, despite it's aging warts, just works and stays invisible for the most part.

sangnoir 8y ago

> No, it's just a stupid little historic decision that someone remembered and decided to fix. Kudos to them, interoperability is always nice. Maybe they can acknowledge the existence of (and respect) other bootloaders, while they are at it.

thomastjeffery 8y ago
Now that would be wonderful. Unfortunately, it seems their hearts are set on running everything inside windows, including GNU/Linux minus Linux (WSL). Side note: I think we should just start referring to WSL as GNU/Windows.
- sangnoir 8y ago
  If I didn't know any better, I'd say the new Microsoft is embracing and extending the Linux stack...
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    They might, but Google got there first.

spilk 8y ago

> There are Microsoft products that fill me with a fiery rage of a thousand suns. Sharepoint?

cannedslime 8y ago

Personally I think this should have been done decades ago. Its simply too little too late.