5 ms·
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,
by jameshart 9y 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 9y agoBecause 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 9y agoI 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.