7 ms·

Years ago as an intern at Microsoft, I had code go into the Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and shared Office code. Excel is an incomprehensible maze of #def

by wcarss 8y ago

Years ago as an intern at Microsoft, I had code go into the Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and shared Office code. Excel is an incomprehensible maze of #defines and macros, PowerPoint is a Golden Temple of overly-object-oriented insanity, and Word is just so old and brittle you'd expect it to turn to dust by committing. There are "don't touch this!"-like messages left near the main loop _since roughly 1990_. I had a bug in some IME code causing a popup to draw behind a window occasionally, and a Windows guru had to come in to figure it out by remote-debugging the windows draw code with no symbols. I learned there that people can make enormous and powerful castles from, well, shit.

java-man 8y ago
and this tradition proudly continues with Windows 10!
PaulHoule 8y ago
"Don't touch this" around the main loop can mean being able to make promises about responsiveness, reliability, etc. Frequently there are critical code sections where it is much easier to tell people "don't touch it" rather than training people how to work on it safely.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  When that is the case, would it not also be a really good place to explain why not, or provide a link to the place where such an explanation is provided?
  - thepp1983 8y ago
    In reality there often isn't time. Getting it done > Getting it done properly as far a management is concerned.
    - technix32 8y ago
      This is a complete fallacy IMO. The time is 10 fold down the line when people are attempting to reverse engineer in order to maintain it.
      - dc_gregory 8y ago
        In this case, the evidence is that excel/word etc are doing fairly well...
      - jjeaff 8y ago
        Presumably, down the road, you'll either be a defunct company or doing well enough to afford 10 times the manpower to fix things. Facebook was a spaghetti code mess in the beginning. I'm sure it caused them some growing pains, but moving too slowly early on would have likely been more costly.
        flukus 8y ago
        > Presumably, down the road, you'll either be a defunct company or doing well enough to afford 10 times the manpower to fix things. Only in startup land which is still a small fraction of our industry. Most places will never have 10 times the manpower to fix things and are hurting themselves by not doing them properly in the first place. > Facebook was a spaghetti code mess in the beginning. I'm sure it caused them some growing pains, but moving too slowly early on would have likely been more costly. Survivor-ship bias, for every facebook how many potentially viable companies never got off the ground because users couldn't tolerate using their steaming pile?
        SatvikBeri 8y ago
        Notably, MySpace is often cited as a company that failed because their codebase was terrible, which prevented them from adding features as quickly as Facebook could (despite having many more engineers at the time.)
        8y ago
  - humbleMouse 8y ago
    It is important to point out that most computer systems are running non deterministic operating systems. For example, code running in JVMs on top of non deterministic operating systems sometimes behaves in really odd ways. Sometimes a main loop is stable for reasons nobody understands.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    To be fair, if you are implementing a feature or fix in Word and think you need to edit the main loop - 99% chance you are wrong and the fix would be better placed elsewhere. And 99% chance that an edit will cause regressions or changes in behaviour elsewhere.
- rawoke083600 8y ago
  Yup ! Code is the how.... Comments are the Why
siruncledrew 8y ago
Maybe in the year 2050 some future intern/employee will be adding to the Office code and wonder about the "Don't touch this" code relics of the past that someone from long ago left for future generations.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I bet in 2050 people will puzzle over the microservice-cloud-javascript-Go-caching legacy systems that were developed in 2018 and be scared...
  - Endy 8y ago
    I mean, in 2018, I'm scared witless of all that. Anything cached in background to someone else's computer by something as unstable and slow as ECMAScript is just... a very bad idea. Keep programs local, and don't use Web coding / scripting for anything but the Web itself through a free-standing browser.
swebs 8y ago
Reminds me of this beautiful rant http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w...
smcameron 8y ago
1990 you say.... maybe the programmer was just an MC Hammer fan.
exikyut 8y ago
Waited a bit for this question to pop up, but it didn't, to my surprise. So: > ...remote-debugging the windows draw code with no symbols Why, specifically, were no symbols available? I can't come up with an explanation. Surely old symbols are kept. Do checked builds take longer to iterate on (ie build), or something?
- wcarss 8y ago
  That's a great question! I didn't mean to imply that we absolutely couldn't have used symbols -- the answer is just because he was able to figure it out without them and it was less effort to try without first. Office and Windows are different teams and units, so one dev on one team typically wouldn't have access to all of the symbol info for the codebase of the other. Setting that up takes some hoop-jumping, so he tried without and ended up figuring things out just fine over a few hours. What I wanted to demonstrate was that in that moment all he had available was shit, and he still managed to push the castle higher.
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Wow, I see. I must admit, I do very much wonder what kind of environment Microsoft would be if teams were less segregated. I found http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w... in the comments, which seems to hint at the same sort of theme somewhat - particularly the bit about contributing to teams other than your own. There's a strong notion of isolation. This is just thinking out loud, a response is not required. Everywhere has pros and cons. I'm (even with all this moping) actually less hesitant about MS as a whole than the rest of FAANG (except for N, which I also don't see a problem with) - not because of the whole "new MS" thing, or GH, but because everyone else seems to have fewer scruples than I consider to be a viable baseline. So there's that. :) It's just kind of sad to see these kinds of inefficiencies, and it would be cool to eliminate them. Of course, it'd unleash organizational chaos for a while, but of course it would be totally worth it.
kaybe 8y ago
Can you guess what happened here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745250 ? It appeared that a bug in an office component was fixed with manually binary editing. Is that probable?

by wcarss 8y ago

java-man 8y ago

and this tradition proudly continues with Windows 10!

PaulHoule 8y ago

"Don't touch this" around the main loop can mean being able to make promises about responsiveness, reliability, etc. Frequently there are critical code sections where it is much easier to tell people "don't touch it" rather than training people how to work on it safely.

mannykannot 8y ago
When that is the case, would it not also be a really good place to explain why not, or provide a link to the place where such an explanation is provided?
- thepp1983 8y ago
  In reality there often isn't time. Getting it done > Getting it done properly as far a management is concerned.
  - technix32 8y ago
    This is a complete fallacy IMO. The time is 10 fold down the line when people are attempting to reverse engineer in order to maintain it.
    - dc_gregory 8y ago
      In this case, the evidence is that excel/word etc are doing fairly well...
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      Presumably, down the road, you'll either be a defunct company or doing well enough to afford 10 times the manpower to fix things. Facebook was a spaghetti code mess in the beginning. I'm sure it caused them some growing pains, but moving too slowly early on would have likely been more costly.
      - flukus 8y ago
        > Presumably, down the road, you'll either be a defunct company or doing well enough to afford 10 times the manpower to fix things. Only in startup land which is still a small fraction of our industry. Most places will never have 10 times the manpower to fix things and are hurting themselves by not doing them properly in the first place. > Facebook was a spaghetti code mess in the beginning. I'm sure it caused them some growing pains, but moving too slowly early on would have likely been more costly. Survivor-ship bias, for every facebook how many potentially viable companies never got off the ground because users couldn't tolerate using their steaming pile?
        SatvikBeri 8y ago
        Notably, MySpace is often cited as a company that failed because their codebase was terrible, which prevented them from adding features as quickly as Facebook could (despite having many more engineers at the time.)
        8y ago
- humbleMouse 8y ago
  It is important to point out that most computer systems are running non deterministic operating systems. For example, code running in JVMs on top of non deterministic operating systems sometimes behaves in really odd ways. Sometimes a main loop is stable for reasons nobody understands.
- lozenge 8y ago
  To be fair, if you are implementing a feature or fix in Word and think you need to edit the main loop - 99% chance you are wrong and the fix would be better placed elsewhere. And 99% chance that an edit will cause regressions or changes in behaviour elsewhere.
rawoke083600 8y ago
Yup ! Code is the how.... Comments are the Why

siruncledrew 8y ago

Maybe in the year 2050 some future intern/employee will be adding to the Office code and wonder about the "Don't touch this" code relics of the past that someone from long ago left for future generations.

maxxxxx 8y ago
I bet in 2050 people will puzzle over the microservice-cloud-javascript-Go-caching legacy systems that were developed in 2018 and be scared...
- Endy 8y ago
  I mean, in 2018, I'm scared witless of all that. Anything cached in background to someone else's computer by something as unstable and slow as ECMAScript is just... a very bad idea. Keep programs local, and don't use Web coding / scripting for anything but the Web itself through a free-standing browser.

swebs 8y ago

Reminds me of this beautiful rant http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w...

smcameron 8y ago

1990 you say.... maybe the programmer was just an MC Hammer fan.

exikyut 8y ago

Waited a bit for this question to pop up, but it didn't, to my surprise. So: > ...remote-debugging the windows draw code with no symbols Why, specifically, were no symbols available? I can't come up with an explanation. Surely old symbols are kept. Do checked builds take longer to iterate on (ie build), or something?

wcarss 8y ago
That's a great question! I didn't mean to imply that we absolutely couldn't have used symbols -- the answer is just because he was able to figure it out without them and it was less effort to try without first. Office and Windows are different teams and units, so one dev on one team typically wouldn't have access to all of the symbol info for the codebase of the other. Setting that up takes some hoop-jumping, so he tried without and ended up figuring things out just fine over a few hours. What I wanted to demonstrate was that in that moment all he had available was shit, and he still managed to push the castle higher.
- exikyut 8y ago
  Wow, I see. I must admit, I do very much wonder what kind of environment Microsoft would be if teams were less segregated. I found http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/ http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w... in the comments, which seems to hint at the same sort of theme somewhat - particularly the bit about contributing to teams other than your own. There's a strong notion of isolation. This is just thinking out loud, a response is not required. Everywhere has pros and cons. I'm (even with all this moping) actually less hesitant about MS as a whole than the rest of FAANG (except for N, which I also don't see a problem with) - not because of the whole "new MS" thing, or GH, but because everyone else seems to have fewer scruples than I consider to be a viable baseline. So there's that. :) It's just kind of sad to see these kinds of inefficiencies, and it would be cool to eliminate them. Of course, it'd unleash organizational chaos for a while, but of course it would be totally worth it.

kaybe 8y ago

Can you guess what happened here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745250 ? It appeared that a bug in an office component was fixed with manually binary editing. Is that probable?