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There's plenty of good reasons to bash Microsoft, but 'lack of backwards compatibility' just isn't one of them. If anything, I think their obsession with back

There's plenty of good reasons to bash Microsoft, but 'lack of backwards compatibility' just isn't one of them. If anything, I think their obsession with backwards compatibility drove a lot of compromised design decisions at that company.

reacweb 8y ago
History of Microsoft is very long. Backwards compatibility was excellent until windows XP (included). This focus on compatibility has largely disappeared in more recent versions. I am not bashing Microsoft. I love visual studio code. I love the fact that I can edit office documents (powerpoint and word) for free using chrome on ubuntu. Maybe the work Microsoft is doing on Windows Subsystem for Linux will make me come back to windows one day.
- Crinus 8y ago
  Why do you think backwards compatibility dropped? Just recently they decided to not build newer versions of .NET Framework on top of .NET Core (even though they have open sourced practically everything on .NET) to ensure that older programs built on .NET Framework will keep working and wont face issues from any incompatibility with .NET Core. IMO they are making their life a lot harder by introducing all those frameworks and platforms every five years or so, but despite that they still make sure that stuff keeps working.
- shawnz 8y ago
  It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit support so that timeline would fit. There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows and I don't think it's fair to imply that they lost their focus on backwards compatibility just because of that one regression.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows That's the official answer. The more nuanced and correct answer is that DOS (16-bit realmode) apps won't work due to the hardware lacking the functionality --- blame AMD, not Microsoft, for that --- but there's no such limitation for Win16 (16-bit protected mode) apps. Thus, WINE on a 64-bit Linux will handle 64, 32, and 16-bit Windows apps, and there's no emulation unlike with DOSbox and such: https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 (Coincidentally, I recently made a comment on another article about the nuanced nature of the word "supported": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 )
    - coldacid 8y ago
      To add even more nuance, even protected mode 16-bit Windows ran Windows apps in v86 mode. Essentially protected mode was a hypervisor you could launch from DOS and your actual Windows session would run on top of that. Before the VT-x extensions to x86-64, there was no more access to virtual-86 if you were running the processor in 64-bit long mode. Considering that, it's no surprise that 16-bit Windows apps would no longer run on 64-bit Windows, especially since NTVDM was necessary to run them on 32-bit NT based versions of Windows anyway.

reacweb 8y ago

History of Microsoft is very long. Backwards compatibility was excellent until windows XP (included). This focus on compatibility has largely disappeared in more recent versions. I am not bashing Microsoft. I love visual studio code. I love the fact that I can edit office documents (powerpoint and word) for free using chrome on ubuntu. Maybe the work Microsoft is doing on Windows Subsystem for Linux will make me come back to windows one day.

Crinus 8y ago
Why do you think backwards compatibility dropped? Just recently they decided to not build newer versions of .NET Framework on top of .NET Core (even though they have open sourced practically everything on .NET) to ensure that older programs built on .NET Framework will keep working and wont face issues from any incompatibility with .NET Core. IMO they are making their life a lot harder by introducing all those frameworks and platforms every five years or so, but despite that they still make sure that stuff keeps working.
shawnz 8y ago
It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit support so that timeline would fit. There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows and I don't think it's fair to imply that they lost their focus on backwards compatibility just because of that one regression.
- userbinator 8y ago
  There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows That's the official answer. The more nuanced and correct answer is that DOS (16-bit realmode) apps won't work due to the hardware lacking the functionality --- blame AMD, not Microsoft, for that --- but there's no such limitation for Win16 (16-bit protected mode) apps. Thus, WINE on a 64-bit Linux will handle 64, 32, and 16-bit Windows apps, and there's no emulation unlike with DOSbox and such: https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180 (Coincidentally, I recently made a comment on another article about the nuanced nature of the word "supported": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 )
  - coldacid 8y ago
    To add even more nuance, even protected mode 16-bit Windows ran Windows apps in v86 mode. Essentially protected mode was a hypervisor you could launch from DOS and your actual Windows session would run on top of that. Before the VT-x extensions to x86-64, there was no more access to virtual-86 if you were running the processor in 64-bit long mode. Considering that, it's no surprise that 16-bit Windows apps would no longer run on 64-bit Windows, especially since NTVDM was necessary to run them on 32-bit NT based versions of Windows anyway.