6 ms·

What if a Microsoft developer gets her/his hands on the leaked NT 3.5 code and secretly starts working on setting Windows 10 straight...

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Little chance of that. They still haven't even fixed the start menu search. I open up the start menu, type 'vlc', and get no matches. I close the menu, reopen it, and try again. This time, it finds VLC no problem. They've had almost 5 years to fix this.
- BruceEel 6y ago
  sobering...
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  The most annoying thing in Windows 10 is the damned file explorer jumps three seconds after you have just opened it and clicked on a folder. Makes you have to reposition the view a second time.
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    I've never seen this before.
- lutte 6y ago
  What mystifies me is that the core of the OS is actually pretty good. I've never had any issue like a blue screen since a decade ago. The kernel and driver subsystems are rock solid. Had a few occasional GPU driver crashes but those are mostly the fault of the driver devs and they don't cause a system reboot since Vista. Why is the userland so bad in comparison? are they employing much worse developers to take care of the windows explorer/search/browser side of things? it is true that if you really try to pay attention you will notice many quirks and bugs here and there in the user interface interactions, with the start menu search being such a horribly visible offender (also bugs in the explorer search box). Microsoft managed to make a uniform looking user interface for both win9x and XP/Vista/7, why are they having so much trouble with Windows 10 control panels?
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Agree that Windows 10 seems to get the difficult stuff right. Stability, security, advanced graphics infrastructure, and very impressive backward compatibility with old binaries. Also agreed that the new control panels are a trainwreck, offering no advantages whatsoever over the old control panels they're trying to (very gradually) replace. It's also incredibly bloated. Gone are the days when a few gigabytes would be enough for your Windows partition.
    - csharptwdec19 6y ago
      Minesweeper from the Microsoft store is bigger than a standard Win98 install. :)
      - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        The original Xbox had 64MB of RAM, with no dedicated graphics memory. The Microsoft Teams chat application uses 200MB to 550MB of RAM when idle. My all-time favourite example of high-density software is Super Mario 64, which weighs in at 8MB.
        blattimwind 6y ago
        .kkrieger is a full 3D shooter in just 96K (needs slightly more than 96K of memory to run)
        MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        That's a good example from the demoscene, but that was done as a tech demo, rather than as a serious commercial product. To illustrate the bloat of modern software, I think it's better to point to examples of highly compact 'real' software. Of course, a great deal of effort must have gone into squeezing it down to 8MB, and it wouldn't be reasonable to ask modern developers to go to those lengths, but still.
ch_123 6y ago
For a small team (or individual) to evolve the code to the point where it had parity with Windows XP would be a herculean effort, never mind Windows 10.
- BruceEel 6y ago
  Yep. Compare that with the story of getting Windows 2.x work in protected mode (two devs and a spare Friday evening...) https://gunkies.org/wiki/Windows_3.0 https://gunkies.org/wiki/Windows_3.0
  - mschaef 6y ago
    They were working with code that already pretended to be in protected mode anyway (with the exception of locking and unlocking blocks of memory... which was unnecessary with a hardware MMU.) Even saying that, it was amazing at the time to run essentially unmodified 'real mode' binaries in protected mode. (There was a tool that would take an existing binary and set the 'okay to run in protected mode' flag.)
    - BruceEel 6y ago
      yeah, they go into that in the referred-to book (The Personal Computer from the Inside Out).. though spectacularly irrelevant in this day and age, it still makes a thrilling read, for me anyway ;)
      - mschaef 6y ago
        It does me too... I was an early high school computer enthusiast/programmer around this time, and remember waiting for Windows 3 with bated breath. At the time, I didn't appreciate the engineering and politics behind what went into Windows 3, and it's fun to look back on it all in retrospect. I never liked the product as much, but the same thing's true for me for Windows 95. I remember waiting years for it, and then all the drama around Schulman's work to try to uncover _undocumented_ API's that Microsoft was reserving for itself to give its software an advantage. The AARD code is about all I remember of that that was real. (And of course now, Apple has undocumented API's all over its products, and it doesn't get nearly the press that that did then.)
LoSboccacc 6y ago
Windows 10 is just layers built on top of layers all the way back to nt, you have to remove stuff instead of adding it to make it better. the funniest part is that you can have literal archeological expeditions from the menus, each click bringing you further back in its history https://i.imgur.com/K0xEDaN.png https://i.imgur.com/K0xEDaN.png you can get back to components so old that are out of the new styling as well, taking the right turns: https://i.imgur.com/NWR6Epm.png https://i.imgur.com/NWR6Epm.png
- pedrocx486 6y ago
  Let's also not forget this amazing jewel: http://i.imgur.com/48S59Xm.png http://i.imgur.com/48S59Xm.png Straight from Windows 3.x :-)
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    :-) good catch, the oldest legacy I knew from 8 was the "advanced appearance" menu, but they removed it in 10
  - mattl 6y ago
    That looks like it's from NT 3 rather than Windows 3.x as it does support long filenames.
AndrewGaspar 6y ago
Believe it or not, Microsoft engineers already have access to old NT source code.
- BruceEel 6y ago
  you don't say:)

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Little chance of that. They still haven't even fixed the start menu search. I open up the start menu, type 'vlc', and get no matches. I close the menu, reopen it, and try again. This time, it finds VLC no problem. They've had almost 5 years to fix this.

BruceEel 6y ago
sobering...
Fjolsvith 6y ago
The most annoying thing in Windows 10 is the damned file explorer jumps three seconds after you have just opened it and clicked on a folder. Makes you have to reposition the view a second time.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  I've never seen this before.
lutte 6y ago
What mystifies me is that the core of the OS is actually pretty good. I've never had any issue like a blue screen since a decade ago. The kernel and driver subsystems are rock solid. Had a few occasional GPU driver crashes but those are mostly the fault of the driver devs and they don't cause a system reboot since Vista. Why is the userland so bad in comparison? are they employing much worse developers to take care of the windows explorer/search/browser side of things? it is true that if you really try to pay attention you will notice many quirks and bugs here and there in the user interface interactions, with the start menu search being such a horribly visible offender (also bugs in the explorer search box). Microsoft managed to make a uniform looking user interface for both win9x and XP/Vista/7, why are they having so much trouble with Windows 10 control panels?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Agree that Windows 10 seems to get the difficult stuff right. Stability, security, advanced graphics infrastructure, and very impressive backward compatibility with old binaries. Also agreed that the new control panels are a trainwreck, offering no advantages whatsoever over the old control panels they're trying to (very gradually) replace. It's also incredibly bloated. Gone are the days when a few gigabytes would be enough for your Windows partition.
  - csharptwdec19 6y ago
    Minesweeper from the Microsoft store is bigger than a standard Win98 install. :)
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      The original Xbox had 64MB of RAM, with no dedicated graphics memory. The Microsoft Teams chat application uses 200MB to 550MB of RAM when idle. My all-time favourite example of high-density software is Super Mario 64, which weighs in at 8MB.
      - blattimwind 6y ago
        .kkrieger is a full 3D shooter in just 96K (needs slightly more than 96K of memory to run)
        MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        That's a good example from the demoscene, but that was done as a tech demo, rather than as a serious commercial product. To illustrate the bloat of modern software, I think it's better to point to examples of highly compact 'real' software. Of course, a great deal of effort must have gone into squeezing it down to 8MB, and it wouldn't be reasonable to ask modern developers to go to those lengths, but still.

ch_123 6y ago

For a small team (or individual) to evolve the code to the point where it had parity with Windows XP would be a herculean effort, never mind Windows 10.

BruceEel 6y ago
Yep. Compare that with the story of getting Windows 2.x work in protected mode (two devs and a spare Friday evening...) https://gunkies.org/wiki/Windows_3.0 https://gunkies.org/wiki/Windows_3.0
- mschaef 6y ago
  They were working with code that already pretended to be in protected mode anyway (with the exception of locking and unlocking blocks of memory... which was unnecessary with a hardware MMU.) Even saying that, it was amazing at the time to run essentially unmodified 'real mode' binaries in protected mode. (There was a tool that would take an existing binary and set the 'okay to run in protected mode' flag.)
  - BruceEel 6y ago
    yeah, they go into that in the referred-to book (The Personal Computer from the Inside Out).. though spectacularly irrelevant in this day and age, it still makes a thrilling read, for me anyway ;)
    - mschaef 6y ago
      It does me too... I was an early high school computer enthusiast/programmer around this time, and remember waiting for Windows 3 with bated breath. At the time, I didn't appreciate the engineering and politics behind what went into Windows 3, and it's fun to look back on it all in retrospect. I never liked the product as much, but the same thing's true for me for Windows 95. I remember waiting years for it, and then all the drama around Schulman's work to try to uncover _undocumented_ API's that Microsoft was reserving for itself to give its software an advantage. The AARD code is about all I remember of that that was real. (And of course now, Apple has undocumented API's all over its products, and it doesn't get nearly the press that that did then.)

LoSboccacc 6y ago

Windows 10 is just layers built on top of layers all the way back to nt, you have to remove stuff instead of adding it to make it better. the funniest part is that you can have literal archeological expeditions from the menus, each click bringing you further back in its history https://i.imgur.com/K0xEDaN.png https://i.imgur.com/K0xEDaN.png you can get back to components so old that are out of the new styling as well, taking the right turns: https://i.imgur.com/NWR6Epm.png https://i.imgur.com/NWR6Epm.png

pedrocx486 6y ago
Let's also not forget this amazing jewel: http://i.imgur.com/48S59Xm.png http://i.imgur.com/48S59Xm.png Straight from Windows 3.x :-)
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  :-) good catch, the oldest legacy I knew from 8 was the "advanced appearance" menu, but they removed it in 10
- mattl 6y ago
  That looks like it's from NT 3 rather than Windows 3.x as it does support long filenames.

AndrewGaspar 6y ago

Believe it or not, Microsoft engineers already have access to old NT source code.

BruceEel 6y ago
you don't say:)