5 ms·

> Use the tool that's best for your job. I don't bitch about my socket set being metric when I need SAE. At this point the differences are known and well unders

by ulkesh 5y ago

> Use the tool that's best for your job. I don't bitch about my socket set being metric when I need SAE. At this point the differences are known and well understood. Completely agreed, and clearly the author of the article did not understand the differences before their endeavor, or they are trying to make a point -- one in which we all already know. One real strong opinion about Windows I have is the registry, which is at its core a flawed and archaic system. It tries to bring every setting and registered library into one single infrastructure and it has been the bane of developer existence for far too long. The registry needs to die. There is nothing the registry provides that can't be done simply within the sandbox of the application. And applications should be sandboxed. And don't get me started about NTFS. I find it odd, that the author, who claims they are coming from Linux doesn't complain about just how godawful slow NTFS is. To me this is the most egregious Windows issue. Sure, NTFS works, but when it takes 3-4 minutes to compile the same code on the same language/compiler in Windows that takes 30 seconds or less to compile in Linux, clearly something is wrong. I simply cannot develop on Windows -- efficiency is completely lost.

legalcorrection 5y ago
It's funny that with the registry being SO AWFUL and BAD, every other platform basically has the same thing. MacOS has the /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences hierarchies, with plist files inside of them representing individual keys and being accessible by a programmatic interface that abstracts the files away. This is the same as the Windows Registry aside from implementation details. On Linux, at least in the Gnome side of things, there's dconf, which is again exactly the same thing as the Windows Registry, and it even has a similar implementation: a binary database file. Amusingly, the dconf wikipedia article has a whole little section full of misleading and downright inaccurate ("Most Windows applications still store their user settings in individual .ini files spread across the disk") copes to obscure the fact that dconf is the same thing as the registry. All of this Windows hate is so tiresome. Bitter Slashdot-tier commentary from people who don't actually know anything about operating systems. I've noticed in particular that hobbyist Linux users think that they have a profound understanding of the OS because they used a command line and text editor to do system configuration instead of a GUI, and have to type arcane incantations from Google to fix their broken systems periodically. But in reality, they know very little. See, for example, any thread with hysterical complaints about systemd. They can't even explain what systemd is, what problems it solves, and why almost everyone who actually does linux system development for a living is pretty happy with it. But they're sure it's an evil conspiracy to steal the innocence of their precious OS. They think they know a lot, but they actually know nothing.
- windowsworkstoo 5y ago
  Yeh this is bang on - I find that type of person tends to say they know something, where in fact they know the name of something and thats’s about it - there’s nothing below the surface.
- johnny22 5y ago
  it's just that most of these people haven't updated their understanding of windows since windows 98 to XP. I bet that dconf article section hasn't been touched since the bush era when it was actually mostly true.
dataflow 5y ago
I'm sorry but you seem to be misplacing a lot of your judgments. NTFS is awesome. What's not so awesome is the performance of Windows's I/O subsystem when opening files, and this doesn't really have much to do with NTFS. Also I don't know how you're compiling files, but if you're using GCC and observing it to be much slower than on Linux, you should be aware that that's a GCC issue and not an OS issue; it neither happens with Clang, nor with MinGW versions of GCC. As for the whole "registry is flawed" thing, I've never heard one good argument for that assertion. It's a meme people keep repeating without even bothering to make good arguments for it. "Trying to bring every setting and registered library into one single infrastructure" is literally what the filesystem does too. Except if you're on Linux it drags in random stuff like /proc and /dev in for the ride. All the registry is is a very fast and well-implemented hierarchical key-value store for small bits of data. Either you want such a thing, in which case the registry is a great implementation, or you don't, in which case the problem isn't the registry. I haven't experienced greater joy dealing with ~/.config or dconf than the registry, but if you want those you can always use %AppData%.
- throwaway675309 5y ago
  I don't know if they've changed it, but I can think of one very simple disadvantage to the registry in about five seconds, and that is that they combined windows registry settings and user application registry settings into the same registry which meant that they were acting in the same space which from a security / permission standpoint as well as from a possible data loss and corruption standpoint is TERRIBLE; they should've had physically separate registry hive files for each of these spaces to keep them separate and protected.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    I don't follow, sorry. They aren't in the same "space" any more than files are in the same "space". Users put files in C:\ and so does the system, so filesystems are terrible?
  - legalcorrection 5y ago
    More poorly informed registry bashing. 1. Every registry key can have its own ACL (Access Control List). So you can have highly granular permissions. 2. "The registry" is not stored in one file. It's actually a few different hives which are stored as separate files. Your user-level registry settings are stored in your user profile (i.e. home directory) and roams with your user account to different machines in a domain.
ulkesh 4y ago
Heh, clearly people think they know more than they do and accuse me of the same. No worries, I really couldn’t care less what others think of me. I know how my systems perform under multiple OS conditions and configurations, I’ve developed for every single OS natively, and I’ve yet to experience anything close to the multiple issues on windows with the subject matter I described on any other OS. Keep fighting the fight, though! I mean it’s not like your favorite OS is going anywhere.

by ulkesh 5y ago

legalcorrection 5y ago

It's funny that with the registry being SO AWFUL and BAD, every other platform basically has the same thing. MacOS has the /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences hierarchies, with plist files inside of them representing individual keys and being accessible by a programmatic interface that abstracts the files away. This is the same as the Windows Registry aside from implementation details. On Linux, at least in the Gnome side of things, there's dconf, which is again exactly the same thing as the Windows Registry, and it even has a similar implementation: a binary database file. Amusingly, the dconf wikipedia article has a whole little section full of misleading and downright inaccurate ("Most Windows applications still store their user settings in individual .ini files spread across the disk") copes to obscure the fact that dconf is the same thing as the registry. All of this Windows hate is so tiresome. Bitter Slashdot-tier commentary from people who don't actually know anything about operating systems. I've noticed in particular that hobbyist Linux users think that they have a profound understanding of the OS because they used a command line and text editor to do system configuration instead of a GUI, and have to type arcane incantations from Google to fix their broken systems periodically. But in reality, they know very little. See, for example, any thread with hysterical complaints about systemd. They can't even explain what systemd is, what problems it solves, and why almost everyone who actually does linux system development for a living is pretty happy with it. But they're sure it's an evil conspiracy to steal the innocence of their precious OS. They think they know a lot, but they actually know nothing.

windowsworkstoo 5y ago
Yeh this is bang on - I find that type of person tends to say they know something, where in fact they know the name of something and thats’s about it - there’s nothing below the surface.
johnny22 5y ago
it's just that most of these people haven't updated their understanding of windows since windows 98 to XP. I bet that dconf article section hasn't been touched since the bush era when it was actually mostly true.

dataflow 5y ago

I'm sorry but you seem to be misplacing a lot of your judgments. NTFS is awesome. What's not so awesome is the performance of Windows's I/O subsystem when opening files, and this doesn't really have much to do with NTFS. Also I don't know how you're compiling files, but if you're using GCC and observing it to be much slower than on Linux, you should be aware that that's a GCC issue and not an OS issue; it neither happens with Clang, nor with MinGW versions of GCC. As for the whole "registry is flawed" thing, I've never heard one good argument for that assertion. It's a meme people keep repeating without even bothering to make good arguments for it. "Trying to bring every setting and registered library into one single infrastructure" is literally what the filesystem does too. Except if you're on Linux it drags in random stuff like /proc and /dev in for the ride. All the registry is is a very fast and well-implemented hierarchical key-value store for small bits of data. Either you want such a thing, in which case the registry is a great implementation, or you don't, in which case the problem isn't the registry. I haven't experienced greater joy dealing with ~/.config or dconf than the registry, but if you want those you can always use %AppData%.

throwaway675309 5y ago
I don't know if they've changed it, but I can think of one very simple disadvantage to the registry in about five seconds, and that is that they combined windows registry settings and user application registry settings into the same registry which meant that they were acting in the same space which from a security / permission standpoint as well as from a possible data loss and corruption standpoint is TERRIBLE; they should've had physically separate registry hive files for each of these spaces to keep them separate and protected.
- dataflow 5y ago
  I don't follow, sorry. They aren't in the same "space" any more than files are in the same "space". Users put files in C:\ and so does the system, so filesystems are terrible?
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  More poorly informed registry bashing. 1. Every registry key can have its own ACL (Access Control List). So you can have highly granular permissions. 2. "The registry" is not stored in one file. It's actually a few different hives which are stored as separate files. Your user-level registry settings are stored in your user profile (i.e. home directory) and roams with your user account to different machines in a domain.

ulkesh 4y ago

Heh, clearly people think they know more than they do and accuse me of the same. No worries, I really couldn’t care less what others think of me. I know how my systems perform under multiple OS conditions and configurations, I’ve developed for every single OS natively, and I’ve yet to experience anything close to the multiple issues on windows with the subject matter I described on any other OS. Keep fighting the fight, though! I mean it’s not like your favorite OS is going anywhere.