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I feel that the complaints about "old tech", like comparing XML-RPC to XDR or the DEC Alpha at the time isn't very helpful, and maybe lacks some context. The sp

I feel that the complaints about "old tech", like comparing XML-RPC to XDR or the DEC Alpha at the time isn't very helpful, and maybe lacks some context. The specification came out in 1999, which means that people were discussing the spec for months or even years beforehand. Was any Microsoft-associated engineer using a 64-bit computer during that time? Did they even care? It's a guess on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised they couldn't put 64-bit in the spec since their competitors may have had patents in that space, and some tech companies weren't being friendly with each other at the time. Also, messages that look like a HTML web page at the time also could have made it seemingly easier for developers to work with, and be attracted to use a new platform.

masklinn 4y ago
NT ran on Alpha and MIPS R4000, both of which were 64b architectures, though Windows only ran in 32b until XP64 (there was a 64b 2K prototype targeted at Itanium, but since Itanium ended up delayed it was shelved without release).
jmillikin 4y ago
According to a post on xml.com[0], development of the spec that would become XML-RPC started in 1998. Microsoft was selling (32-bit) NT for Alpha at that point, and according to Raymond Chen[1] they had an internal 64-bit build of it. I may be dating myself here, but a lot of folks new to the industry seem to think of anything pre-2000 as a dark time full of greyscale CRTs and dot-matrix printers. While those did exist in the home market, academic and business computing (where most of the advanced tech was being developed) was pretty advanced and a modern engineer would have felt right at home on a mid-90s UNIX workstation. If you go back further you'll start encountering things like CORBA, which were pretty bad, but had the legitimate excuse of being very early. Remember that the '90s moved fast by modern standards -- CORBA was contemporary with MS-DOS, while XML-RPC was after IE had dethroned Netscape. [0] https://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2001/04/04/soap.html https://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2001/04/04/soap.html [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/cc718978(v=msdn.10) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-m...
fweimer 4y ago
Windows on the DEC Alpha was still in support at the time, I think, so someone at Microsoft must have used it.

masklinn 4y ago

NT ran on Alpha and MIPS R4000, both of which were 64b architectures, though Windows only ran in 32b until XP64 (there was a 64b 2K prototype targeted at Itanium, but since Itanium ended up delayed it was shelved without release).

jmillikin 4y ago

According to a post on xml.com[0], development of the spec that would become XML-RPC started in 1998. Microsoft was selling (32-bit) NT for Alpha at that point, and according to Raymond Chen[1] they had an internal 64-bit build of it. I may be dating myself here, but a lot of folks new to the industry seem to think of anything pre-2000 as a dark time full of greyscale CRTs and dot-matrix printers. While those did exist in the home market, academic and business computing (where most of the advanced tech was being developed) was pretty advanced and a modern engineer would have felt right at home on a mid-90s UNIX workstation. If you go back further you'll start encountering things like CORBA, which were pretty bad, but had the legitimate excuse of being very early. Remember that the '90s moved fast by modern standards -- CORBA was contemporary with MS-DOS, while XML-RPC was after IE had dethroned Netscape. [0] https://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2001/04/04/soap.html https://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2001/04/04/soap.html [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/cc718978(v=msdn.10) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-m...

fweimer 4y ago

Windows on the DEC Alpha was still in support at the time, I think, so someone at Microsoft must have used it.