5 ms·

> Some of these arguments are not really in good faith. First, this isn't a technical issue with the registry, but with how it's been used over the years and ne

by Jedd 4y ago

> Some of these arguments are not really in good faith. First, this isn't a technical issue with the registry, but with how it's been used over the years and never "refactored" - a distinct issue. Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... I'd suggest that last bit is not uttered in good faith. 20+ years ago you could install the Microsoft Office suite on the Microsoft OS du jour and you'd find about 12k new registry entries. You could then uninstall that same Microsoft Office suite from your OS, and ... you'd find no decrease in the size of your registry. In the same epoch -- if you installed a hundred new applications on your Debian GNU/Linux OS, you may end up with several dozen new directory hierarchies under your /etc directory. If you then uninstalled those applications, the /etc/ entries would be gone. If they weren't, you'd file a report on the Debian BTS and that oversight would be resolved within a few months. For this reason I think it's disingenuous to claim running ls /etc/ is a mess that's equivalent, in any sense of the word, to the microsoft registry.

vsareto 4y ago
I'm sure MS has enough issues with backwards compatibility. Can't imagine handling multiple registry implementations on top of it.
bzxcvbn 4y ago
If your argument relies on how things were in late 90s - early 00s, I don't know if it's really worth anything today.
- Jedd 4y ago
  That's probably a reasonable retort. My response was to the claims that we aren't addressing the technical issues with the registry -- that is, if Microsoft was unable/unwilling to handle registry hygiene, what hope the rest of us? I have not run the same test on a modern OS / Office install and uninstall, but at the risk of exposing my biases, I'm not hugely optimistic. Tangential aside - at the time I was working with a large Australian telco where we'd developed a SOE with robust roaming plus (effectively) package management for ~1500 desktop applications on a Microsoft Windows 3.x platform, all of which was largely kiboshed by the introduction of the registry. Secondly, I feel I've already addressed your 'at least it's not as bad as the /etc mess' by pointing out that /etc is not a mess on some, perhaps all, GNU/Linux distros with a good package management system. To paraphrase - if your argument relies on how slackware handled /etc in the late 90's, I don't know if that's worth anything today.

by Jedd 4y ago

vsareto 4y ago

I'm sure MS has enough issues with backwards compatibility. Can't imagine handling multiple registry implementations on top of it.

bzxcvbn 4y ago

If your argument relies on how things were in late 90s - early 00s, I don't know if it's really worth anything today.

Jedd 4y ago
That's probably a reasonable retort. My response was to the claims that we aren't addressing the technical issues with the registry -- that is, if Microsoft was unable/unwilling to handle registry hygiene, what hope the rest of us? I have not run the same test on a modern OS / Office install and uninstall, but at the risk of exposing my biases, I'm not hugely optimistic. Tangential aside - at the time I was working with a large Australian telco where we'd developed a SOE with robust roaming plus (effectively) package management for ~1500 desktop applications on a Microsoft Windows 3.x platform, all of which was largely kiboshed by the introduction of the registry. Secondly, I feel I've already addressed your 'at least it's not as bad as the /etc mess' by pointing out that /etc is not a mess on some, perhaps all, GNU/Linux distros with a good package management system. To paraphrase - if your argument relies on how slackware handled /etc in the late 90's, I don't know if that's worth anything today.