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Don't get me started on the wasteland that "My Documents" has become, given 20 years of incompetent developers.

by yrro 4y ago

alyandon 4y ago
To this day, I still have a few applications that store important user configuration files via hard-coded "C:\Program Files\Publisher\AppName" path names rather than literally anywhere else.
mhh__ 4y ago
Another bit of incompetence that really winds me up is: software that you can specify the install location for, so it installs a update manager at that location but then always installs the actual programs under the C drive
- yrro 4y ago
  What the heck, I've never seen this. Hey ISVs, if you see this conversation engage me to consult on how to make your installers not drive people like us up the wall! ;)
  - ridgered4 4y ago
    IIRC Visual Studio technically lets you install in a non-C location but 80% of the disk usage ends up on C: anyway. Microsoft decided at some point people hard drive were plenty big so who cares? Unfortunately SSDs came along and for quite awhile space was quite tight on them!
pkaye 4y ago
The "Documents and Settings" for user home directories used to annoy me because its too long to type and has spaces. Thankfully the now changed it to "Users". There was a time when some old installers wouldn't parse "Program Files" correctly because of the space. Also "ProgramData" is inconsistent with the others because no space. But that folder is now hidden anyway. No consistency at Microsoft.
- Karellen 4y ago
  > There was a time when some old installers wouldn't parse "Program Files" correctly because of the space. That's one of the reasons why it had a space. If you wanted to stop using the DOS APIs and get off of `PROGRA~1`, you need to handle spaces properly. Having a bunch of the standard paths (see also `My Documents`) include spaces meant that software vendors shouldn't have been able to get away with using Windows filename APIs without supporting filenames with spaces - everything would obviously break almost instantly. Doing that, Microsoft made sure that there was no reasonable way for an ISV to claim that they either forgot to test that use-case, or weren't going to support it, when every Windows system in existence relied so heavily on paths with spaces.
tomrod 4y ago
Does anyone actually _use_ My Documents for anything legitimate these days?
- netsharc 4y ago
  I just use C:\Home\(my username)\ , where apps don't auto-create and leave theri junk. I guess the C:\Home\ isn't even necessary since I'm the only one using my computer.

Don't get me started on the wasteland that "My Documents" has become, given 20 years of incompetent developers.

by yrro 4y ago

Don't get me started on the wasteland that "My Documents" has become, given 20 years of incompetent developers.

To this day, I still have a few applications that store important user configuration files via hard-coded "C:\Program Files\Publisher\AppName" path names rather than literally anywhere else.

mhh__ 4y ago

Another bit of incompetence that really winds me up is: software that you can specify the install location for, so it installs a update manager at that location but then always installs the actual programs under the C drive

yrro 4y ago
What the heck, I've never seen this. Hey ISVs, if you see this conversation engage me to consult on how to make your installers not drive people like us up the wall! ;)
- ridgered4 4y ago
  IIRC Visual Studio technically lets you install in a non-C location but 80% of the disk usage ends up on C: anyway. Microsoft decided at some point people hard drive were plenty big so who cares? Unfortunately SSDs came along and for quite awhile space was quite tight on them!

pkaye 4y ago

The "Documents and Settings" for user home directories used to annoy me because its too long to type and has spaces. Thankfully the now changed it to "Users". There was a time when some old installers wouldn't parse "Program Files" correctly because of the space. Also "ProgramData" is inconsistent with the others because no space. But that folder is now hidden anyway. No consistency at Microsoft.

Karellen 4y ago
> There was a time when some old installers wouldn't parse "Program Files" correctly because of the space. That's one of the reasons why it had a space. If you wanted to stop using the DOS APIs and get off of `PROGRA~1`, you need to handle spaces properly. Having a bunch of the standard paths (see also `My Documents`) include spaces meant that software vendors shouldn't have been able to get away with using Windows filename APIs without supporting filenames with spaces - everything would obviously break almost instantly. Doing that, Microsoft made sure that there was no reasonable way for an ISV to claim that they either forgot to test that use-case, or weren't going to support it, when every Windows system in existence relied so heavily on paths with spaces.

tomrod 4y ago

Does anyone actually _use_ My Documents for anything legitimate these days?

netsharc 4y ago
I just use C:\Home\(my username)\ , where apps don't auto-create and leave theri junk. I guess the C:\Home\ isn't even necessary since I'm the only one using my computer.