5 ms·
What blew my mind is not that incident, or that Microsoft devs refused[1] to fix it, but that about a year later they updated Notepad the same way and it visibl
by jiggawatts 4y ago
What blew my mind is not that incident, or that Microsoft devs refused[1] to fix it, but that about a year later they updated Notepad the same way and it visibly lags and stutters on a suuuuper high end gaming machine. Like. What. The. Fuck!?
They literally never tested Notepad with large text files! It can take a minute to open a file that every other text editor on Windows opens instantly. It misaligns tabs and four spaces by one or two pixels, which means they utterly failed to render using a fixed width font in a way I have never seen before.
This minimalist text editor takes over a second to launch from an SSD that can read a 4K movie end-to-end in the same time.
It’s just a staggering level of incompetence.
[1] Their excuses were mostly that they couldn’t even look at his code, lest their minds be infected somehow and be in violation of copyright. Meanwhile Casey uploaded it as open source and they could have at least listened to his videos with their eyes closed. Instead they elected to stick their fingers in their ears and yell “La-la-la can’t hear you!”. Clearly I’m exaggerating for effect, but not much.
- fmajid 4y agoCorporate legal departments have a really strong aversion to GPL.
- pointlessone 4y agoI wonder if the author could release his code in public domain if he wants to fix the issue. Corporate stance on GPL is not exactly unknown after all.
- tough 4y agoWhy should here the good guy bend over microsoft lawyers? Use the open source version
- jiggawatts 4y agoNobody needs to copy the code verbatim anyway. The essential part is the algorithm (or the "approach" to the problem), not some sort of specific C++ wizardry or a huge library. The correct solution can be thrown together in a couple of weekends, it's not something that has to be imported into the Windows Terminal codebase as-is.
- tough 4y agoTo me that just shows that microsoft doesn't really care, right?
- jiggawatts 4y agoExhibit a) Microsoft has their own Linux distro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBL-Mariner Exhibit b) Microsoft is a top-5 contributor to Linux: https://www.zdnet.com/article/top-five-linux-contributor-microsoft/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/top-five-linux-contributor-mic... The Terminal team could have simply asked a Microsoft Linux team member to watch the videos, and then explain the gist of the algorithm without ever referencing any specific code. Algorithms can only be patented, not copyrighted, and any IP lawyer would tell you that. Not to mention that Casey's code is dead obvious, totally standard, done-this-way-for-decades, not some sort of exotic thing he invented. Heck, I've personally implemented something nearly identical back in 2000, and I'm pretty sure every game engine console (as seen in Source games) works nearly identically also. It's so simple that a one or two sentence description is sufficient. Nobody is suggesting that Microsoft copy-paste reams of GPL code. Instead, Microsoft is refusing to listen to a single sentence of good advice, and stubbornly forging ahead with a demonstrably stupid solution.