4 ms·

I aspire to one day work for an organization that balances backward compatibility with necessary changes as well as the linux community can. It's not just the a

I aspire to one day work for an organization that balances backward compatibility with necessary changes as well as the linux community can. It's not just the attention to maintaining it, it's the sophistication in how to manage the variant needs.

kazinator 4y ago
Microsoft is hiring. In the past, Microsoft had gone as far as emulating undocumented/undefined API behavior for misbehaving/buggy applications, to keep them working under new OS releases. Nobody in GNU/Linux tests old binaries; only whatever they recompiled for their current distro, and screw the rest. The kernel is pretty good about maintaining syscall compatibility.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  The difference between Microsoft and the linux kernel community as demonstrated in this case is what I termed 'balance'. > Microsoft had gone as far as emulating undocumented/undefined API behavior for misbehaving/buggy applications Yeah, I believe Chen writes about code for SimCity. This is where Microsoft loses balance. They keep backwards compatibility to a fault. Literally a fault. At some point the kernel will no longer have `struct buffer_head`, at least not in the mainline, though it may be a while. That backwards compatibility will go away. Microsoft has been and continues to be bad about end-of-life for their software. They keep things around that should be gone, and remove or stop supporting things that should stay.
  - rasz 4y ago
    also 'Woe unto PROGMAN.INI' https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090903-00/?p=16863 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090903-00/?p=16... > Sad but true: Once you document a file format, it becomes a de facto API.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  Raymond Chen has about a million blog posts describing some of these efforts. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    is redmond-chan even a real person ?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

kazinator 4y ago

Microsoft is hiring. In the past, Microsoft had gone as far as emulating undocumented/undefined API behavior for misbehaving/buggy applications, to keep them working under new OS releases. Nobody in GNU/Linux tests old binaries; only whatever they recompiled for their current distro, and screw the rest. The kernel is pretty good about maintaining syscall compatibility.

cratermoon 4y ago
The difference between Microsoft and the linux kernel community as demonstrated in this case is what I termed 'balance'. > Microsoft had gone as far as emulating undocumented/undefined API behavior for misbehaving/buggy applications Yeah, I believe Chen writes about code for SimCity. This is where Microsoft loses balance. They keep backwards compatibility to a fault. Literally a fault. At some point the kernel will no longer have `struct buffer_head`, at least not in the mainline, though it may be a while. That backwards compatibility will go away. Microsoft has been and continues to be bad about end-of-life for their software. They keep things around that should be gone, and remove or stop supporting things that should stay.
- rasz 4y ago
  also 'Woe unto PROGMAN.INI' https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090903-00/?p=16863 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090903-00/?p=16... > Sad but true: Once you document a file format, it becomes a de facto API.
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Raymond Chen has about a million blog posts describing some of these efforts. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
- smegsicle 4y ago
  is redmond-chan even a real person ?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]