The Windows NT kernel is surprisingly well-designed. Everything is an 'object' to the kernel (or file descriptor). Concepts like ACLs apply to all kernel object

The Windows NT kernel is surprisingly well-designed. Everything is an 'object' to the kernel (or file descriptor). Concepts like ACLs apply to all kernel objects. I summarized about some of its capabilities previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34914776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34914776 One concrete example of its design: exercising administrator (sudo) permissions causes a User Account Control (UAC) dialog to pop up, which takes over the screen from the current WindowStation -- making it impossible for any software to mess with approval or password entry [1]. IO Completion Ports (IOCP) also stand out as a powerful way to perform asynchronous IO that NT has had since ... I'm not sure how long, but I believe probably since the 90s. As one HN commenter wrote in 2016, "IOCP is the top item on my (short) list of things Windows simply does better. The performance boost you see from designing a server for IOCP from the ground up is jaw-dropping." [2] And it works for a variety of different IO tasks (including disk IO). Windows gets a lot of hate, but most of the criticism you read about it online is not usually a well-considered critique of how its kernel APIs operate. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-control/user-account-control/how-it-works https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/applicati... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11867345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11867345