4 ms·

Windows 95 was years behind the state-of-the-art on the day "Chicago" shipped. The technical choice of the backslash for file system paths, and hiding the real

Windows 95 was years behind the state-of-the-art on the day "Chicago" shipped. The technical choice of the backslash for file system paths, and hiding the real disk contents from the user view, caused years of headaches. The architectural design choices for extensibility ended up as a swiss-cheese architecture for malware. MSFT-chairman literally saw himself as the new savior. glad you see this as important?

petemill 3y ago
Important in terms of adoption.
function_seven 3y ago
None of your assessment matters regarding how big a deal it actually was. My mom didn’t give a damn about backslashes and my dad had zero use for seeing hidden files. The “state of the art” in 1995 was for nerds doing nerd stuff, Windows 95 was for regular people who couldn’t afford a Macintosh.
hackzzz 3y ago
[flagged]
canucker2016 3y ago
I fail to see how a minor choice such as what character to use as path separator has to do with being state of the art. https://www.os2museum.com/wp/why-does-windows-really-use-backslash-as-path-separator/ https://www.os2museum.com/wp/why-does-windows-really-use-bac... does a deep dive into the reasons for the choice, which seems more to do with backwards compatibility with DOS 1.0. Win95 wasn't built on a base that had security in mind. And when the Win95 feature set was created, the world wide web wasn't in that list. TCP/IP wasn't either iirc. Dialup access was the main onramp to the internet. MSN was supposed to be Microsoft's main way to get users on to the internet (to fight against AOL). If you don't have internet access, where is your malware coming from? Floppies? No wifi to attack your printers. Much easier to deal with a strange poisonous floppy the few times that you are given one than the 24/7 defenses needed when your box is ON the internet. Well, Win95 was hobbled with the MSDOS base which was mainly concerned with CP/M familiarity when first designed. That's why Microsoft was working on windowsNT.

petemill 3y ago

Important in terms of adoption.

function_seven 3y ago

None of your assessment matters regarding how big a deal it actually was. My mom didn’t give a damn about backslashes and my dad had zero use for seeing hidden files. The “state of the art” in 1995 was for nerds doing nerd stuff, Windows 95 was for regular people who couldn’t afford a Macintosh.

hackzzz 3y ago

[flagged]

canucker2016 3y ago

I fail to see how a minor choice such as what character to use as path separator has to do with being state of the art. https://www.os2museum.com/wp/why-does-windows-really-use-backslash-as-path-separator/ https://www.os2museum.com/wp/why-does-windows-really-use-bac... does a deep dive into the reasons for the choice, which seems more to do with backwards compatibility with DOS 1.0. Win95 wasn't built on a base that had security in mind. And when the Win95 feature set was created, the world wide web wasn't in that list. TCP/IP wasn't either iirc. Dialup access was the main onramp to the internet. MSN was supposed to be Microsoft's main way to get users on to the internet (to fight against AOL). If you don't have internet access, where is your malware coming from? Floppies? No wifi to attack your printers. Much easier to deal with a strange poisonous floppy the few times that you are given one than the 24/7 defenses needed when your box is ON the internet. Well, Win95 was hobbled with the MSDOS base which was mainly concerned with CP/M familiarity when first designed. That's why Microsoft was working on windowsNT.