3 ms·

I think if you focus on the win{16,32} API, it doesn't do any justice to, for instance, the C library. FreeBSD has always supported binaries from various UNIX s

I think if you focus on the win{16,32} API, it doesn't do any justice to, for instance, the C library. FreeBSD has always supported binaries from various UNIX systems and I think this heritage goes back a bit further then 1995. Also, windows bundles a c library of its own which implements a significant subset. Sure win{16,32} support a GUI with bells and whistles but that's because it evolved several years later specifically to support this newer mode of UI. It does not support 50-year old teletypes.

fpgeek 14y ago
You misunderstand my point about length. I'm completely aware that there are plenty of APIs that have been supported far longer than Win<anything>. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm wondering is this: Has there ever been an API with a longer deprecation period than Win16? Remember, Microsoft announced the deprecation in 1995 (IIRC), but it didn't start to bite until 64-bit Windows mattered (you could draw the line at some server versions, Vista, or, as I do, at Windows 7). No matter how you slice it, that's a long time.
- hapless 14y ago
  X11: 1987. Still works in 2012.
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    X11, not backwards compatible with X10 or X9. OpenGL 4.2, backwards compatible to OpenGL 1.0 (1992) OpenGL ES, not backwards compatible with OpenGL. There's an obvious parallel here of APIs being compatible within themselves but not across boundaries between major architectural revisions intended to throw out cruft and target new environments.
    - cpeterso 14y ago
      > X11, not backwards compatible with X10 or X9. That's why it's called X11 and not X10 ES.
      - msbarnett 14y ago
        This line of reasoning is utterly absurd. They are different APIs with different names. The specifics of the substrings they have in common and the format of the substrings that differ is utterly irrelevant. OpenCL is a different API from OpenAL, Cocos-2d is an API for an entirely different language than Cocos-2d-x, the Cocoa API is wildly incompatible with Cocoa Touch. Horrors! You determine whether or not two APIs are compatible (or even striving to be the same kind of API) by reading the documentation, not by applying stupid heuristics to common substrings in their names.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    X11 wasn't deprecated in 1987, that's when it was released. So far as I know, X11 hasn't been deprecated. Side-note: Win16 (called "the Windows API" back then) actually predates X11 (though not previous versions of X) since Windows 1.0 was released in November 1985.

fpgeek 14y ago

You misunderstand my point about length. I'm completely aware that there are plenty of APIs that have been supported far longer than Win<anything>. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm wondering is this: Has there ever been an API with a longer deprecation period than Win16? Remember, Microsoft announced the deprecation in 1995 (IIRC), but it didn't start to bite until 64-bit Windows mattered (you could draw the line at some server versions, Vista, or, as I do, at Windows 7). No matter how you slice it, that's a long time.

hapless 14y ago
X11: 1987. Still works in 2012.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  X11, not backwards compatible with X10 or X9. OpenGL 4.2, backwards compatible to OpenGL 1.0 (1992) OpenGL ES, not backwards compatible with OpenGL. There's an obvious parallel here of APIs being compatible within themselves but not across boundaries between major architectural revisions intended to throw out cruft and target new environments.
  - cpeterso 14y ago
    > X11, not backwards compatible with X10 or X9. That's why it's called X11 and not X10 ES.
    - msbarnett 14y ago
      This line of reasoning is utterly absurd. They are different APIs with different names. The specifics of the substrings they have in common and the format of the substrings that differ is utterly irrelevant. OpenCL is a different API from OpenAL, Cocos-2d is an API for an entirely different language than Cocos-2d-x, the Cocoa API is wildly incompatible with Cocoa Touch. Horrors! You determine whether or not two APIs are compatible (or even striving to be the same kind of API) by reading the documentation, not by applying stupid heuristics to common substrings in their names.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- fpgeek 14y ago
  X11 wasn't deprecated in 1987, that's when it was released. So far as I know, X11 hasn't been deprecated. Side-note: Win16 (called "the Windows API" back then) actually predates X11 (though not previous versions of X) since Windows 1.0 was released in November 1985.