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"So when I went to work on my app, I was astonished to find that twenty years after the release of WPF, the boilerplate had barely changed." Such is the benefi

"So when I went to work on my app, I was astonished to find that twenty years after the release of WPF, the boilerplate had barely changed." Such is the benefit and the curse, I guess, of having the Windows API being locked in the distant past for backwards compatibility. I've always been surprised that Microsoft didn't do a full operating system refactor and provide a compatibility layer for running old binaries. Perhaps they figure it would be better to just transition everything to software as a service using web tech? But I just don't see how that strategy is gonna work long-term.

fsloth 7mo ago
"I've always been surprised that Microsoft didn't do a full operating system refactor and provide a compatibility layer for running old binaries" Just keeping a legacy system in working order is different skillset than writing a new system from scratch. So you need a new team. Nothing from Windows maintenance transfers. Maybe would require hiring someone who knows how to design an OS. It would be a major undertaking, needing protection by CEO (and if it would not succeed CEO would loose a lot of prestige). I'm not saying MS does not have the existing talent base. I don't _know_. But I've been inside a house maintaining a monstrous legacy codebase. I can tell you - it requires surprisingly little deep understanding just to keep an existing system going.
- hypercube33 7mo ago
  I mean technically they did with Windows on NT and again with Windows on Windows 64. Vista was also a huge redesign from the 1990s NT to a lot of the new technologies they'd made in Longhorn.
mwkaufma 7mo ago
They DID such a refactor for Win NT under David Cutler. Even in that comparatively simpler time it was a huge undertaking, and required all-hands-on-deck management that doesn't exist anywhere in tech anymore, let alone at today's Microsoft.

fsloth 7mo ago

"I've always been surprised that Microsoft didn't do a full operating system refactor and provide a compatibility layer for running old binaries" Just keeping a legacy system in working order is different skillset than writing a new system from scratch. So you need a new team. Nothing from Windows maintenance transfers. Maybe would require hiring someone who knows how to design an OS. It would be a major undertaking, needing protection by CEO (and if it would not succeed CEO would loose a lot of prestige). I'm not saying MS does not have the existing talent base. I don't _know_. But I've been inside a house maintaining a monstrous legacy codebase. I can tell you - it requires surprisingly little deep understanding just to keep an existing system going.

hypercube33 7mo ago
I mean technically they did with Windows on NT and again with Windows on Windows 64. Vista was also a huge redesign from the 1990s NT to a lot of the new technologies they'd made in Longhorn.

mwkaufma 7mo ago

They DID such a refactor for Win NT under David Cutler. Even in that comparatively simpler time it was a huge undertaking, and required all-hands-on-deck management that doesn't exist anywhere in tech anymore, let alone at today's Microsoft.