4 ms·

I'm really amazed that Windows has maintained substantial binary compatibility for so long. To be honest, when I see "one way they could've done it was by squee

I'm really amazed that Windows has maintained substantial binary compatibility for so long. To be honest, when I see "one way they could've done it was by squeezing the flag into the one byte of padding between widgetLevel and needs_more_time" I think nooope, nonstandard, can't do it, not my problem. Worrying about such things constantly throughout huge projects like MSVC over decades of time must add a whole new level to the difficulty of those engineers' jobs.

amaks 13y ago
That's Windows strength as well as its weakness. For example, I've heard that Windows Shell (whose proud team member is Raymond Chen) has to carry the baggage of backward compatibility, heritage code base and stuff like that simply because some forsaken customer might be using a particular feature. It's really hard to innovate in the environment like that.
Joeri 13y ago
On the other hand, it's a service to the user that old software keeps running. People who once invested in a copy of photoshop don't have to pay for upgrades they don't need. Or, in my case, i still use ecco pro to outline ideas, which saw its last update in 1997, is orphaned without source, and for which i've found no alternative that matches my exact flow.