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If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#81

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

kentonv wrote: post #74
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, a better solution would be for the system to pop up a notification informing the user that printing is not supported on this platform That's the whole point of this article - when you can't control the various platforms that your application is run on, you want to try to do the "least bad" thing, even if that platform didn't anticipate the situation of, in this case, telling people that printing isn't suppor…

The article is the other way around -- it's written from the perspective of a platform developer trying to deal with apps that didn't anticipate the situation.

Thanks for the clarification, you're correct. The nuance/complexity is that the platform developer must conform to a platform spec (in this case, the Windows API) that usually makes some underlying assumptions about the capabilities of the system that runs it, which may not always be correct.

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#82

Post by orange_fritter »

happytoexplain wrote: post #23

The specific thing the author is suggesting is correct (components should suffer before users do), but I take great offense to their framing. "There may be times where you need to make an API do nothing." "The wrong thing to do is to have the printing functions throw a Not­Supported­Exception." No, no, absolutely no - what the author is describing is a hack to support a shitty client. Yes, you have to do this sometim…

> The way they've worded this betrays the internalization of their suffering as a MS developer.

While I feel less strongly about this Xbox/printing example, I remember Bill Gates saying "I reboot my computer every day" which is a similar mindset-- this culture has been forced to adopt a certain form of "hygiene" due to that same culture NOT adopting hygiene preemptively when they built their systems.

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#83

Post by [deleted] »

alpaca128 wrote: post #70
gruez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an app originally designed for iPhone but is running on an iPad? iPhones can make calls, but iPads can't. Sure, a properly designed iPad app wouldn't try to use the phone functionality, but what if the developer is too lazy to develop a dedicated iPad app? Surely a crappy iPhone app running on iPad is better than no app at all?

Wouldn't that be part of Apple's app reviews?

[deleted]

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#84

Post by bakugo »

paxys wrote: post #10

People are reacting negatively as expected, but stuff like this is exactly why you can click on a file that was written in Word '97 or a game that was compiled for MS-DOS three decades ago and it opens on your computer exactly as expected. Backwards compatibility is always messy. You either do it imperfectly or don't do it at all.

I assume the negative reactions are due to the large Apple user base on HN. Most of these people are likely so used to being told "this software was built for a version of your OS released 2 years ago so you can't use it anymore, tough shit", they've come to expect it.

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#85

Post by gruez »

alpaca128 wrote: post #70
gruez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about an app originally designed for iPhone but is running on an iPad? iPhones can make calls, but iPads can't. Sure, a properly designed iPad app wouldn't try to use the phone functionality, but what if the developer is too lazy to develop a dedicated iPad app? Surely a crappy iPhone app running on iPad is better than no app at all?

Wouldn't that be part of Apple's app reviews?

Only if you try to publish it as an iPad app. See also: https://hacknicity.medium.com/how-iphone-only-apps-appear-on...

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#86

Post by Arainach »

FreeFull wrote: post #18
Analemma_ wrote: post #3

I understand the logic here, and I'm aware Microsoft has a large number of convoluted backward-compatibility requirements, but this seems like drinking to solve your problems and just putting off the inevitable hangover. To be clear: what you're doing here is lying to the user and the developer. Maybe that's justified in isolation, but now this lie is one more bit of "hidden state" you have to keep track of in furthe…

As far as alternatives to what the article suggested go, I think the ideal solution would be to have a compile-time error, so the developers never even get as far as having their printing code try to run on the Xbox. And since it's a compile-time error, there doesn't need to be any kind of runtime error handling or cost either.

Apps aren't being compiled here. Apps already exist and new platforms and platform functionalities are being made available.

Launching platforms is an eternal chicken and egg problem: You want to launch a new platform. Users want apps before they buy into the platform. Developers want users and a guarantee they will spend money before investing time and money building apps for the platform. If you're really really rich, you can literally pay developers to write apps for you, but ask Microsoft how that went with Windows Phone.

Instead, the most reliable way (I said most reliable, not reliable) is to leverage an existing group of apps onto your platform. Maybe you have a phone ecosystem and want to get into tablets. So you take the already existing phone apps in your store and let them run on your new platform.

There is no recompiling. There is no build.

There is no "build" because the source code was lost when all of the company's assets were sold off in 2002.

There is no "build" because the developer made a game, put it on your app store, moved on to the next game and has no interest in supporting this game that isn't providing any significant new revenue.

There is no "build" because this is FooManager 6.0, the company that makes FooManger wants everyone to buy FooManager 7.0 and isn't making any further changes to 6.0.

etc. etc. etc.

Binary compatibility is what matters. Nothing else is of particular significance.

In addition, if recompiling an app for your new platform yields compile errors and requires work (as opposed to targeting a new platform version in a manifest and just hitting build), developers on your platform are significantly less likely to spend the time to do so.

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#87

Post by iamtedd »

> the function for installing a printer can return immediately with a result code that means “The user cancelled the operation.”

I hope this is never shown to the user, because one of the most infuriating things that can happen is when the computer tells me that I did something I actually didn't.

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#88

Post by awkwardpotato »

wewtyflakes wrote: post #43
paxys wrote: post #10

People are reacting negatively as expected, but stuff like this is exactly why you can click on a file that was written in Word '97 or a game that was compiled for MS-DOS three decades ago and it opens on your computer exactly as expected. Backwards compatibility is always messy. You either do it imperfectly or don't do it at all.

I hear that refrain often regarding Microsoft, but with games, I have not had good luck. I resort to using GOG, which itself ends up virtualizing the environment anyway. For example, I do not think anyone would have success installing the original Sim City on Windows 11.

Fallout 3 was unplayable (without mods/patches) on Windows 10 for many years because of its dependency on "Games for Windows Live" from Windows 7

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#89

Post by lhamil64 »

bitwize wrote: post #75
happytoexplain wrote: post #23

The specific thing the author is suggesting is correct (components should suffer before users do), but I take great offense to their framing. "There may be times where you need to make an API do nothing." "The wrong thing to do is to have the printing functions throw a Not­Supported­Exception." No, no, absolutely no - what the author is describing is a hack to support a shitty client. Yes, you have to do this sometim…

> No, no, absolutely no - what the author is describing is a hack to support a shitty client. If you were on the Windows team and I was your manager, I might fire you for that. This is Windows. You do not break applications that users depend on. Ever, ever, ever. If you have a "shitty" or misbehaving client application, you use whatever workarounds, shims, and compatibility hacks it takes to make the application work…

I also took issue with the Xbox example, and I think it's a context issue. When I read it, I interpreted it as an API for new apps/games to use. In that case, they should be testing on an actual Xbox before shipping! And why would the app be trying to print in the first place if it's designed to run on an Xbox?

But I suspect the situation this is being designed for is existing PC apps being ported to an Xbox. OK, in that case I can see fudging the API since there might be obscure corners that the devs didn't think about that try to print. But I'd still say the devs should be testing on an Xbox and make an effort not to attempt to do things when it doesn't make sense for the platform.

Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly

#90

Post by imperfectsoft »

lucianbr wrote: post #5

Once upon a time it was considered a great strategy for browsers to make the best effort to display a page, even if the html code had errors. Just try to guess the author's intention as well as you can, and go ahead. Errors are bad. Users don't want errors. I thought we learned from that experience. Apparently not.

the evolution we have seen in software in the last 20 years isn't great except for LLMs, but then again, they messed them up with censorship.

I would not miss much if I was time-traveled to 1999.

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