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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

#141

Post by freeone3000 »

derefr wrote: post #122
maerF0x0 wrote: post #91

I've learned this as "swallowing errors" and IMO it's a poor practice. Not only does it not solve the issue at hand (you cannot print on an xbox), but it actively hides how broken the software is, which makes bug discovery and testing much harder. This is one thing I like about Go's panic. You're mostly not supposed to use it or recover from it at run time. It serves as a great vehicle to blare loud sirens at testing…

The point of the article, in large part, is that when you’re designing an alternative runtime for a new platform, it is up to you what conditions are considered to be errors. Deciding to make a component of the runtime “inert” exists before and above the decision to make the implementation panic. In this specific case: it is up to Microsoft to decide what the semantics of “printing on an Xbox” are. It could be an err…

UWP apps that don’t require specifically desktop APIs will run on Xbox — including, for instance, Excel.

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

#142

Post by elevatedastalt »

PaulHoule wrote: post #115
mey wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Error design depends on context. For most of the systems I work on, fail fast on request for anything out of spec is the correct design. B2B/Microservices/API focused systems. Windows however has focused on bending over backwards to provide compatibility (including memory patching popular software that was broken, like Simcity https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/windows-95-went-the-... ). In the context of a user…

It's hard to overstate how hard Microsoft has worked to maintain backwards compatibility. Recently I had to read an old Access file and where I work we still keep Office '97 around for this purpose and it is quite amazing that it installs and works just fine on Win 11, Clippy works just fine, in fact all the other lame-ass things Office '97 does to take over your desktop all still work even if they don't quite visual…

It's hard to overstate*

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

#143

Post by kbolino »

mrguyorama wrote: post #136
Arainach wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The printer drivers don't run on XBox. XBox isn't exposing all of the legacy Win32 APIs and driver models available in desktop.

It's an x64 CPU running most of Windows with plentiful and fully supported USB ports. Why CAN'T I print from my Xbox? I can print with my phone, so why not my Xbox? I'm sure there's something about "windows print subsystems are pretty terrible and we should excise them from anything we can" and "reduce code to reduce bugs" but like.... There's no technical reason it can't

You go to print a document. Your printer is temporarily unavailable. The print job hits the spooler and sits in a queue. You get bored and launch a game. The printer becomes available. The print driver has to convert the job to PCL or whatever proprietary format the printer uses. Your game hangs or even worse crashes because it's not really designed to run with background tasks on the same cores.

Who do you blame, especially since the usual diagnostic tools of a PC with a full operating system aren't available?

It's a feature very few people will use with lots of sharp edges that people accept on a PC but would find intolerable on a video game console.

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

#144

Post by patapong »

Hmmm I see and appreciate the idea behind this. That said, it seems confusing for the user to be shown an empty list of printers if no printers can be installed on the platform. In my opinion, it would be preferable to show the user a dialog that says "This platform does not support printing" and, once they dismiss the dialog, inform the program that the user cancelled the print action.

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

#145

Post by thfuran »

gruez wrote: post #102
maerF0x0 wrote: post #91

I've learned this as "swallowing errors" and IMO it's a poor practice. Not only does it not solve the issue at hand (you cannot print on an xbox), but it actively hides how broken the software is, which makes bug discovery and testing much harder. This is one thing I like about Go's panic. You're mostly not supposed to use it or recover from it at run time. It serves as a great vehicle to blare loud sirens at testing…

>It serves as a great vehicle to blare loud sirens at testing time that you (the programmer) screwed up (and that's ok, we all do), and it's time to figure out where and how to fix it :) Right, but if you read the article, the author is talking less about the developer experience and more about the user experience. "blare loud sirens" is great if you're a tester/developer, not so much if you're an end user. When it c…

That is a dangerous assumption. Unless you know a great deal about every possible use case, you can't know the potential ramifications of incorrect output. Proceeding from invalid state (which would often be the result of swallowing errors) is essentially undefined behavior.

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

#146

Post by ahazred8ta »

mnw21cam wrote: post #92
gruez wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the same DVI file. Which is used by approximately no one. Good luck uploading your resume in DVI.

Good luck uploading your CV in PDF. I tried that a few times and got moaned at a load that my CV must be in Word format. In the end I converted the PDF into images, and created a Word document in OpenOffice (this was a while ago) with one page image per page. Got moaned at for that too.

Heh. A buddy of mine once applied for a Linux job and sent his resume as a PDF. They called him back: "OMG, you're the only applicant who didn't send a Word file. We're not worthy."

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

#148

Post by spiderice »

bakugo wrote: post #84
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.

You just created a scenario in your head that confirmed an existing bias in your head and then assumed that your made up scenario matched reality. Very weird to read.

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

#149

Post by repler »

apetresc wrote: post #116
gruez wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With Word you can't even guarantee that reopening the file on the same computer & version won't change its formatting. Source? This seems utterly bizarre.

Before the new '.docx`, '.xslx', etc. formats, when it was still just .doc, .xsl, etc., the document format was (as I've heard it told) essentially just a memory dump of Word/Excel's state for that document at the time you saved. And since it's easy to imagine that serializing/deserializing such a complex thing might not be always 100% perfectly idempotent, it would indeed happen that just the act of opening a file w…

the new formats are actually zip archives believe it or not

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

#150

Post by WalterBright »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #91

I've learned this as "swallowing errors" and IMO it's a poor practice. Not only does it not solve the issue at hand (you cannot print on an xbox), but it actively hides how broken the software is, which makes bug discovery and testing much harder. This is one thing I like about Go's panic. You're mostly not supposed to use it or recover from it at run time. It serves as a great vehicle to blare loud sirens at testing…

It has irked me for decades that when the internet connection fails, all you get is a message that it failed. But what failed?

1. the software on your computer

2. the computer's hardware

3. the ethernet cable or wifi

4. the switch

5. the router

6. the cable modem

7. the internet cable to your house

8. the ISP

9. the remote system you're trying to connect to

Nothing has improved for decades.

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