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How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#101

Post by rincebrain »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #80
kevstev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent in the win world to obscure command line settings is the registry. There is a whole heap of documented and undocumented config in there. 99% of the time you don't really need to go in there, but its often the more automatable way and occasionally you will find some fun options.

and unsuprisingly that's considered one of the worst parts of windows

Once upon a time, someone at Microsoft wished on a monkey's paw for a way to replace thousands of undocumented INI files throughout the filesystem.

It curled, and we got the registry.

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#102

Post by QuercusMax »

Daviey wrote: post #94
ayaros wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I appreciate about Windows is (in my experience at least) you almost never have to go into the command line to change a weird setting. There's always a toggle in the GUI somewhere . I mean, I'll use the command line if I have to... I just like the fact that the supported options are enumerated visually; I don't have to worry I'll break something. Also, I can peruse through a place like the group policy edit…

Interestingly, I feel polar opposite to you. Digging through a clunky GUI, going multiple levels deep, to find a tick box is annoying.. When I can just run a single one-line to achieve what I need. I suppose different strokes..

MacOS has the best of both worlds - you can interact with propertylists through the gui, or you can use the commandline.

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#103

Post by pseudalopex »

butlike wrote: post #86
ACS_Solver wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perforce is standard in gamedev currently. As a programmer first and foremost, I prefer git but I've certainly come to appreciate the advantages of Perforce and it's an overall better fit for (bigger) game projects.

Does it do better handling of larger files, like game assets?

Yes. And other game development tools integrate Perforce better than Git. File level security is another advantage.

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#104

Post by throwaway2037 »

aallaall wrote: post #84
ninkendo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tragic part is how brief the period of time was between “ascii and a mess of code pages” and the problem actually getting solved with Unicode 2.0 and UTF-8. Unicode 1.0 was in 1991, UTF-8 happened a year later, and Unicode 2.0 (where more than 65,536 characters became “official”, and UTF-8 was the recommended choice) was in 1996. That means if you were green-fielding a new bit of tech in 1991, you likely decided…

For a while the brain dead utf32 encoding was popular in the Unix/Linux world.

Exactly: Long live "wchar_t".

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#105

Post by thaumasiotes »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #67
thaumasiotes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funny how fast Git became entrenched as the way of doing things, though. > ...and I immediately got flamed by several people because no one used patches any more. How are these ideas connected? The intent of git is that you work with patches.

For most people, git is that you work with pull requests, and already early on some bristled at the term “patches” which implied an obsolete way of working.

> For most people, git is that you work with pull requests

Unlike patches, pull requests aren't even a feature of git.

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#106

Post by jodrellblank »

TMWNN wrote: post #60
apexalpha wrote: post #20

Windows is like real life archeology. You can dig up the UI of ancient generations of humans before you underneath the modern facade.

Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky depicts a human society thousands of years in the future, in which pretty much all software has already been written; it's just a matter of finding it. So programmer-archaeologists search archives and run code on emulators in emulators in emulators as far back as needed. https://garethrees.org/2013/06/12/archaeology/ > (Heck, recently I migrated a VM to its third hypervisor. It be…

> "in which pretty much all software has already been written; it's just a matter of finding it"

This is how I think about music and Spotify. Pretty much all music exists, you 'just' have to remember everything that exists and what it's called so you can find it.

Recent HN link, Red Alert 2 in your web browser. A game from 25 years ago which you can unofficially download the C++ original version from the Internet Archive to upload to the website which extracts the assets to play in a Javascript based reimplementation inside a web hypertext document browser.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45991853

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#107

Post by breakingcups »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #68

@dang: It would be nice if we can add an exception to these URLs. Currently, the domain hint only says: "microsoft.com". It would be better if it said: "devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing" or "microsoft.com/oldnewthing". I think we did something similar with forbes.com to illuminate when it was a blog (which are frequently low quality), instead of the official media website.

It says devblogs.microsoft.com for me

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#108

Post by jasonvorhe »

psunavy03 wrote: post #88
knome wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate linux for the inverse reason. Because everything is either a nice text based config file or a command line tool, scripting changes to settings and automating things is a breeze.

That works for technical folks, but it's also a barrier to Linux adoption when too many things require dropping to a Bash terminal and dorking around. Try getting Grandma or Katie from HR to be able to do that . . .

Grandma gets her computer setup by family, Katie probably has tech support or a managed device. I've been setting up Linux for friends and relatives and apart from 1-2 niche issues I didn't even have to do any support because stuff just works.

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#109

Post by z500 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #106
TMWNN wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky depicts a human society thousands of years in the future, in which pretty much all software has already been written; it's just a matter of finding it. So programmer-archaeologists search archives and run code on emulators in emulators in emulators as far back as needed. https://garethrees.org/2013/06/12/archaeology/ > (Heck, recently I migrated a VM to its third hypervisor. It be…

> " in which pretty much all software has already been written; it's just a matter of finding it " This is how I think about music and Spotify. Pretty much all music exists, you 'just' have to remember everything that exists and what it's called so you can find it. Recent HN link, Red Alert 2 in your web browser. A game from 25 years ago which you can unofficially download the C++ original version from the Internet A…

My personal collection got so big I started forgetting what was in it lol. I had to write a program to catalog everything and present a directory tree of genre combinations with FUSE

Re: How did the Win 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?

#110

Post by dang »

breakingcups wrote: post #107
throwaway2037 wrote: post #68

@dang: It would be nice if we can add an exception to these URLs. Currently, the domain hint only says: "microsoft.com". It would be better if it said: "devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing" or "microsoft.com/oldnewthing". I think we did something similar with forbes.com to illuminate when it was a blog (which are frequently low quality), instead of the official media website.

It says devblogs.microsoft.com for me

Work in progress :)

Edit: should be done now

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