Why are there both TMP and TEMP environment variables? (2015)

> In general, I find it unacceptable for programs to use (anywhere in) my file system, besides /tmp, as a dumping ground for their caches and downloads, without cleaning it up.

/tmp must be world-writable and for multi-user or multi-tenant systems it becomes a security hole. Storing temporary files in the current user's home directory (or a subdirectory thereof) makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is this blog post about TMP and TEMP, and ending with "I don't know why" (in different words).

The reason is simple: different programmers thought the other name was bad. They were under no obligation to come to a consensus.

Don't forget about TEMPDIR and TMPDIR! Also Windows has its own environment variables for this. But generally, Linux software ported to Windows still use TMP or TEMP.

I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, the files are hidden so out of sight out of mind for me.

I don't disagree that it would be cleaner if things were more organized, but I definitely prefer something more like that the person you replied to said, ie "~/.xdg/foo/{config,share,state,cache}"

The only XDG folders that seem reasonable to me are .local/share/fonts and .local/share/applications, and I think both of those are still just conventions, not actually described in any spec.

I have been pointing out these annoying things for decades with Microsoft. It’s funny because the “senior dev” know it all there person always used to have an answer. “Heh you see temp stands for temporary. Tmp stands for troubleshoot my pc. For debug logs. That’s why I’m a senior and you’re not.”

As I’ve gotten more senior turns out I was right to question it and we can actually talk to the original Microsoft devs now and they explain the whoopsie and how they had to keep it for backwards compatibility.

So then I ask why that excuse is valid, backwards compatibility, when many changes are frequently breaking core compatibility and active business flow (like New Outlook) and they go full hands off. Whoah I’m not the bad dev you’ll have to ask the new guys.

You can’t ask the new guys. And they’re hiding behind leetcode screens. It’s no wonder why these real problems don’t get fixed and we have new outlook. It’s the senior dev from earlier who now works there. All the real devs are retired.

Even when I do get a real answer from Microsoft on annoying things like the user home documents folder being used inappropriately by random programs or straight up forcefully deleted by onedrive in an oopsie, their answer they senior dev invented to give me or go on length about in a technical document or angry interview online is invalidated within 6 months when Microsoft just vibe pushes a random change that randomly alters how these things work in both not a good way and it invalidates their entire core argument.

Just like notepad updates as another example off the top of my head. There are dev interviews talking about how this is a very simple program because it needs to be 0 risk. Then it gets a Microsoft auth login with copilot.

The whole leetcode dev attitude and Microsoft culture really ruins the entire industry. We can’t have civil discussions. Everything turns into Nuh uh your argument is invalid because you don’t work at Microsoft.

Google Chrome famously having chrome install into appdata to exploit and bypass admin rights is a core memory. That’s clearly not the actual intention of that feature for 3rd parties to use in order to bypass having administrator authority. But now this is retconned by the devs as an intended feature because chrome ended up being good at the time at having to sort out the mess of deploying a 3rd party exception program on millions of locked down business computers would’ve been a nightmare.

I remember the words "peeking" and "poking", but this may have been specific to basic.