Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[vinifera]

In my humble dumble opinion, that depends in which prog interface you do coding

 

visual studio without .net (VS 6, or Broland delphi prods)is/are compatible up to win 2003

but VB6 is STILL supported up to winblows 10,

while all these new visual studios based on .net are ... i guess every shit compatible from vista and up

 

unfortunately that is not the main problem

main problem is that MS is still usin win32 api without supporting it in vcpp/vb

so you're basically doomed to .net crap, which is again worse, as theres no backward compatibility

 

so yeah... install 2, 3, 3.5, 4, 4.2, 4.5, 4.6 ... and so on

or those idiots could simply update win32 api and theres no need for gigabyte of junk

but rather 30 MB tops, and you get same shit

[NoelC]

Out of curiosity, what do you mean "without supporting it in vcpp/vb"?  I have a quarter million LOC project based on Win32 in Visual C++ and while a lack of integration (and quality) of the documentation could be considered sort of a lack of support, it IS actually possible to find the documentation...

 

And yes, my installer is 34 MB (which has both 32 and 64 bit builds).  :-)

 

-Noel

[Drugwash]

I remember the times when programmers actually could code.

Anybody recalls kkrieger, the 96kB 3D first-person shooter game?

Bigger is not better - bigger is lamer!

[JorgeA]

^^ I hadn't heard of that game before, but it's remarkable what you can do in such a small package. Sounds like it would fit on a 5.25" floppy!

 

One surprising bit from the Wikipedia article:

 

The game remains a beta version as of 2016.

 

 

--JorgeA

Edited February 1, 2016 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

The discussion of how programs may (or sometimes must) be made incompatible with an older OS was educational. Thanks, guys!  

 

The bottom line for me is that while claims of incompatibility should be taken with a grain of salt, sometimes they really are valid. I'll probably be able to stay on Vista (and then Win7) for longer than "they" say, but not as long as I'd like...

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Found in an unrelated web post, but highly applicable to Windows 10 Home users:

 

Microsoft should treat customers like they matter, not like beta testers

 

Heh, they've as much as said that when it comes to new patches and features served via Windows Updates, Win10 Home users are the guinea pigs for Enterprise customers. So what else is new?

 

--JorgeA

[NoelC]

Bigger is not better - bigger is lamer!

 

I find the graphics for big icons (to support display scalability) represent the biggest size impact.

 

And no, I don't relish the idea of writing a program to generate each icon independently just to save that space.

 

In 1985 I co-designed and wrote the software for a controller that managed all the airport surveillance radar data traffic in the US for 23 years.  It was 8080 code that fit into 48 kBytes of ROM with room to spare.  It had a keypad/screen/sound generator UI as well as remote control interfaces, watched traffic on 16 comm lines, and would switch spare hardware as needed to overcome failures.  People do tend to forget how complex a program even tens of thousands of instructions can represent.

 

-Noel

Edited February 1, 2016 by NoelC

[Drugwash]

I started with a Z80 computer and stuck my nose in a lot of its games. Those were complex enough already and they also fit in 48kB of RAM (as the rest of 16kB were reserved for BASIC and the video memory). I always considered machine code as the best language because there is no room for error there, everything must be perfect and done manually instruction by instruction.

Nowadays, with all different instruction sets and even hardware bugs in CPUs, everything relies on compilers which is the first possible source of bugs apart from human error in the code itself.

 

If it weren't for the money people would create out of sheer passion and creativity, they'd compete for the best, smallest, feature-richest and so on while at the same time helping each-other. Everything would be better, close to perfection. Or at least let me dream it would.

[jaclaz]

And now, for no apparent reason, a link to Donkey's Stable , do check the WinExplorer there:

http://www.donkeysstable.com/

http://www.donkeysstable.com/winexplorer.htm

 

@drugwash

Why, in my day, all we had was a Z80 with 1 (one) Kb of RAM, had to actually solder the board ....

https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html

.... and we LIKED it!

Kids today ....

 

jaclaz

[NoelC]

My first 8080 kit system had 2 kBytes of RAM at first (but to be fair 1 kByte of it was mapped to the 16 line x 64 column screen, so...).

 

Now a single scalable icon at 256 x 256 pixels x 4 bytes per pixel takes up 4 times the space that old system could ever hope to address with its 16 bit memory pointer...

 

 

 

All so we can support different high dpi monitors...

 

 

 

 

 

-Noel

Edited February 1, 2016 by NoelC

[Drugwash]

OK, now approximately how large would the Windows 95 OSR 2.5 installation kit would become if all of its icons would be replaced with scalable 256x256px images (assuming it could decode PNG)? No, better let's take Windows 98SE which is already larger. Would it get to the current size of Win10 which is about 6GB if I'm not mistaken?

 

Of course, you'd say there are lots of new drivers inside and all… but what else is it there that is actually useful? Actually, what else should it be in an operating system, other than rudimentary means to access local or remote resources? Because the OS is not obligated in any way to provide a full set of professional tools. It should only offer the ability for the user to navigate their internal/external fixed/optical/flash/etc drives as well as the local network and the Internet in order for them to retrieve the desired software and install it, at which point that software would take over the file types designated for it. That would be a normally set up system.

 

The user should have unlimited options to install/uninstall any applications as they see fit, without the operating system denying it or reverting the changes through a forced update, as Windows 10 does. When an operating system acts as if itself should be the only software running on a give computer then something is very wrong with whoever designed it. It's a cancer!

[NoelC]

Actually, what else should it be in an operating system, other than rudimentary means to access local or remote resources?

 

THAT is the right question indeed!

 

It used to be the answer was "whatever would facilitate professional users' work".  Now it's "whatever will reap the greatest profits from consumers".

 

This single fundamental shift is what has got us all SO upset with Microsoft's change in direction.

 

I honestly don't know what really SHOULD be in there.  Certainly Windows accumulated a lot of stuff over time.  I'm sure I never used 80% of it, but it's nice to discover, say, just the right NET STOP command or Remove-AppXPackage when you finally do learn enough to want it.

 

-Noel

Edited February 1, 2016 by NoelC

[Drugwash]

I just watched again last night the 1999 movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley". Reminded me how Billy got the richest "kid" (at the time).

 

Thing is, Microsoft are greedy - they don't want only the revenue from the OS, they want it all! Their apps, their office suite, their browser, their everything should be used exclusively and all other software - usually much better/bug-free/feature-rich/etc - should just die by simply shoving it off the users' systems every few months. Isn't that how cancer cells work, by eating the good ones?

 

There's a reason why alternative software exists: because all people are different, think differently, act differently, have different needs and different preferences. When an operating system is so anal that it doesn't even allow a large diversity of themes unless it's being hacked - as was the case starting with XP - then that should already raise a red flag as large as Billy's house. Reverting all user settings, file associations and uninstalling or blocking legitimate applications should raise a red flag as large as the continent itself. But is God still watching - assuming He does exist…?

[NoelC]

Yes, and being adept managers of mediocrity, they realize they can't get there by making theirs actually better, so they go the nefarious route and they feel they can get away with it.

 

-Noel

[helpdesk98]

I think MS wants to go the way Apple did with proprietary hardware/software and still find a way to make an extra buck off it's users.