The Old New Thing

This book is based upon the popular blog by Raymond Chen, a longtime developer on the Microsoft Windows team.

I've read quite a few Windows Development books in my time, I first started using Windows at the 1.0 release.

Over the years books have focused on what you can and what you can't do. Sometimes the focus is on what you shouldn't be able to do but can do (Undocumented Windows by Andrew Schulman).

This is one of the first books I can remember reading that explains why. Why do strange things happen in Windows?

There are chapters about compatibility, hardware reminiscences, security etc.

As a software professional developer working in a corporation it's easy to lose site of the wider world. I target a fixed client base using the same machines and platform. Microsoft have to cope with strange hardware, buggy third party drivers, developers too clever for their own good etc etc.

So, whilst not a Microsoft apologist (these days I use Java 80% of the time) I came to have a new respect for the Windows team.

I can certainly understand how the compromises they had to make came about: I used to work for an independent software house and we had to fit very large programs into small amount of RAM. We used all sort of tricks, self modifying code, portions rewritten in assembler, custom loaders, OS hacks.

At least I could remove these later on when machines got better, Microsoft still have to support programs that use these sort of tricks. How they do it is nothing short of amazing.