Comment on dotnet developer

• bequirtle@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  let’s face it, the 10 was chosen for marketing, even if there’s a technical reason it can’t be “windows 9”

  it could’ve just been windows nine. or any other word that isn’t a number

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  • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Say whatever you want about Microsoft, but they don’t mess around with backwards compatibility.

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    • riodoro1@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s easy to be backwards compatible when you’re backwards in general.

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      • Octopus1348@lemy.lol ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I once heard some YouTuber say Windows uses \ in path names instead of / like everyone else because Microsoft thinks backwards.

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      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Well, better to be backwards with backwards compatibility than to just be backwards.

        looks at Apple

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  • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They properly search for windows n(t) somewhere too ;)

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  • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    it could’ve just been windows nine. or any other word that isn’t a number

    But “nine” is a word that is a number

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• puttputt@beehaw.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The reason they checked that it started with “Windows 9” was because it worked for “Windows 95” and “Windows 98”

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• activ8r@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It makes sense why they did it, but their messed up versioning was the cause to begin with. You should always assume Devs will cut corners in inappropriate ways.

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  • pkill@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They’ll cut corners the more the shittier APIs and ABIs you provide

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    • dan@upvote.au ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The API is fine. It returns the internal version number (which is 4.0 for Windows 95), not a string. learn.microsoft.com/…/ns-winnt-osversioninfoexa

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• dev_null@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  An often repeated urban legend that has no basis in reality. Sodtware checking the version of Windows gets “6.1” for Windows 7 and “6.2” for Windows 8. The marketing name doesn’t matter and is different.

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• dan@upvote.au ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  some legacy software checked if the OS name began with “Windows 9” to differentiate between 95 and future versions.

  This is a myth. Windows doesn’t even have an API to give you the marketing name of the OS. Internally, Windows 95 is version 4.0 and Windows 98 is 4.1. The API to get the version returns the major and minor version separately, so to check for Windows 95 you’d check if majorVersion = 4 and minorVersion = 0.

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  • 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Maybe it’s a myth, but it sure sounds plausible. The software that checks the “Windows 9” substring doesn’t even have to exist for this to be reason they chose to skip to version 10 — they just had to be concerned that it might exist.

    Sure, maybe there’s no C function that returns the string, but there’s a ver command. It would be trivial to shell out to the command. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ver_(command)

    This doesn’t prove anything, but there are a TON of examples of code that checks for the substring. It’s not hard to imagine that code written circa 2000 would not be future proof. sourcegraph.com/search?q=context:global+"\"window…

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    • dan@upvote.au ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      but there are a TON of examples of code that checks for the substring

      oh

      oh no

      There’s code in the JDK that does that??

      I really wish I didn’t see that.

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      • 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yup!! Never look under the hood in software, you’ll just be disappointed ☹️

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• jadelord@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Strange argument… how does that prevent checks versus Windows 7, 8 and 1* all of which would be less than 9.

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  • Wrrzag@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because it checks if the version starts with the string “Windows 9*”, not wether the number is less than 9.

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    • dan@upvote.au ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is a myth - code that checks the version number uses the internal version number, which is 4.0 for Windows 95.

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• mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Eh. I think Microsoft should have let that break so the spaghetti code finally gets fixed

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• ziixe@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I was about to say that most apps should check the NT number but then I remembered that until XP it wasn’t common to run a NT system, but then I remembered NT 4 existed basically in the same timeframe as 95 did, and even if the argument went to “it’s a 9x application”, shouldn’t these OSes at least have some sort of build number or different identifier systems? Because as I said NT systems were around, so they would probably need a check for that

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  • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Some programs just didn’t work on NT though. A lot of installers were more OS specific back then.

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