Gregory's Server@JoshJers @eniko Also "Hey, if people only have to make stuff once for your platform and then have it work from then on out, it's basically free marketing for your platform. Any amount of work that we can do to make sure that the stuff - even if we think it's bad - still works on our platforms, we should do.".
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 @JoshJers @eniko Yeah - I'm reminded of the story that allegedly SimCity and it's sequels use the same exe name because Microsoft saw that it has memory management leakage, and instead of just letting it BSOD after a while, made their OS detect when it was running, and gave it a *custom* memory manager that properly did the freeing and allocation instead of expecting it tobbe done correctly. And then SimCity devs essentially said "Well, it works, and it doesn't cost us to reuse our code..."... @JoshJers @eniko ...and while I'm sure Microsoft is ripping their hair out over maintaining that throughout the OS versions, it's an amazing testament to their commitment to be willing to eat the technical debt of other developers. That, and the whole "This Windows version is 3.99, because some developers had a bad check that their software was being installed on Windows 3.1 or higher." thing. @JoshJers @eniko To some extent, it's making me realize that Texas Instruments doesn't get that kind of rep, and it feels like maybe they should've tried for it. Like, "Yes, we have a new version of our TI-Nspire models, but they will still run that program of Doom from your father's TI-83 if you upload it to this new calculator model, no changes to the code necessary.". I have a feeling they didn't do that. |
@AT1ST @eniko oh god, also that
Microsoft does absolute fucking BACKBENDS to make sure that some obscure-ass thing from 1998 still works (like the things I wrote in DirectDraw around that time, which still run)
Apple is like "that thing you developed last month? it doesn't work any more. Also you have to buy a new $3000 development kit because we switched the entire processor architecture again"