Tag "microsoft"

Did you know that you can use Windows Notepad to create log files? It’s a feature that has been available on Windows since at least version 3.1… and I know it because, well, I’m old enough to have used such a feature to keep my own journal around 1992.

As technology waves come and go, the names of iconic companies follow the movements, first reaching the pinnacle of their glories, and later fading into irrelevance.

In the past few months I’ve been writing about my software archeology experiments, including how to convert old HTML code from 1999 to run in today’s browsers, how to run Macromedia Flash movies with Ruffle, or even how to run Java applets now that they aren’t supported anymore.

The other day I had friends in Bolivia asking me if they could install Windows on a laptop they got through an NGO that initially came bundled with Linux.

Developers working for a particular vendor tend to develop a bizarre version of Stockholm syndrome. It’s something I’ve witnessed at least twice in my career.

The D programming language lacked a “killer app” to break through. Another brilliant language suffered from this situation, objectively deserving a much better fate than the one it had; Smalltalk.

The news recently splashed the demise, disappearance, and final “good riddance” of Internet Explorer. I remembered the first time I encountered the beast. In 1997, Internet Explorer 4.0 was soooooo good compared to anything else, it was hard to believe.

Microsoft is a big, big, big name in our industry. No matter what they do, everybody notices. Whether it’s good or bad, useful or ridiculous, big or small, it never goes by unnoticed.

I started using Windows 11 recently. It’s changed a lot since the last time I used Windows professionally (those were the times of Windows XP, almost 20 years ago).

In January 2004 Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post titled “Please Sir May I Have a Linker?, where he described his tribulations trying to install a small .NET app in computers not bundled with the original .NET framework.

I’ve learnt lately that there are many standards for the BASIC programming language.

Looking at the software industry, it appears that most big companies usually share more traits than they would like to admit.

It might sound incredible to younger developers out there, but there was a time when Git did not exist.

The recent release by Microsoft of vscode.dev, the online version of Visual Studio Code, made me think of all the different things I do with VSCode, including this blog.

I have had the chance to attend keynotes by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in person; their styles couldn’t have been more different. Here’s some memories from both. Of course I did not meet or talk to them; this is just my experience as another attendee in the room.

Once upon a time, there was a programming environment made by Microsoft called Visual J++.

Back in 1997 I was earning some cash writing Active Server Pages in that mutant programming language called VBScript.

This is the story of how, after being a loyal macOS user for 15 years, I decided to start using Linux full-time.

This is the talk that I gave in the 4th MCE Conference in Warsaw, Poland, on May 8th, 2017 (conference organized by Polidea) and (with updates) at UIKonf on May 15th, 2018 and at NSConfArg on April 20th, 2019.

Charles Petzold, in its book “Code”, states the following: In theory, application programs are supposed to access the hardware of the computer only through the interfaces provided by the operating system.

Je viens de finir de lire The Old New Thing. L’auteur, Raymond Chen, a bosse dans l’equipe de developpement de Windows depuis 1995 (au moins) et il raconte les raisons de certaines decisions prises pendant le design de differentes versions de Windows, depuis 1985 jusqu’a Vista.

Yup, the Migration continues. More and more developers are leaving Microsoft technologies behind, and exploring new grounds.

I came accross this interesting posting on The .NET Addict’s Blog.

An excellent article about how to fool everyone to believe that your specification is a… standard:

I remember that, late 2004, I was asked by my employer to evaluate the migration of a huge (huge, did I say huge?

I have been working as a software developer since 1996, and as such I’ve used a variety of different languages, both compiled and interpreted.

“The true operating system is the net itself” This phrase, common marketing argument in the late nineties, made me remind that in the eighties, Sun Microsystems’ founder, Scott McNealy, used the slogan “The Network is the Computer” to describe his vision.

While I was reading this blog post about “Easter eggs” in Microsoft products, I came accross these two (utterly brilliant) comments in the same page:

If you enjoy Microsoft PR material, you may find this “Get the facts” page somewhat interesting.

Sin comentarios.

After four years of .NET, n-tier and service-oriented architectures, object-oriented programming and design patterns, I have been assigned a small… “Classic ASP” project, for Reuters.

‘And through Windows NT, you can see it throughout the design. In a weak sense, it is a form of Unix.’