
Why is the DOS path character "\"? - vladimir
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/06/24/432386.aspx
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wayne
Microsoft does some crazy things for backwards compatibility. Here's one of my
favorites related to the Display Control Panel:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/01/10/511201....](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/01/10/511201.aspx)

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tdavis
What bugs me is that in the case you link to, they've added more crap in an
effort to support drivers which weren't written properly in the first place.
Windows would be a far better product if they hadn't decided to adapt to so
much improperly-written software and oft-needless backwards compatibility.

I much prefer Apple's approach with the switch to UB: they put in an emulator
for PPC apps which basically sucks, thereby creating motivation for switching
apps to the new format while still technically supporting legacy software.
Now, in the upcoming version of OSX, that emulator cruft is being removed
(last I checked).

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wheels
Apple APIs are a huge pain in the ass to work with in the commercial world
though since they're so volatile. With every 10.x release they seem to wipe
out some huge subsystem and send everyone off to rewrite their code. As
someone who used to maintain a set of cross-platform APIs built on top of
Carbon, I learned to have quite a bit of respect for the cruft that sticks
around in MFC.

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tdavis
I realize that, and I can empathize with your plight. However, just as one
would cull a herd or prune flowers, that cruft must also be removed sooner or
later, else it will end up killing the entire system. Would this be a
plausible explanation for why Windows performance continues to degrade
substantially with each version?

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jballanc
An excellent case of backwards compatibility above all else, including common
sense!

