
Windows 7: The Best Vista Service Pack Ever - twampss
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001290.html
======
RyanMcGreal
In the comments, Jeff writes:

 _I'm saying you should avoid using the rusted screwdriver which is liable to
burst into fragments and cause a crippling hand wound at any time!_

This is why friends don't let friends Comment While Defensive. XP is old
technology but this analogy is absurd. It's not as if the code becomes brittle
and starts to break down over time.

Incidentally, Vista is what finally decided me to get off my ass and switch to
Ubuntu. Now that I've invested a fair bit of energy familiarizing myself with
it and customizing my system, there's no chance I'll switch back to Microsoft
even if Windows 7 _is_ a huge improvement.

~~~
kristiandupont
I don't think the analogy is that absurd. It's true that code doesn't rust,
but as time advances and other code is developed and improved, old code can
become relatively less reliable. IE6 is "rusty" compared to modern browsers.

~~~
philwelch
You know, when IE6 was new (edit: and _after_ Firefox was released), it still
sucked, and we pined for the day everyone would abandon IE for standards-
compliant browsers. Now that IE7 and IE8 are more standards-compliant, that
exact same complaint has just been indexed to IE6 in particular. It's not a
matter of it being out of date at all.

~~~
blasdel
What are you talking about? IE5 and IE6 for Windows were _awesome_ when they
were released. They were way faster, more reliable, and more standards-based
than the browsers of the day when released (like the NN4.7 shitpile). The last
release of IE5 for OS X had one of the first usable CSS implementations, and
some awesome UI innovations.

The problem with IE is not that it sucked, but that it was abandoned before
hundreds of millions of users started banging on it.

~~~
philwelch
IE5 maybe, but it was long before IE7 (i.e. during the IE6 era) when IE came
under fire for poor standards compliance.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Again, that's because in the huge interim between IE6 and IE7, the other
browsers caught up to IE and then pulled way ahead.

------
niyazpk
I have been using Windows 7 as my primary OS for about 8 months now. It is
very good and stable. The best improvement is of course the new taskbar which
does make the process of managing your applications and open windows a lot
more streamlined.

That said, in the article Jeff sounds like Windows 7 is _really_ just a slight
improvement over Vista. It is just plain wrong. If you have been following the
windows 7 development blog, you can see that they have put a lot of effort in
the R&D of this new OS. You have to use the OS for some time to understand
this. ( _5 minutes_ is not enough to form an opinion and write a lengthy blog
post)

I remember an article by Raymond Chen [1] where he tells the story of how they
changed the inner workings of windows calculator and people never noticed it.
Then they just changed the skin a little bit and praises came in pouring,
about how much better the new calculator is. The original article also feels
like committing the same mistake. The fact that they have polished the UI does
not mean that that is the only thing they did.

As an aside, I also wanted to try out Ubuntu in the past few years, but did
not get time for that. The one thing I understood is that (especially for web
workers) the OS you are using to develop applications never really matters. If
I switched to Linux (or a mac for that matter), I'd just be wasting a lot of
my time to get familiarized with the working of the new OS, with no
significant upsides for switching.

[1]
[http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/141253....](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/141253.aspx)

~~~
jraines
I installed W7 yesterday and get a BSOD on a lot of video sites (hulu,
adultswim.com) Any recommendations?

~~~
potatolicious
Sounds like bad video drivers. Download from manufacturer and reinstall - if
on notebook stop using the vendor's and use NVidia/AMD's instead (as the case
may apply).

Video drivers is practically the only reason Windows ever BSODs anymore.

~~~
s3graham
I get them from a RAID something-or-other too. But agreed, it's typically
Nvidia's fault.

------
wvenable
I have a Vista on my laptop, and it isn't horrible but it also isn't an
improvement over XP. When I recently purchased a new computer, I built it for
XP.

I fully disagree with Atwoods comment: _A world where people regularly use 9
year old operating systems is not a healthy computing ecosystem_

I'm really very fine with that. There's been an over-emphasis on the operating
system for far too long. It should just shut up and get out of the way. As
long as it continues to be updated and has plenty of drivers, we don't need to
be changing operating systems very 3 years. XP has ushered in a period of
relative stability to our industry that's been very good thing and,
unsurprisingly, people are reluctant to move away from that.

Unfortunately, XP is really at the end of it's life due to the move to 64bit.
I'm confident that Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista, but I'm not yet
convinced that it's the next 9 year operating system.

------
omellet
Does anyone contradict him or herself more often than Jeff Atwood? It's like
I'm reading an article written by two people wrestling for the keyboard.

~~~
niyazpk
He is very good at analogies though. Read this:
[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-
just...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/why-cant-you-have-just-one-
site/)

Even if what he tries to prove is correct, his reasoning for that is almost
always wrong. Not wrong, but funny.

I am sad that Hacker News never really loved CodingHorror articles. But I
understand why - _Some reasoning != Good Reasoning_

A gentle reminder: There is no point in discussing about Jeff every other
week. Jeff Atwood is not writing for the HN crowd. Leave him alone.

~~~
thismat
I first started reading Coding Horror about a year ago, as someone who is new
to the development and programming world, he really opened my eyes to a lot of
misconceptions I had held, and I can say without a doubt he led me on a path
to greatly improving my standards and code.

He also was instrumental in introducing me to not only a slew of great blogs
and information, but eventually led me to find hacker news.

I'd say the good he does for new and upcoming developers far outweighs all of
the criticism I've read about his articles.

------
DannoHung
I might get W7 for my PC gaming habbit. I'd never own Windows for anything
else though.

Basically, I just really wish they'd finally add mouse and keyboard support to
the 360.

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Oompa
Windows 7 is still missing a unix terminal, last I checked.

~~~
jauco
They have the powershell. I hear good things about it.

~~~
blasdel
Powershell is more like Applescript than it is like a bourne shell.

