
Why the hell most Microsoft programs are still 32-bit by default? - TeddyBear060
Even FSX Steam Edition is installed by Steam using the 32-bit flavour without asking me about it. Is it for compatibility reasons?
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chrisbennet
At least with Visual Studio, it’s 32bit for performance reasons (32bit is
faster).

[https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/01/VS-64-bit](https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/01/VS-64-bit)

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TeddyBear060
Thanks for sharing this interesting reading.

It makes sense.

> [...] most of the time, staying with 32-bit and reducing the amount of
> memory being consumed will have a much larger impact for both the
> application and the operating systems as a whole.

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technion
Given you mentioned Steam, Kerbal Space Program is a great example here. They
initially released a 64-bit edition due to community pressure. It was full of
bugs and crashed a lot, and all they got were complaints about a lack of QA.
There were mod authors who actually introduced checks and had their mods
refuse to run on a 64 bit build, because they didn't want their mods running
on unreliable systems.

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TeddyBear060
Ok. But what do you mean, that 64-bits programs are more buggy that 32-bits
ones ? Or that company/developers are not yet confortable with releasing
64-bits versions of a program ? Or something else :-)

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technion
I just mean there is apparently quite a bit of room for bugs beyond "getting
it to compile", and the QA and testing takes time and money.

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TeddyBear060
Got it ;-)

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moonbug
Yes.

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TeddyBear060
Ok, but is it so complicated to test the computer arch in order to install the
correct flavour?

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berbec
100% of 64-bit computers run 32-bit programs. The vast majority of users never
know or care what arch is installed. The only time most people care about bit-
ness (word?) is if they are 64-bit trying to run an ancient 16-bit program.

This isn't VHS vs Bluray; it's much harder to explain why there is an
advantage when it can't be seen. The 64 not version isn't 35% faster, or has
dozens of new features. It's mainly just compiled differently, and it is hard
to explain memory limits and instruction sets to people.

~~~
TeddyBear060
Totally agree with the first part.

But, does a program can use more than 4GB of RAM if it's compiled in 32-bit
and executed into a 64-bit environnement (with more than 4GB of memory)?

I imagine that the answer is between yes and no.

I imagine that you, as developer, can choose between limiting your program not
to use more than 4GB or let the system (host) do the memory re-mapping job for
you...

But what about reliability in this case?

