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by devbent
899 days ago
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> So I have no lost love for devs that couldn’t be arsed, How are teams that no longer exist supposed to recompile anything? Plenty of source is laying around where the last person who knew how to compile it left the company years ago and no one even knows how to check the software out from the source repo anymore. (Pre Git, it wasn't always obvious how to even pull software down from repos, tools like perforce allow for fancy remapping of folders so you cannot necessarily just pull source down, also I've worked in repos where you needed specially modified scripts that weren't in the repo so you could actually build things!) Microsoft's MO has been that once the end user has acquired an executable, that program will keep working damn nearly forever. 16bit support was the only time they ever dropped anything, and people are still upset about that. |
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> How are teams that no longer exist supposed to recompile anything? Plenty of source is laying around where the last person who knew how to compile it left the company years ago and no one even knows how to check the software out from the source repo anymore.
This transition started five years after the birth of the App Store. Most of the abandoned apps and games were created in the two years between the start of the transition and the deadline, not to mention that many of those developers happily published other apps and games after the transition was complete.
So, the notion that there were no people around or that the source code was inaccessible is not believable.
> (Pre Git, it wasn't always obvious how to even pull software down from repos, tools like perforce allow for fancy remapping of folders so you cannot necessarily just pull source down, also I've worked in repos where you needed specially modified scripts that weren't in the repo so you could actually build things!)
This was well after the birth of Git. At the start of the transition, more than half of the developers were using Git, and another 40% were using SVN. So, we weren’t exactly in the stone ages of software development.
> Microsoft's MO has been that once the end user has acquired an executable, that program will keep working damn nearly forever.
This is becoming less and less the case. I must install dependencies like older .NET frameworks, track down obscure dlls, or generally run into compatibility issues.
While annoying, I can’t fault them for it. It’s simply not feasible to ensure compatibility in perpetuity and deliver a smooth, innovative experience.
You see them attempting this with their abomination, that is, the control panel and its underlying systems. It’s grafted together from all kinds of components that originate from pretty much every Windows in existence.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38827562