A "naming things is hard" anecdote I was just reminded of by an old web page:
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A "naming things is hard" anecdote I was just reminded of by an old web page:
In the 1990s, when 32-bit versions of Windows were introduced, a new executable file format was needed for native 32-bit programs. The existing 16-bit file format used by Windows 3.x was called "NE", for "New Executable". The 32-bit one was named "PE", for "Portable Executable".
Windows 95 could still run 16-bit Windows 3.x programs. But Windows 3.x couldn't run the newer 32-bit ones. (Ok, there was Win32s, but it had very restricted usefulness.)
In other words, the format called "New" was the older one of the two, *and* the format called "Portable" was the one that didn't work everywhere!
@simontatham Also, the confusion between Windows 3.1 and Windows 32.
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@simontatham Also, the confusion between Windows 3.1 and Windows 32.
@riley ah, that must be the ancestor of the rumour about why there wasn't a Windows 9 – because it would have been matched by everyone's regexes that were on the lookout for Windows 95 and 98.
(I've never heard that proved or officially confirmed, but it seems so plausible I've also never seriously questioned it.)
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A "naming things is hard" anecdote I was just reminded of by an old web page:
In the 1990s, when 32-bit versions of Windows were introduced, a new executable file format was needed for native 32-bit programs. The existing 16-bit file format used by Windows 3.x was called "NE", for "New Executable". The 32-bit one was named "PE", for "Portable Executable".
Windows 95 could still run 16-bit Windows 3.x programs. But Windows 3.x couldn't run the newer 32-bit ones. (Ok, there was Win32s, but it had very restricted usefulness.)
In other words, the format called "New" was the older one of the two, *and* the format called "Portable" was the one that didn't work everywhere!
@simontatham
Do you think the programmers at Microsoft are that stupid, or do you believe that marketing has more power and uses that to fuck it up? -
@riley ah, that must be the ancestor of the rumour about why there wasn't a Windows 9 – because it would have been matched by everyone's regexes that were on the lookout for Windows 95 and 98.
(I've never heard that proved or officially confirmed, but it seems so plausible I've also never seriously questioned it.)
@simontatham I don't have direct insight into Microsoft's thinking, but I consider it plausible.
Alternatively — or possibly, contributorily —, they might have heard from a focus group that "nine" makes people think "the end of the range is near".
But, hey, they missed that vista is Latvian for chicken.
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@simontatham
Do you think the programmers at Microsoft are that stupid, or do you believe that marketing has more power and uses that to fuck it up?@janneke I don't know that I'd say "stupid". I titled the post "naming things is hard", after all.
I _doubt_ MS marketing was involved in this case, because those executable file format names were pretty low-level and not the kind of thing that ends up all over the glossy brochures. A marketing department diligent enough to reach right down into that level of detail would have to be pretty determined. (Though it has been known.)
No, I think "New Executable" was called that because it was new compared to _something_, namely, the MS-DOS .exe format that it piggybacked on. I don't know what was up with "Portable"; perhaps it referred to running on both Win95 and Windows NT? But probably it had some meaning that was not actually inaccurate.
It's just that after the names were selected, events moved on.
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@janneke I don't know that I'd say "stupid". I titled the post "naming things is hard", after all.
I _doubt_ MS marketing was involved in this case, because those executable file format names were pretty low-level and not the kind of thing that ends up all over the glossy brochures. A marketing department diligent enough to reach right down into that level of detail would have to be pretty determined. (Though it has been known.)
No, I think "New Executable" was called that because it was new compared to _something_, namely, the MS-DOS .exe format that it piggybacked on. I don't know what was up with "Portable"; perhaps it referred to running on both Win95 and Windows NT? But probably it had some meaning that was not actually inaccurate.
It's just that after the names were selected, events moved on.
@simontatham
Sure, I get that. Naming is hard. And I very much agree. Also, I'm pretty bad at it.However.
Using "new" in a name (Pont Neuf--- currently the oldest standing bridge in Paris---comes to mind), is plain stupid. In my humble opinion, of course.
And that's also why I suggested involvement of marketing... although we know their software is awfully bad...so yeah.
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@simontatham
Sure, I get that. Naming is hard. And I very much agree. Also, I'm pretty bad at it.However.
Using "new" in a name (Pont Neuf--- currently the oldest standing bridge in Paris---comes to mind), is plain stupid. In my humble opinion, of course.
And that's also why I suggested involvement of marketing... although we know their software is awfully bad...so yeah.
@janneke also New College, Oxford.
Yes, true – "Portable" might have had some sensible meaning (though my suggestion in the previous toot was only guess), but as you say, calling anything at all "New" is an unforced error.
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@janneke also New College, Oxford.
Yes, true – "Portable" might have had some sensible meaning (though my suggestion in the previous toot was only guess), but as you say, calling anything at all "New" is an unforced error.
@simontatham @janneke
also Spinal Tap changing their name to The New Originals. -
@riley ah, that must be the ancestor of the rumour about why there wasn't a Windows 9 – because it would have been matched by everyone's regexes that were on the lookout for Windows 95 and 98.
(I've never heard that proved or officially confirmed, but it seems so plausible I've also never seriously questioned it.)
@simontatham @riley
I've seen a piece of code that did VersionString.StartsWith("Windows 9"), which claimed to be from the Java Runtime.True or not, I don't know.
Personally I prefer the explanation that QA saw what later became Windows 10 and said "not a chance, we reserve odd numbers for the good versions"
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@simontatham @riley
I've seen a piece of code that did VersionString.StartsWith("Windows 9"), which claimed to be from the Java Runtime.True or not, I don't know.
Personally I prefer the explanation that QA saw what later became Windows 10 and said "not a chance, we reserve odd numbers for the good versions"
@leeloo @riley a couple of decades ago there was a similar meme about Arm CPUs, back when they had names like ARM7 and ARM9 rather than Cortex-something-or-other. The odd-numbered ARM7, ARM9 and ARM11 were all more popular than ARM8 and ARM10. Always seemed curious that it worked the opposite way round to Star Trek films
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@janneke I don't know that I'd say "stupid". I titled the post "naming things is hard", after all.
I _doubt_ MS marketing was involved in this case, because those executable file format names were pretty low-level and not the kind of thing that ends up all over the glossy brochures. A marketing department diligent enough to reach right down into that level of detail would have to be pretty determined. (Though it has been known.)
No, I think "New Executable" was called that because it was new compared to _something_, namely, the MS-DOS .exe format that it piggybacked on. I don't know what was up with "Portable"; perhaps it referred to running on both Win95 and Windows NT? But probably it had some meaning that was not actually inaccurate.
It's just that after the names were selected, events moved on.
@simontatham @janneke
Windows NT at the time ran on both Intel x86 and DEC Alpha (something about a MIPS version), I always thought that was the reason.Not portable binaries as in Apples universal binaries, but a portble *format* so that different architectures could use the same format and may e even tell you which arch the binary was from, rather than every arch needing to invent their own format.
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@simontatham @janneke
Windows NT at the time ran on both Intel x86 and DEC Alpha (something about a MIPS version), I always thought that was the reason.Not portable binaries as in Apples universal binaries, but a portble *format* so that different architectures could use the same format and may e even tell you which arch the binary was from, rather than every arch needing to invent their own format.
@leeloo @janneke that's an interesting point – I did run into NT on Alpha once, but didn't look into it closely enough to find out whether the executable format was the same.
It probably was, though, since Windows on Arm is a thing these days and does use the same PE format – not just COFF with an extra sub-header, but even including the vestigial x86-16 MS-DOS stub executable strapped to the front, which is _even_ less likely to do anything useful on an Arm system than it is on an x86 one!
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@leeloo @riley a couple of decades ago there was a similar meme about Arm CPUs, back when they had names like ARM7 and ARM9 rather than Cortex-something-or-other. The odd-numbered ARM7, ARM9 and ARM11 were all more popular than ARM8 and ARM10. Always seemed curious that it worked the opposite way round to Star Trek films
@simontatham @riley
It wasn't true for Windows versions, it was just that Windows changed version schemes so often that you could pretty much decide which versions to include.For example, 95-bad, 98-good, ME-bad, XP-good.
But that skips 2000, which in my experience was almost as bad as NT 4, but others say it was almost as good ad XP. And either way, 3.51 was the good one, so it's not going to fit with XP being good no matter how you count.
And 98 was only good compared to 95 and ME, it was still based on the 9x kernel with it's habbit of responding to any unexpected event with a blue screen of death.
Also, The Search for Spock may have been the weakest of the trilogy, but if you leave it out, something is missing, and IMO it's not comparable to The Motion Picture or The Final Frontier.
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@janneke also New College, Oxford.
Yes, true – "Portable" might have had some sensible meaning (though my suggestion in the previous toot was only guess), but as you say, calling anything at all "New" is an unforced error.
@simontatham @janneke The New Forest has been around for a while now.
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@simontatham @riley
I've seen a piece of code that did VersionString.StartsWith("Windows 9"), which claimed to be from the Java Runtime.True or not, I don't know.
Personally I prefer the explanation that QA saw what later became Windows 10 and said "not a chance, we reserve odd numbers for the good versions"
@leeloo @simontatham Yup, it’s real! OpenJDK 8 still had it: https://hg.openjdk.org/jdk8/jdk8/jdk/file/687fd7c7986d/src/windows/classes/sun/tools/attach/WindowsAttachProvider.java#l41
(I haven’t verified later versions of Java)
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@janneke I don't know that I'd say "stupid". I titled the post "naming things is hard", after all.
I _doubt_ MS marketing was involved in this case, because those executable file format names were pretty low-level and not the kind of thing that ends up all over the glossy brochures. A marketing department diligent enough to reach right down into that level of detail would have to be pretty determined. (Though it has been known.)
No, I think "New Executable" was called that because it was new compared to _something_, namely, the MS-DOS .exe format that it piggybacked on. I don't know what was up with "Portable"; perhaps it referred to running on both Win95 and Windows NT? But probably it had some meaning that was not actually inaccurate.
It's just that after the names were selected, events moved on.
@simontatham @janneke I'm pretty sure "Portable" meant it supported multiple architectures (x86, MIPS, PPC, Alpha in the beginning).
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