[Vm-dev] I hate Windows... (off topic)

[Eliot Miranda]

Hi Jakob,

> On Sep 20, 2020, at 7:26 AM, Jakob Reschke <forums.jakob at resfarm.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Eliot,
> 
> It may look strange at first, but it makes sense if you know what
> WOW64 means: it is "Windows on Windows-64" and the folder contains the
> 32 bit libraries for the 32 bit emulation.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64
> 
> System32 has been called like this since the advent of Win32, starting
> with Windows 95 and NT. The API is as well still called Win32. The
> folder name stays most probably for compatibility reasons, or because
> there was no compelling reason to change it.
> 
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/949959/why-do-64-bit-dlls-go-to-system32-and-32-bit-dlls-to-syswow64-on-64-bit-windows/950011#950011
> 
> Also as the other answers note, an application should not deal with
> these directories, and especially not SysWOW64, anyway.

I know.  It’s still a mess.  Compared to linux when /lib64 and /usr/lib64 were added the Microsoft naming is awful.  When System32 was added to take 16-bit apps to 32-bits Microsoft acted rationally and required 16-bit apps to be rewritten.  When they went with SysWOW64 and changed the semantics of System32, instead of introducing System64 and requiring a handful of apps that explicitly loaded dlls by name to be rewritten or contain an ifdef for 64 vs 32 but they acted IMO incompetently, and made things much messier than they needed to be.  System32 in modern Windows is a wart on its nose.

> Kind regards,
> Jakob
> 
>> Am So., 20. Sept. 2020 um 06:47 Uhr schrieb tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>>> On 2020-09-19, at 8:19 PM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I *hate* Windows.  It is utterly contemptible.  Why?  Consider this perversity:
>> 
>> Good grief. I mean. Good. Grief. That's up there with using the right moue button for menus instead of the middle one.
>> 
>> tim
>> --
>> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
>> A)bort, R)etry, P)ee in drive door
>> 
>>