5 ms·

This is a major internal architecture change. It simply wasn’t possible to write a proper console before. That’s why you weren’t met with enthusiasm for your id

This is a major internal architecture change. It simply wasn’t possible to write a proper console before. That’s why you weren’t met with enthusiasm for your idea.

mixmastamyk 7y ago
And that's exactly what I suggested. They've had a bridge to ssh for quite a while, for example.
nnq 7y ago
> a major internal architecture change. It simply wasn’t possible to write a proper console before. Really curious why this would be so. On Linux there's dozen's of terminals/consoles. On MacOS quite a few too. Why would the GUI (which was the biggest pain point) has to have anything to do with the terminal functionality, except maybe a few keybindings maybe being impossible to implement. There were 3rd party console alternatives since like ~2000 - only they all had horrible UI/X (but still better than the original one), but Microsoft could simply have adopted one of them, normalized it's weird quirks to follow sane conventions, and baked it in as Windows default. I never understood Microsoft's attitude of "mushing" these and other things together needlessly. As a Mac & Linux user now, I can only applaud the idea of keeping things separate at all levels. Desktop environment separate from os separate from shells separate from terminal apps etc.. Heck, you often even have the GUIs as separate applications from the main one in Linux land. Never going back to Windows! Dis-integration ftw!
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  It's part backwards-compatibility (historically very important at MS), and part politics (Ballmer-era shortsightedness). Anyway, there is a great series on the technical aspects: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/06/20/windows-command-line-backgrounder/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/06/20/wind...
  - nnq 7y ago
    Yeah, I guess the `backwards-compatibility (historically very important at MS)` thing is the root cause for most of the things I violently dislike about the MS platform... But I get the biz reasoning behind it... dropping backwards-compatibility would mean embracing the fact that software is made to be perpetually re-compiled, modified, re-written. And in an ecosystem embracing these values, closed-source software is automatically at a disadvantage vs. even slightly-worse-but-open-source alternatives. I find it funny that we care so much about backwards-compatibility in software, but we completely ignore any semblance of it in hardware, where it could actually make a difference w.r.t. climate-change, toxic-chemical pollutions, preventing planned obsolescence etc. :) I mean, if there is any area where actively encouraging "planned obsolescence" in the form of less backwards-compatibility would be good, it would be in software. Anyway, this is getting offtopic, but just wanted to say that different value systems produce different technologies... even something as boring as a terminal.
    - MagicPropmaker 7y ago
      Intel cares deeply about backwards compatibility in hardware and it's worked well for them. And of course, Microsoft is currently the most valuable company.
      - nnq 7y ago
        Ofc, wrt software, in the sense that new hardware still runs old software. But not in the sense that one can just upgrade/replace a cpu, or just add some ram etc.

This is a major internal architecture change. It simply wasn’t possible to write a proper console before. That’s why you weren’t met with enthusiasm for your idea.

mixmastamyk 7y ago

And that's exactly what I suggested. They've had a bridge to ssh for quite a while, for example.

nnq 7y ago

> a major internal architecture change. It simply wasn’t possible to write a proper console before. Really curious why this would be so. On Linux there's dozen's of terminals/consoles. On MacOS quite a few too. Why would the GUI (which was the biggest pain point) has to have anything to do with the terminal functionality, except maybe a few keybindings maybe being impossible to implement. There were 3rd party console alternatives since like ~2000 - only they all had horrible UI/X (but still better than the original one), but Microsoft could simply have adopted one of them, normalized it's weird quirks to follow sane conventions, and baked it in as Windows default. I never understood Microsoft's attitude of "mushing" these and other things together needlessly. As a Mac & Linux user now, I can only applaud the idea of keeping things separate at all levels. Desktop environment separate from os separate from shells separate from terminal apps etc.. Heck, you often even have the GUIs as separate applications from the main one in Linux land. Never going back to Windows! Dis-integration ftw!

mixmastamyk 7y ago
It's part backwards-compatibility (historically very important at MS), and part politics (Ballmer-era shortsightedness). Anyway, there is a great series on the technical aspects: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/06/20/windows-command-line-backgrounder/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/06/20/wind...
- nnq 7y ago
  Yeah, I guess the `backwards-compatibility (historically very important at MS)` thing is the root cause for most of the things I violently dislike about the MS platform... But I get the biz reasoning behind it... dropping backwards-compatibility would mean embracing the fact that software is made to be perpetually re-compiled, modified, re-written. And in an ecosystem embracing these values, closed-source software is automatically at a disadvantage vs. even slightly-worse-but-open-source alternatives. I find it funny that we care so much about backwards-compatibility in software, but we completely ignore any semblance of it in hardware, where it could actually make a difference w.r.t. climate-change, toxic-chemical pollutions, preventing planned obsolescence etc. :) I mean, if there is any area where actively encouraging "planned obsolescence" in the form of less backwards-compatibility would be good, it would be in software. Anyway, this is getting offtopic, but just wanted to say that different value systems produce different technologies... even something as boring as a terminal.
  - MagicPropmaker 7y ago
    Intel cares deeply about backwards compatibility in hardware and it's worked well for them. And of course, Microsoft is currently the most valuable company.
    - nnq 7y ago
      Ofc, wrt software, in the sense that new hardware still runs old software. But not in the sense that one can just upgrade/replace a cpu, or just add some ram etc.