The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
std::call_once vs. std::async
Simple vs complex machinery.
Magic statics vs. std::call_once
They sort of do the same thing, but differently.
Why do Microsoft job levels start in the high 50’s instead of starting at a sane number like 1?
It used to start at 1, but that was the old system.
Why didn’t ReadDirectoryChangesW provide a way to correlate the two sides of a rename operation?
Perhaps it wasn't necessary, or perhaps it didn't occur to them that this a problem.
How can I remove the Close button from my window caption?
Not through normal means.
Why is the x86 undefined instruction called ud2? Why 2?
It came after <CODE>ud0</CODE> and <CODE>ud1</CODE>.
What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?
It's random, really.
A sample use of the winstart.bat file in Windows 95
For a driver that needs high resolution mode only in Windows.
Why don’t we allow stacks to be sparse, instead of forcing them to be contiguous?
Imagining how to report a memory allocation failure for a sparse page.