February 13th, 2017

Sometimes you get so worked up about the compatibility consequences of a change that you miss the obvious

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

During the course of investigating a bug that resulted in the system crashing with a bluescreen, the question arose, “What are the compatibility consequences of making this change? Are there any legitimate scenarios where somebody would be relying on being able to do XYZ and counting on the old behavior?”

I had to step in and state the obvious:

“There is clearly no valid scenario for the old behavior, because if you try to do XYZ, you crash with a bluescreen.”

Some people were amused by the clear logic of this statement. But it’s also the case that sometimes people get so excited that they miss the obvious.

Category
Old New Thing
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Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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