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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How were DLL functions imported in 16-bit Windows?

July 17th, 2006
A threaded linked list.

How were DLL functions exported in 16-bit Windows?

July 14th, 2006
The whole point of dynamic link libraries (DLLs) is that the linkage is dynamic. Whereas statically-linked libraries are built into the final product, a module that uses a dynamically-linked library merely says, "I would like function X from Y.DLL, please." This technique has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is more efficient use of...

Glass houses are great places to throw stones

July 13th, 2006
Whenever I write an article explaining that programs should avoid doing X, I can confidently rely on a comment saying, "Well, Microsoft Product Q does this!" as if to say, "Gotcha, you hypocrite!" But they're saying "gotcha" to the wrong person. Because, and I'm sure it's a shock to many people to read this, I did not ...

Win $5000 every summer for life (some restrictions on your life apply)

July 12th, 2006
Back in 2003, M&M offered a chance to win $5000 every summer for life, but if you looked more carefully, the offer actually read, "Win $5000 Every Summer For Life*", and the asterisk at the bottom read, "Maximum 50 years". That fine print was filled with strange stuff. For example, 3. Sponsor responsible only for delivery of prize; not ...

Pidls and monikers do roughly the same thing, just backwards

July 12th, 2006
When operating with the Windows shell, you will almost certainly find yourself at some point working with a pointer to an item ID list, known also as a "pidl" (rhymes with "middle"). On the other hand, when working with OLE you may find yourself having do deal with monikers. In a sense, they both do the same thing. They let you refer to some ...

News flash: Big houses have bigger heating bills

July 11th, 2006
Big houses have bigger heating bills. Thanks, Associated Press! I learn something new every day. (Previous amazing fact...

Not everybody with a non-Windows partition type is a geek

July 11th, 2006
In the discussions following why Windows setup lays down a new boot sector, some commenters suggested that Windows setup could detect the presence of a non-Windows partition as a sign that the machine onto which the operating system is being installed belongs to a geek. In that way, the typical consumer would be spared from having to deal ...

Wenn Ausländer Deutsch phonetisch singen

July 10th, 2006
When foreigners sing German phonetically, the results are kind of painful. Listen, if you dare, to Johnny Cash sing "Wer kennt den Weg? (I Walk the Line)" [WMV] [Real]. If you can't get enough, you can grab the lyrics and sing along. Listening to the recording brought back painful memories of my high school German class, where there were ...

Before you can learn to recognize what's wrong, you must learn to recognize what's right

July 10th, 2006
Sometimes, when I'm debugging a problem, I'll ignore a particular thread and somebody will ask, "What is that thread doing, and how did you know to ignore it?" My reply: "I have no idea what it's doing, but whatever it's doing, it's normal." Tess has been running an excellent series of posts on debugging the CLR, but one of the most ...

Mr. T prefers a double-shot of espresso with two graham crackers, go figure

July 7th, 2006
Back in November, Paul Davidson popped into his local Starbucks coffee shop and ended up in line right behind Mr. T. Unlike me, Mr. Davidson actually knew ahead of time what he was going to ask the former A-Team heavy. And the answer was worth waiting for. (Via TV Squad: Mr. T likes espresso, fool!) Mr. T has not ...