The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

Latest posts

Jun 12, 2026
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How can I schedule work on a thread pool with low latency?

Raymond Chen

The thread pool is designed for throughput, not latency.

Jun 11, 2026
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Understanding the rationale behind a rule when trying to circumvent it

Raymond Chen

I mean, technically <I>I</I> didn't do it.

Jun 10, 2026
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What’s the opposite of Clip­Cursor that lets me exclude the cursor from a region?

Raymond Chen

There is no such feature, but you can just exclude it virtually.

Jun 9, 2026
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The Microsoft Company Party where everybody played name tag swap

Raymond Chen

Even the boss got into the festivities.

Jun 8, 2026
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Rotation revisited: Shuffling more than three blocks, and other small notes

Raymond Chen

Generalizing the shuffle to arbitrary numbers of blocks.

Jun 5, 2026
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The back cover of C++: The Programming Language also raises questions not answered by the front cover

Raymond Chen

Not doing the reading.

Jun 5, 2026
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Rotation revisited: Avoiding having to calculate the gcd when doing cycle decomposition

Raymond Chen

Math is hard. Let's go counting!

Jun 4, 2026
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Rotation revisited: Cycle decomposition in clang’s libcxx

Raymond Chen

Rotating in the minimum number of steps by performing cycle decomposition.

Jun 3, 2026
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Rotation revisited: A shocking discovery about gcc’s unidirectional rotation algorithm

Raymond Chen

We've seen this before.

Jun 2, 2026
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Rotation revisited: Another unidirectional algorithm

Raymond Chen

Moving in a straight line, in a different way.

Jun 1, 2026
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The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was “modern”

Raymond Chen

Modern this and that.

May 29, 2026
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Sharing the result of a single Windows Runtime IAsyncOperation among multiple coroutines, part 3

Raymond Chen

A variation where we try only once.

May 28, 2026
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Sharing the result of a single Windows Runtime IAsyncOperation among multiple coroutines, part 2

Raymond Chen

Just let each person take turns trying.

May 27, 2026
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Sharing the result of a single Windows Runtime IAsyncOperation among multiple coroutines, part 1

Raymond Chen

Caching the result and knowing when the cache is valid.

May 26, 2026
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If C# and JavaScript lets me await a Windows Runtime asynchronous operation more than once, why not C++/WinRT?

Raymond Chen

A difference in philosophy.

May 25, 2026
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A hypothetical redesign of System.Diagnostics.Process to avoid confusion over properties that are valid only when you are the one who called Start

Raymond Chen

Putting them in a place that can access only if you call <CODE>Start</CODE>.

May 22, 2026
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Why do you say that a COM STA thread must pump messages if I see sample code creating STA threads and not pumping messages?

Raymond Chen

You need to pump messages when idle, but maybe you are never idle.

May 21, 2026
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How do I use Win32 structures from the Windows Runtime?

Raymond Chen

Trick question: You can't. But maybe you can fake it.