The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

Latest posts

Sep 20, 2023
Post comments count 1
Post likes count 1

Why does my C++/WinRT project get unresolved externals for constructors?

Raymond Chen

You forgot to include the namespace header file, didn't you.

Sep 19, 2023
Post comments count 3
Post likes count 3

Why did the 16-bit _lopen and _lcreat function return -1 on failure instead of 0?

Raymond Chen

Trying to look like somebody else.

Sep 18, 2023
Post comments count 3
Post likes count 5

When looking to free up disk space, don’t forget your symbol file caches

Raymond Chen

They go all over the place.

Sep 15, 2023
Post comments count 6
Post likes count 2

How can I prevent myself from using a parameter after I’ve extracted all value from it?

Raymond Chen

You can shadow it with something useless.

Sep 14, 2023
Post comments count 7
Post likes count 3

I accidentally performed an operation on INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE, and it worked: What just happened?

Raymond Chen

Coincidentally valid, but not what you think.

Sep 13, 2023
Post comments count 1
Post likes count 2

How do I perform a case-insensitive comparison of two strings in the Deseret script?

Raymond Chen

It sort of depends on why you're comparing them.

Sep 12, 2023
Post comments count 4
Post likes count 3

The odd cadence of narrative engineering design documents

Raymond Chen

Following the rubric off a cliff.

Sep 11, 2023
Post comments count 27
Post likes count 9

Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

Raymond Chen

The common pattern of trying to delete yourself.

Sep 8, 2023
Post comments count 3
Post likes count 4

On transferring or copying ABI pointers between smart pointers

Raymond Chen

Keep track of who owns the reference.