\nOne of the things you learn when dealing with compatibility is that\nevery single external detail is a potential compatibility constraint.\n<\/p>\n
\nA few years ago, the water coolers in the buildings were replaced.\nI have no idea why.\nMaybe the new water cooler company put in a lower bid.\nWho knows?\nAll I know is that I like the newer ones less,\nand I’m not the only one.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe water cooler has three spouts:\none for hot water,\none for room-temperature water,\nand one for cold water.\n(Okay, so it’s also a water heater as well as a water cooler.)\nThe old machine positioned the spouts close enough together that\nyou could fit a cup beneath the last two spouts\n(room-temperature and cold).\nThis meant that you could push both levers to dispense water\ninto your cup.\nNow, the result was “somewhat cool” water, but the important thing\nwas that it filled your cup in half the time!\n<\/p>\n
\n Room\nHot Temp Cold\n | | |\n v v v\n |. .|\n |.cup.|\n |.....|\n +-----+\n<\/pre>\n\nThe new water coolers has the same three spouts,\nbut they are positioned just a tiny bit further apart,\njust far apart enough that you can’t use the “double-barrel” trick\nany more.<\/p>\n
\n Room\nHot Temp Cold\n | | |\n v v v\n |. |.\n |.cup |.dribble\n |.....|*\n +-----+*\n *dribble\n<\/pre>\n\nThe new water cooler is subtly incompatible with the old one,\nin a manner that is not part of the specification\nbut rather is merely\na convenient side-effect of the implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the things you learn when dealing with compatibility is that every single external detail is a potential compatibility constraint. A few years ago, the water coolers in the buildings were replaced. I have no idea why. Maybe the new water cooler company put in a lower bid. Who knows? All I know is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-26563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
One of the things you learn when dealing with compatibility is that every single external detail is a potential compatibility constraint. A few years ago, the water coolers in the buildings were replaced. I have no idea why. Maybe the new water cooler company put in a lower bid. Who knows? All I know is […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}