The Reason Behind The Windows 10 Name

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
I don't know, this seems like a plausible explanation for the reason behind the jump from Windows 9 to Windows 10.

Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form

if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9")) { /* 95 and 98 */ } else {

and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that.

"Having worked on the Windows compatibility team before, I have no difficulty believing this," wrote user richkzad in response. There are in fact examples of this on publicly available code repositories.
Click to expand...
 
Fair enough, though most code I've seen was win 9x where x covered various versions. This does make sense though
 
I don't buy it. If a shitty programmed application uses that, then it's incompatible and needs a new version. That's not a good way to determine version (and I'm a shitty programmer). Windows 95 is causing issues 20 years later... Who would have known.
 
There's software out there that supports Windows 95 through Windows 8 with a single executable?

I doubt it?

Also, will there even be a 32-bit version of Windows 10?

I think this is a joke.
 
krogen said:
Also, will there even be a 32-bit version of Windows 10?
Click to expand...

Yes.

It's plausible, but it's grasping at straws. There are a lot of theories on why it's Windows 10, and this is just one of many. :)
 
And here I thought they were jumping ahead of themselves without even releasing "9" yet. So its just a stupid naming issue.
 
It's BS, it's all marketing. The devs themselves typically have no say in the naming scheme of their products, that's all marketing.
 
I think they just skipped 8 so it would cause all this talk about it and build up anticipation for Windows 10. Like "it has to be way better because they skipped a whole OS number". Otherwise they shouldn't even care about making it work with programs that were coded around the Windows 95/98 era.
 
More proof that people in marketing are the stupidest, overvalued people ever. How can you just skip a fuckin' version number? Do you really think anyone wouldn't notice?
 
krogen said:
There's software out there that supports Windows 95 through Windows 8 with a single executable?

I doubt it?

Also, will there even be a 32-bit version of Windows 10?

I think this is a joke.
Click to expand...

As someone who works at a place with equipment that has ancient interfaces and such, I have no problem believing both of these will be true.

I think people severely underestimate the lengths that businesses will go to in order to NOT have to update ancient software. Especially when the guy who wrote it retired and/or was laid off a decade ago.
 
Is this the reason? I'd learn towards not likely. Is there current production software out there coded like this. Most definitely! There's a ton of old proprietary software in use across many industries that is mission critical and is beyond hope of being upgraded.

The catch is that it's very unlikely systems running that software will be upgraded.
 
Really, why does it matter? I wouldn't care if it was called Windows Herpes.
 
krogen said:
There's software out there that supports Windows 95 through Windows 8 with a single executable?
Click to expand...
That's not where this issue springs up.

This is a problem with NEW software that has no support for Windows 95 or 98. Devs will often perform a check to make sure you're not trying to run their software on Windows 9x, and in-so-doing, might mistake Windows 9 for Windows 95 or 98.
 
This may have been part of the reason, but I bet the name was still marketing related. This acting like a workaround for this issue was probably just a bonus.

Any programmer worth his salt is going to check the NT build number and not the name anyway.
 
It's an interesting theory, but software installation checks for version numbers, not product names. Thus, Windows 98 is version 4.10.x, not 9x as implied by the article.

I'm betting they picked Windows 10 simply because it sounds better/more complete than Windows 9. Microsoft has an obsession with branding and naming. They never seem to be happy and are always changing the name of their products.
 
This is bullshit. IIRC you use preprocessor variables in Windows programming to define which version it is for and then you design conditionals around that. If that snippet of code is seriously how some programmers out there did it, then they are bad programmers and should face the consequences. It really irks me when I see something like this that doesn't follow best practices.
OregonLAN said:
It's an interesting theory, but software installation checks for version numbers, not product names. Thus, Windows 98 is version 4.10.x, not 9x as implied by the article.

I'm betting they picked Windows 10 simply because it sounds better/more complete than Windows 9. Microsoft has an obsession with branding and naming. They never seem to be happy and are always changing the name of their products.
Click to expand...
Also this. It is all marketing trickery.
 
captainyarr said:
It sounds stupid, but the proof is easy enough to find.
https://searchcode.com/?q=if(version,startswith("windows+9")
Click to expand...

Yep.. JAVA code:

https://searchcode.com/codesearch/view/60696206/

public class WindowsAttachProvider extends HotSpotAttachProvider {

public WindowsAttachProvider() {
String os = System.getProperty("os.name");
if (os.startsWith("Windows 9") || os.equals("Windows Me")) {
throw new RuntimeException(
"This provider is not supported on this version of Windows");
 
Unknown-One said:
That's not where this issue springs up.

This is a problem with NEW software that has no support for Windows 95 or 98. Devs will often perform a check to make sure you're not trying to run their software on Windows 9x, and in-so-doing, might mistake Windows 9 for Windows 95 or 98.
Click to expand...

Far fetched and easy to patch one way or another.even with just another version string then Windows 9 while keeping the Windows 9 name since programmers prolly know how to distinguish between this.

Cheap stupid marketing ploy with unbelievably weird reasoning which can only be had when you work for MS or don't have the slightest idea on how computer programs work.
 
Wouldn't it be better to look at the Kernel version to determine operating system?
 
krogen said:
There's software out there that supports Windows 95 through Windows 8 with a single executable?

I doubt it?

I think this is a joke.
Click to expand...

It's probably legacy Windows code that was never cleaned up :D
 
I don't think this is the reason. If MS wanted it to be Windows 9, they would have just made the version identifier different.
 
They have no choice. Program issues with older apps would be blamed on Microsoft, just as a lot of the Windows Vista issues started from sloppy drivers or older unupdated programs.

It would be a PR nightmare to go forward with it, expecting third parties to update their whole catalog and instead to have Microsoft absorb all the blame.

Easier to have a clean break and call it Windows 10.
 
MRAB54 said:
It's probably legacy Windows code that was never cleaned up :D
Click to expand...

And when using Windows 9 the version string that is used (because it is not tied to the name of the operating system whatsoever) would be "muppet" then all of the legacy code would work normally and no one would ever get confused by this as a programmer when such a version string would be used.
 
Armenius said:
Ah, it's Java. That explains everything :D. Java really needs to just die already.
Click to expand...
Obviously Microsoft bought Minecraft to remove one of the last bastions of JAVA uses.
kioras said:
They have no choice. Program issues with older apps would be blamed on Microsoft, just as a lot of the Windows Vista issues started from sloppy drivers or older unupdated programs.

It would be a PR nightmare to go forward with it, expecting third parties to update their whole catalog and instead to have Microsoft absorb all the blame.

Easier to have a clean break and call it Windows 10.
Click to expand...
A ton of windows Vista issues especially the UAC stuff was sloppy programming by 3rd party developers who never learned or cared.
 
What a stupid reason. They skipped 9 so they can call Windows "OS10" and start naming every service packs after stupid animals.

OS10.1 Chinchilla
 
BillNutz said:
What a stupid reason. They skipped 9 so they can call Windows "OS10" and start naming every service packs after stupid animals.

OS10.1 Chinchilla
Click to expand...

Are you calling chinichilla's stupid? Cute little guys, they are.

They should use big cats for the code names. :D
 
PCunicorn said:
I don't think this is the reason. If MS wanted it to be Windows 9, they would have just made the version identifier different.
Click to expand...

This. Just because it says Windows 9 on the box doesn't mean they can't code around it on the back end. I don't believe it for a second.
 
TwiceOver said:
Wouldn't it be better to look at the Kernel version to determine operating system?
Click to expand...

Better? lol do you know anything about coders, there are hundreds of great advancements in windows that go completely unappreciated because of lazy coders. MS learned a huge lesson in the shift from xp to vista about how, it simple doesn't matter who is right or wrong the consumers will always blame it on the OS. Even though almost all the instability in vista was caused by crappy coders who were given access to the OS and allowed to build drivers up to a year ahead of time and didn't bother to do anything or make sure it was stable. In the end everyone says vista is instable.

Many things such as DPI scaling will remain broken forever because coders wouldn't update for a new implementation.

Given that MS largest advantage in the desktop is its software library they definitely do not want to ruffle any feathers on that front.
 
Also just so people think about it any decision made didn't have to come down to one reason. People seem to always think that for some reason. They might have said look 9 is unlucky in Japan, 9 will cause all these problems with crappy software, or any other number of reasons and said well all that stuff adds up and its just worth skipping but not any single one reason has to be the sufficient in itself.
 
Here's stills from the branding meeting:

Lorenzo%20Santi%27s%20photo.jpg
 
PCunicorn said:
I don't think this is the reason. If MS wanted it to be Windows 9, they would have just made the version identifier different.
Click to expand...

As it's been proven in the thread, not everyone checks that way.

if (MajorVersion >= 5 && MinorVersion >= 1)

That was a somewhat common way that people checked versions in the XP days. It caused a lot of programs and drivers to bomb out in Vista. Remember the compatibility packs they used to provide on patch tuesdays? It was to update a list of programs that checked the version like that, so windows could feed it a false number so it will work.

And just like UAC, most people blamed Microsoft for the compatibility issues, not the developer.
 
I have always said that Microsoft should have followed the Fibonacci sequence for naming Windows.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top