I really love articles about programming from the 90s. Everything was written in C/C++ and maybe some Perl. Working with file formats that may or may not have had specifications, building and using algorithms that you learned in comp sci classes. I miss those days. :(
It's so rare that web pages from the 90s still even exist on the internet. Sadly I have to do a lot of web surfing with the wayback machine as a proxy to the days of the past.
> Sadly I have to do a lot of web surfing with the wayback machine as a proxy to the days of the past.
I'd argue this is not sad, but incredible that the Wayback Machine has been so successful in preserving webpages as they've been revised, expanded, and deprecated. And if anything, it shows just how important the project and projects like it are for the preservation of the Internet's history.
I had a windows xp machine that had very long file names on some pictures, and when the drive ran into some troubles the data specialists I took it to wanted to charge $2k because of the troubles those files were going to give them. Ahh my youth.
<raises hand> Don't remember any file-system problems though I believe I got into the betas mid cycle. I do however remember well the "What the heck is a Start menu and where did Program Manager go?"
Edit: I'm also starting to feel old when threads like this come up :)
The irony of this is half of Windows is STILL utterly BROKEN with respect to path lengths since LFN was introduced in the Win32 API and it shoots you almost every day if you have to work with any deep directory hierarchies. There are so many rules it's unfunny:
Indeed! Try writing a Windows file system driver sometime; I hear it's truly a lovely experience.
The other irony is that the HP48 graphing calculator, originally introduced in 1990, had a user-facing filesystem with full support for long file and directory names. I'd be curious to learn what possessed the people responsible for DOS to have ever shipped a system with the insane 8.3 restriction. Even ancient Unix filesystems (early 1970s vintage) supported far more reasonable 14-character filenames.
Been there, done that. People think it's awesome to create a bunch of long, nested directory names, until the fully qualified file name becomes too long for max path and automation starts breaking.
[+] [-] aninteger|14 years ago|reply
It's so rare that web pages from the 90s still even exist on the internet. Sadly I have to do a lot of web surfing with the wayback machine as a proxy to the days of the past.
[+] [-] tiles|14 years ago|reply
I'd argue this is not sad, but incredible that the Wayback Machine has been so successful in preserving webpages as they've been revised, expanded, and deprecated. And if anything, it shows just how important the project and projects like it are for the preservation of the Internet's history.
[+] [-] wayne|14 years ago|reply
(I found the main link via Raymond's post and found it a lot more interesting, but Raymond's post is worth a read if you enjoyed the article.)
[+] [-] kingkawn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethank|14 years ago|reply
Early betas had the tendency to bork the LFN's which was a joy.
[+] [-] 51Cards|14 years ago|reply
Edit: I'm also starting to feel old when threads like this come up :)
[+] [-] whatgoodisaroad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiabloD3|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zura|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pointyhat|14 years ago|reply
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247(v=vs.85).as...
[+] [-] gcv|14 years ago|reply
The other irony is that the HP48 graphing calculator, originally introduced in 1990, had a user-facing filesystem with full support for long file and directory names. I'd be curious to learn what possessed the people responsible for DOS to have ever shipped a system with the insane 8.3 restriction. Even ancient Unix filesystems (early 1970s vintage) supported far more reasonable 14-character filenames.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WayneDB|14 years ago|reply