Old New Thing, The: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows

The author did a nice job of suggesting what chapters might be of interest to different levels of readers. But a good bit of the time he was way into the “weeds” for my level of programming knowledge. It was enjoyable nonetheless. History books such as this one are useful for active programmers.

This book is a delight to read and it was my second time reading it (the first was during jury duty back in February 2007). Some chapters get pretty deep in programming, so I just skimmed over those. Mostly focuses on the Windows 95 and 3.1 era with a little 2000 and XP thrown in. Basically, this is the book form of Chen's blog "The Old New Thing" with more stories and more details.One thing that is kind of annoying is the downloadable bonus chapters. The author gives a link to download bonus chapters in the preface. This link goes to informit.com with another link to safari.com. Even after registering the ISBN number on informit.com, it would link me into safari.com and safari.com won't let me look at bonus chapters unless I sign up for a 10 day trial. Of course, they want a credit card number. Why? I already bought the book, so I cancelled out the trial setup and did a little Google searching and found the bonus chapters in PDF format over at the Pearson site.I went to Chen's blog to contact him about this, but there's no e-mail address in site and no comment box to leave a message. On the blog postings where he mentions the bonus chapters, I was going to leave a comment, but the comments are now closed (too much time has passed I guess). Why can't he post these bonus chapters on his web site? The second chapter is just a reprint of something he wrote in the MS-DOS days. I don't get it!

As a long-time reader of Raymond Chen's blog, The Old New Thing, I was quite excited to see that he had put out a book. After reading it, I'm pleased to say that Chen's acerbic style shines through in this book as well.This book is an excellent tour through the history of Windows development. It does a good job explaining why parts of Windows are as quirky as they are, and what limitations and design decisions led to them being that way.The book's style varies from chapter to chapter. Some chapters are collections of short essays and observations, similar in length and style to Old New Thing blog posts. (Some, in fact, are expanded versions of topics already posted on the blog.) Other chapters are more in-depth looks at a single topic - for example, there is a whole chapter dedicated to the workings of the Windows dialog manager. Many topics in this book would be of interest to a non-technical audience, while others are only of interest to Windows programmers. (There's a table in the introduction that does a good job identifying what audiences would like each chapter.)All in all, if you're a fan of The Old New Thing, this is a no-brainer. If you'd like to see some of the history of Windows, and how design decisions made back when 640K was enough for everyone continue to affect Windows now, then give this a read. Or, if you'd just like to marvel at the number of ways people have screwed up writing Windows programs, and the Herculean efforts of Microsoft engineers to keep their broken code running - pick this book up today.

I've been quite involved in development of open source software (and still am, in my free time) before I got hired by a company who does its development in a traditional way, behind closed door. If you're a software developer you certainly know that there are very valuable cultural foundations behind many software development communities. Funny or entertaining things happens, things break in sophisticated manners, jokes are told, experience is gained.In open source development much of this happens in public, to amusement of many. When developing behind closed doors, funny anecdotes from development are very limited to the people actually participating in development or lost. What a pity!Raymond Chen decided to share much of his experience with Windows NT development with the outside word and created an MSDN blog with funny anecdotes from life of their development community. The book is a printed version of many of articles, anecdotes, funny notes, and horror stories from his blog. There's probably not many people who could do as good job as he did given his years of experience in the field. For me (largely involved in development in Linux environment) the book is was very entertaining reading from a development community previously unknown to me. I can definitely recommend it to any programmer.

Certainly Chen knows the internals of Windows better than practically anyone, and he delivers to a knowledgeable reader much insight and entertainment. I do think he would come across as a bit more likable if he could occasionally acknowledge the drawbacks of Microsoft's product, for instance how many holes the official documentation has, or how frustrating (or, putting it less charitably, harebrained) the operating system's confusing design quirks are. I found quite distasteful his practice of blaming all problems on application developers, and the long diatribes against DOS game programmers of the '80's are singularly uninteresting and irrelevant nowadays.

I recommend this to anyone who's interested in computers because it highlights some of the least visible things that major software developers face. If you ever wondered why Windows does something illogical, chances are Raymond Chen has an explanation why that is. If not, the very least you can find so many things that the Microsoft development team had to put up with to appease their customers that for me imparted a better appreciation for what them and other OS developers have to deal with.

Fun, technical and very insightful on how serious, highly professional, and big-scale software development is in reality. Maximum respect to the Microsoft engineers that crafted Windows in the last 25+ years.Note that this is not an essay, it's quite leaned to C / C++ Windows programmers; however , all IT people could learn a lot from this book.

If you like to read about the history of OS development, whether it be UNIX, Windows or other, you'll love this book.Parts of it are heavy on technical detail, so if that's not your thing then avoid it. But if you like to know some of the deep details about how things became to be the way that they are, this is a book for you.

If you develop on Windows, you need this book. Even if you don't, it's a fascinating look into the way that Windows does what it does, and why. It's also interesting for anyone who has to maintain a large, complex system, as Raymond discusses why things can't be changed, and the amazing lengths that Microsoft goes to to keep stuff working. Every page is an 'oh, wow' experience. Check it out!

If someone told me I would enjoy reading a book about a collection of stories about the development of Windows, I'd look at them strange. But I did enjoy it, and I want more.I have been reading The Old New Thing blog for several years now, Raymond Chen's stories are both interesting and intellectually stimulating. From simple topics like why the taskbar is at the bottom of the screen, to the intricacies of rendering strings in different character sets. The book is essentially a collation of the blog content, and is presented in the same format - so if you love the blog, you'll love the book.This book is essential reading for anyone who works with the Win32 API; it highlights some common problems that people run into, but mostly because the stories are fun to read and explain some of the design quirks we deal with daily.If you read the blog, buy the book. If you are on the fence, head over to (...) to get a feel for the content.

This book is very interesting and easy to read. Nicely illustrated design problems by go through some real world scenario. Worth every cent.

Da ich begeisterter Leser des Blogs bin habe ich mir auch das Buch zugelegt. Ich gebe zu, ein wenig seltsam, sich die Papierversion eines Blogs zu kaufen, aber ich finde es lohnt sich.Das Buch ist eigentlich genauso aufgebaut wie der Blog, auch der Inhalt ist größtenteils gleich. Es gibt nur wenige Beiträge, die man online nicht findet. Allerdings sind die Beiträge im Buch nach Kategorien sortiert und übersichtlich aufbereitet. Das Ganze in Papierform zu lesen ist einfach angenehmer, gerade bei den Codebeispielen.Wem es das Wert ist sollte auch mal einen Blick in das Buch riskieren :-)