That is a case I only become aware of when I read blogs like this. Technically I could solve it the same way, but these days you have so many tasks on your desk, you don't think about the problem and implications at all and that awareness/discipline is drowned in the noise/unlearned over time.
If someone only gave me 2 minutes for this, because they think it is very simple (as always), I'd have done a count of files of a specific pattern in the directory and then picked a random index, very naive and quick and dirty programming, no sampling at all, just to avoid discussions why it takes so long with people who don't want to hear it.
This reminds me of when I did a lot of C#, Java, JS, Python in my life, filling maps of strings and objects until I started with zig and noticed how expensive and complicated strings and data structure allocations can be. It kind of blew my mind how much memory and computation we waste when we try to get stuff done as fast as possible because of budget/time constraints.
Man, every post from Raymond Chen regarding Windows internals is like a little Xmas. I wonder whether he has to ask someone for permission before publishing this knowledge, though.
>Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.
>During the Luna studies, that peopleâs reaction to Luna was often, âWow this would be a great UI for X,â where X was âmy dadâ or âmy employeesâ or âmy daughterâ. People didnât look at it as the UI for themselves; rather, they thought it was a great UI for somebody else.
(Luna is the name of the default look of Windows XP)
That's a matter of taste, but for many it was the Windows they used first and/or spend the most time on and there's a lot of love for that reason alone. I never used XP all that much, but I always changed the theme to the Windows 2000 look. I really didn't like the default, it looked unprofessional and clunky in my eyes. Upon release XP was also pretty universally mocked as a Fisher Price-like UI.
To me Windows 95/NT 4 is still the gold standard in Windows UI. It's certainly not the prettiest, that would be Windows 2000, but it was easy to use, easy to navigate and efficient with space.
win2k was peak for me. lean, functional, just a pinch of glitter here and there (short fade-ins). it was on par with the amazing stability brought by nt5 kernel.
i kinda miss xp at a cultural level since it was a bit the end of that computing culture cycle (after that apple started to dominate and ubuiquitous computing influenced desktop ui)
Took me years to like Windows XP. Hated the new start menu. I always kept installing Windows 2000 (or ME, probably because it could use Windows 98 drivers but look like Windows 2000).
I eventually got used to it and ended up liking it.
It was at this moment I realized that people are talking about liking the non-classic-look XP. I always immediately put things in classic look, no grouped windows, etc.
The first Windows I used was 98, and I sure didn't miss the blocky grey menus nor the pixelated icons. Maybe it was Fisher Price-ish but the new rounded buttons and borders were way more appealing to me.
The "Windows Classic" look on XP is exceptionally ugly, because those 3D-rendered icons just do not belong on a Windows 2000-style grey background for menus or buttons. (I have recently had to test both these OSes in VMsâŚ)
That is true, it looked completely off, as if no one really bothered to tests it and make it look nice. It got rid of the horrible window decoration of the default theme, but the start menu looked terrible.
> As a final safety check, the code stops after sampling 100 pictures. This avoids pathological behavior if somebody puts a million files in the Default Pictures directory
There's no way my memory of this is reliable anymore, but I also remember my administrator account being chess pieces (and my user account being an orange fish).
It somewhat odd that systems don't have a call to tell you how many files are in a folder.
That is a case I only become aware of when I read blogs like this. Technically I could solve it the same way, but these days you have so many tasks on your desk, you don't think about the problem and implications at all and that awareness/discipline is drowned in the noise/unlearned over time.
If someone only gave me 2 minutes for this, because they think it is very simple (as always), I'd have done a count of files of a specific pattern in the directory and then picked a random index, very naive and quick and dirty programming, no sampling at all, just to avoid discussions why it takes so long with people who don't want to hear it.
This reminds me of when I did a lot of C#, Java, JS, Python in my life, filling maps of strings and objects until I started with zig and noticed how expensive and complicated strings and data structure allocations can be. It kind of blew my mind how much memory and computation we waste when we try to get stuff done as fast as possible because of budget/time constraints.
Man, every post from Raymond Chen regarding Windows internals is like a little Xmas. I wonder whether he has to ask someone for permission before publishing this knowledge, though.
I also wonder what his thoughts on âmodern Windowsâ are
His silence speaks a thousand words.
>Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.
That made me chuckle too. No utility, but I did find it interesting.
For those interested, here's the actual code Chen talks about: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b...
Didn't know that NT5 source is available for the public. Why Microsoft does not ban/delete it on GitHub?
The times when people spent an extra brain cycle to avoid billions of second passes.
A couple of screenshots would've been useful for the post-millennial generations that never got to see the "beauty" (cough) of XP.
Here's a blog post from 2003 with beautiful pictures.
https://jakeludington.com/2003/12/17/create_your_own_windows...
XP is Microsoft's prettiest OS by far.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040331-00/?p=39...
>During the Luna studies, that peopleâs reaction to Luna was often, âWow this would be a great UI for X,â where X was âmy dadâ or âmy employeesâ or âmy daughterâ. People didnât look at it as the UI for themselves; rather, they thought it was a great UI for somebody else.
(Luna is the name of the default look of Windows XP)
That's a matter of taste, but for many it was the Windows they used first and/or spend the most time on and there's a lot of love for that reason alone. I never used XP all that much, but I always changed the theme to the Windows 2000 look. I really didn't like the default, it looked unprofessional and clunky in my eyes. Upon release XP was also pretty universally mocked as a Fisher Price-like UI.
To me Windows 95/NT 4 is still the gold standard in Windows UI. It's certainly not the prettiest, that would be Windows 2000, but it was easy to use, easy to navigate and efficient with space.
win2k was peak for me. lean, functional, just a pinch of glitter here and there (short fade-ins). it was on par with the amazing stability brought by nt5 kernel.
i kinda miss xp at a cultural level since it was a bit the end of that computing culture cycle (after that apple started to dominate and ubuiquitous computing influenced desktop ui)
Took me years to like Windows XP. Hated the new start menu. I always kept installing Windows 2000 (or ME, probably because it could use Windows 98 drivers but look like Windows 2000).
I eventually got used to it and ended up liking it.
It was at this moment I realized that people are talking about liking the non-classic-look XP. I always immediately put things in classic look, no grouped windows, etc.
IIRC correctly, XPâs stability greatly increased after Service Pack 2 was published.
The first Windows I used was 98, and I sure didn't miss the blocky grey menus nor the pixelated icons. Maybe it was Fisher Price-ish but the new rounded buttons and borders were way more appealing to me.
The "Windows Classic" look on XP is exceptionally ugly, because those 3D-rendered icons just do not belong on a Windows 2000-style grey background for menus or buttons. (I have recently had to test both these OSes in VMsâŚ)
That is true, it looked completely off, as if no one really bothered to tests it and make it look nice. It got rid of the horrible window decoration of the default theme, but the start menu looked terrible.
I feel Vista was by far the best. 7 simplified it a bit, but that Start orb and black taskbar on Vista, man, that was glorious.
I found each of 2000, XP, and 7 to be excellent in its own unique way. I'd be happy with any of them. But it also felt exciting to upgrade.
It's all been downhill from there as far as UX goes.
I like the installation music :-)
Ehem... nothing beats the beauty and simplicity of Win 95 :)
Perhaps with the Zune theme installed.
You mean 7 ;)
Windows 7 was certainly pretty, but I still think that W2000 was peak Windows UI (and I've been around since Windows 2.0)
Windows 7 fixed Vista a bit, but the Aero windows were never pretty and the non-Aero decorations were painfully obvious a placeholder.
I thought it looked great :-/
I don't see how that's relevant? Article is about the RNG implementation, it doesn't matter what the profile pictures are.
> I don't see how that's relevant?
nobody cares
Why they made it that complex?
A simple rand/mod based on first character of username should be sufficient?
So users Adam, Anne and Archie all have the same profile image?
because you don't know the number of images before running the code so no number to do the mod part
Why wouldn't you know that? It's a set of preloaded stock photos, it's always gonna be the same number.
Itâs a directory. You could add pictures to it, and we did in our image layout (mainly for fun, but they wanted the logo as one).
> As a final safety check, the code stops after sampling 100 pictures. This avoids pathological behavior if somebody puts a million files in the Default Pictures directory
At compile time of when the pr department decided to change it?
Does it also check existing users so you don't match one?
100 seems like a very unnecessarily low limit, even for the time
It's well above the number of images that were in the applicable folder by default, so seems pretty appropriate to me.
Some say the Admin account defaulted to a chessboard.
I think it's true, but not sure if I'm just falling victim to false memories... help?
The account named "Administrator" that Windows created for you always had the chess piece.
There's no way my memory of this is reliable anymore, but I also remember my administrator account being chess pieces (and my user account being an orange fish).
It might be that the randomization code was bypassed in some cases - like creating an account in safe boot mode or similar.
It makes sense. The chess piece is the first profile picture in the list.
I remember it like that too. Or is it Mandela effect?
The Magnus effect? :)