Another try at Winsock rant

Say you were an operating systems developer. Say you were building a networking API. Say a good networking API already existed, so you decided to use parts of that. And further, let's posit that you had two similar, although not identical, operating systems, and in the interest of portability between these operating systems that are supposed to actually be binary compatible, you chose to use the same bastardized derived API on both of them?

Mistakes were made. I can forgive some of them. BUT WHAT BRAINLESS MORON DECIDED THAT THE SAME FUNCTIONS ON WINDOWS 95 AND NT SHOULD BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY? I realize that they have different capabilities, but do I really have to be calling system version calls and choosing different strategies for features which have the same bloody documentation? And what happens with Win98, do I get a whole new set of behaviors?

Sorry. I'll try to get a hold of myself. I can understand taking shortcuts and IGNORING THE FACT THAT EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD WHO MIGHT JUST HAVE A CLUE AS TO HOW TO IMPLEMENT NETWORK APIs CONSOLIDATES THEIR API INTO ABOUT 1/3rd THE FUNCTION CALLS, and I realize that because THERE IS NO REAL UNDERLYING DESIGN TO THE OPERATING SYSTEM THAT MIGHT BE EXPANDED TO INCLUDE NETWORKING, but you might think that since the C library implements many of these simplified compatibility calls as A BAD KLUDGE ON TOP OF A REALLY HORRIBLE API they might just have put in -><- that much effort to do it right.

But noooooooooooo.

Favorite cartoon of late was the "User Friendly" where Greg's putting on a ski mask, explaining his actions by saying "just helping out the Department of Justice in a roundabout way". I'm not much on the DOJ, and I'm not generally anti-monopolistic, but so far as I can tell this has been done simply to inflict gratuitous human suffering.

And any Microsoft employees might want to maintain a distance longer than I can hurl anything within my immediate reach until I cool down a little bit. Realizing that my range may be increased by the endorphins in my system.

Okay, I'm done now. I'll just put down the bazooka and back away slowly with my hands in the air. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe deeply.


Thursday, June 18th, 1998 danlyke@flutterby.com