Comment by MarkSweep
4 days ago
> I wonder how much of this problem was caused by lack of adequate documentation describing how an installer should behave, and how much was developers not reading that documentation and being content when it works on their machine.
There is a third option: the developers knew the rules and chose to ignore them for some reason. A modern example of this is the Zig language’s decision to reverse engineer and use undocumented APIs in Windows in preference of using documented APIs.
This comment is pretty wild:
> In addition to what @The-King-of-Toasters said, the worst case scenario is really mild: A new version of windows comes out, breaking ntdll compatibility. Zig project adds a fix to the std lib. Application developer recompiles their zig project from source, and ships an update to their users.
Uh so what if the application developer isn't around any more?
The fact that they consider the worst case to be one where the application is still actively supported and the developer is willing to put up with this nonsense is pretty surprising. Not sure how anyone could believe that.
>ignore them for some reason
The reasons are clearly stated in the issue you have linked.
"As Zig has evolved, it has become a target to avoid calling Win32 APIs from kernel32.dll etc., instead using lower-level ones in ntdll.dll."
If we needed an example of why we should avoid using passive voice, this is it.
This sentence doesn't include examples of the passive voice.
1 reply →
The sentence that you quoted is more generic. The Zig issue is only one example of "some reason".
Wow! What a mind-bogglingly stupid idea. I will cancel my plans to learn Zig.
My excitement for Zig dropped the longer they stayed at 0.x (and they really have meant 0.x with the breaking changes they were making). This decision from them completely killed it for me.
I understood not using the C Runtime and instead creating direct wrappers over the Win32 API, but going a level lower to APIs that are not guaranteed to be stable is nutty.
Part of this was the allowed or special treatment given to Zig at certain sites. It then allowed the false impression to be created of it being production ready and/or far more stable than it actually is. Often intentionally overlooking or glossing over that it's still in beta, making breaking changes, and has thousands of issues (over 3,000 on GitHub).
They were allowed to have it both ways, pre-1.0 and yet somehow (near, like, just about) production-ready. Almost there, for years. Strangely given a free pass to get away with this, for what looked to be undisclosed financial and other fuzzy reasons.
ntdll.dll APIs are guaranteed to be stable though
Kinda wild