Yikes! Programming for Windows definitely has some harrowing pitfalls.

I’m reading about how Windows manages file locking (inspired by an article describing the FILE_SHARE_DELETE flag) and find it mind-boggling. Not that file locking in UNIX isn’t complex, but I guess it’s more familiar to me since (1) UNIX was assumed to be the OS you were using in all the self-paced computer science classes I took as an undergrad and (2) I’m currently using a UNIX-like OS.

I know that it sounds like a cheap bash on Windows programmers, but it still surprises me that some of them write code like it’s 1989, with the assumption that their program is the only thing running on someone’s system. Kind of makes a pre-emptive multitasking OS useless, if you ask me. Still, I guess that’s what happens when you have to preserve backward compatibility to MS-DOS. Now, I’m just as nostalgic about the 8-bit golden age as the next geek, but I wasn’t quite expecting it to show up in modern day code.