Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Thu Mar 27 12:43:00 CDT 2014
Hi Shamil: That would make sense of course but I am sure we both know from experience with coding all major applications are like the human genome...filled with previous iterations...some commented out, some orphaned (with no direct calls) and some ancient code still being used. Aside: I posted an article a while back on an insider's view of the development work at Microsoft where it is more cost effective to just comment out old code and re-write a new feature as the expense in time and money for a programmer to try and figure what a previous developer did is too time-consuming. Of course the previous code can not be deleted as there is no way to know for sure whether it resolved some yet forgotten problem. (Never remove a fence until why it was placed there is fully known.) This is one of the problems with MS Access. The initial code was brilliant but as in all significant coding there is errors to be fixed. The original developers are probably either no longer with the company or are working on different projects, so errors persist for decades. The latest improvement(?) of MS Access are mostly cosmetic and it seems that no one really wants or can to fix the real issues...it would take a good programmer years to get up to speed in the product. AFAIS, it has been decided to just slowly abandon it but first ring out every last cent before its dumped. The reasons for allowing a major product to slowly disappear is less about supplying clients with what they need and more about protecting a revenue stream and being able to block competition from being able to easy fill that need. IMHO, this is one of the faults of any major proprietary coded applications...so few understand or can even view the code, that if the original team of developers are not longer available, the product languishes. Only continuous peer review of large scale applications keeps them fresh, current and bug free. Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Salakhetdinov Shamil" <mcp2004 at mail.ru> To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com> Sent: Thursday, 27 March, 2014 9:22:59 AM Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] MS DOS 1.1, MS DOS 2. 0 and MS Word for Windows 1.1 source code is opened for public Hi Jim -- Microsoft is known to have their (MS Office pack - MS Access, MS Word, MS Excel, ...) software rewritten completely from scratch several times. I doubt there are any "remainings" of MS Word for Windows 1.1 in MS Word 2013. And AFAIU MS Word 2013 has two rather different implementations: - desktop (C/C++, assembler ?) and - web (HTML, CSS, JavaScript on client side, C/C+, ... on server side) -- Shamil Thu, 27 Mar 2014 09:39:33 -0600 (MDT) from Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca>: >Hi Shamil: > >That is very interesting. I wonder how much of the core source code still resided in the current version of Word? > >Jim > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Salakhetdinov Shamil" < mcp2004 at mail.ru > >To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" < dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com > >Sent: Thursday, 27 March, 2014 8:36:02 AM >Subject: [dba-Tech] MS DOS 1.1, MS DOS 2. 0 and MS Word for Windows 1.1 source code is opened for public > > Hi All -- > >FYI: " Computer History Museum Makes Historic MS-DOS and Word for Windows Source Code Available to the Public" > >http://www.computerhistory.org/press/ms-source-code.html > > >-- >Салахетдинов Шамиль _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com