eskild@bookwyrm.social reviewed The old new thing by Raymond Chen
Review of 'The old new thing' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A fascinating insight into the quirks of modern OS development.
The book goes into a fair bit of technical detail, complete with C++, C and assembly source code listings. Unlike a programming textbook, however, Chen's writing is never boring. Interesting and sometimes funny anecdotes are sprinkled throughout, giving context to the issue being discussed.
While naturally focused on MS-DOS and Windows, it still manages to be very interesting for a Unix user and developer like myself, and while some of the intricacies of the Windows API aren't all that useful nor relatable to me, there were only a few places where the discussion was not something any developer could in some way relate to.
For me, this is mostly a fascinating piece of software development history, and one I'd thoroughly recommend anyone interested in such things give a read.