said by itguy05:It also wasn't until I branched out into Linux and OS X that I realized just how poor Microsoft's offerings are from a technical (and aesthetic) point of view.
Agree. I'm a Linux user myself. While things aren't perfect, they are a helluva lot better than what MS offers.
Registry? Why put all your config stuff into a horrible database that is hard to use and understand? May have made some sense back in the day but config files are much easier to do.
Yeah it was a stupid idea and I am amazed that M$ has kept it around this long. They should definitely copy Unix/Linux and it's "everything is a file" mantra. The registry is what is primarily responsible for "Windows rot" (i.e. where your machine slows down over time). It's one of the reasons why you need to reinstall every few months.
DLLs? really? Why not self contained apps (like OS X) that has everything you need for them right in it.
I disagree here. If you write code you will see why shared libraries make things much easier. Linux uses the same idea with its .so files (.so files are almost exactly the same thing as DLL). Creating apps that are packaged with all the libraries is just not as practical. The .so and .dll's make things easier and smaller/lightweight.
There's a lot of other stuff not to like about Microsoft. I've hated them since before it was cool to hate them.
I can name another. NTFS. It is a crappy filesystem. It's old (1980's), slow and has huge fragmentation issues. Contrast this with Linux's main filesystem (ext4) and it is night and day. This is why Linux boxes never need defragmenting (ext3/4 just doesn't have fragmentation issues, at least not on the scale of NTFS).
Also Linux offers XFS, Btrfs, JFS, ReiserFS and others. With Windows you are stuck with NTFS (or FAT which is even worse).
To be fair, Apple's HFS isn't much better. Linus Torvalds called it "utter crap."
I could go on and on about M$, specifically as it relates to Windows. Tons of design flaws.
