Windows Format Dialog Temporary Fix

I wrote this Format dialog back on a rainy Thursday morning at Microsoft in late 1994, I think it was. We were porting the bajillion lines of code from the Windows95 user interface over to NT, and Format was just one of those areas where WindowsNT was different enough from Windows95 that we had to come up with some custom UI. I got out a piece of paper and wrote down all the options and choices you could make with respect to formatting a disk, like filesystem, label, cluster size, compression, encryption, and so on. Then I busted out VC++2.0 and used the Resource Editor to lay out a simple vertical stack of all the choices you had to make, in the approximate order you had to make. It wasn't elegant, but it would do until the elegant UI arrived. That was some 30 years ago, and the dialog is still my temporary one from that Thursday morning, so be careful about checking in "temporary" solutions! I also had to decide how much "cluster slack" would be too much, and that wound up constraining the format size of a FAT volume to 32GB. That limit was also an arbitrary choice that morning, and one that has stuck with us as a permanent side effect. So remember... there are no "temporary" checkins :) Follow me for more random code musings!

A screenshot of a post by Dave W Plummer explains that the Windows disk Format dialog was created as a temporary vertical stack of options during Windows NT development in 1994. Nearly 30 years later, the supposedly temporary interface was still in use, illustrating the programmer joke that temporary solutions often become permanent, with an arbitrary FAT size limit as another lasting side effect. It is shared as a humorous reaction to legacy code, quick fixes, and technical debt. EN: A screenshot of a post by Dave W Plummer explains that the Windows disk Format dialog was created as a temporary vertical stack of options during Windows NT development in 1994. Nearly 30 years later, the supposedly temporary interface was still in use, illustrating the programmer joke that temporary solutions often become permanent, with an arbitrary FAT size limit as another lasting side effect. It is shared as a humorous reaction to legacy code, quick fixes, and technical debt.

• @ithueti / 12279 2024-03-27