Daily Archives: July 28, 2012

Backward compatibility, 4

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Because the real cost of compatibility is not in the hacks. The hacks are small potatoes. Most hacks are just a few lines of code (sometimes as few as zero), so the impact on performance is fairly low.

No, the real cost of compatibility is in the design.

If you’re going to design a feature that enhances the window manager in some way, you have to think about how existing programs are going to react to your feature. These are programs that predate your feature and naturally know nothing about it. Does your feature alter the message order? Does it introduce a new point of re-entrancy? Does it cause a function to begin dispatching messages that previously did not? You may be forced to design your feature differently in order to accommodate these concerns. These issues aren’t things you can “take out”; they are inherently part of the feature design.

— The Old New Thing

— Raymond Chen

2012.07.28 Saturday ACHK

The Dark Knight Rises, 2

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The Dark Knight Rises (2012 movie): At the end, why does Batman give Gordon such a cryptic clue, rather than just revealing his face?

He either wants Gordon to know, or he doesn’t. Why does he take the path where Gordon may or may not work it out?

Siddharth Bhandari, Batman Fanatic

You just killed all the emotion when you considered it a cryptic clue. This scene had such beautiful emotions.

A hero can be as simple as a man putting his coat around a little boy’s shoulders and reassuring him the world hadn’t ended yet.

See the beauty in this quote. He’s not just giving him a clue but implying that Gordon has been a hero for him all these years.

— Quora

2012.07.28 Saturday ACHK