> On Windows, to this day, configuration seems to be all over the place, a bit here, a bit there, and many different visual and UI styles for the configuration.
With mmc and the various snap-ins, I get the feeling the code has not been touched in at least a decade.
Regarding the Registry, I have a funny anecdote: During development of Windows 7, Microsoft tried to be very open and communicative to rebuild some of the trust that Vista had shattered. So, there was this video of an interview of a few Windows developers about all the cool and interesting things they worked on. Halfway through the interview, the guy behind the camera asks, "So what do you guys think about the registry?". There was a long awkward silence, the developers started to grin and giggle. Eventually, one of them replied, "Let's just say it has turned out to be more widely used than its creators had anticipated".
(In other words, yes, the registry sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner!)
It goes earlier than that. Here's a bit from a presentation that Tony Williams (considered the "co-creator of COM") gave once about the Registry: http://i.imgur.com/52YiK2Y.gifv
Essentially, the Registry was a stop-gap to store configuration information about COM in Windows 3.1 until Cairo came along (which never did). Then the Windows 95 guys came around and decided to use it as the replacement for .ini files. And the rest is history.
With mmc and the various snap-ins, I get the feeling the code has not been touched in at least a decade.
Regarding the Registry, I have a funny anecdote: During development of Windows 7, Microsoft tried to be very open and communicative to rebuild some of the trust that Vista had shattered. So, there was this video of an interview of a few Windows developers about all the cool and interesting things they worked on. Halfway through the interview, the guy behind the camera asks, "So what do you guys think about the registry?". There was a long awkward silence, the developers started to grin and giggle. Eventually, one of them replied, "Let's just say it has turned out to be more widely used than its creators had anticipated".
(In other words, yes, the registry sucks like an industrial vacuum cleaner!)