Former Expert
Tuesday, 13. October 2009, 18:08:08
Today I did a Google search to try and find help with some silly Windows programming problem I'm having at work. I was successful; I quickly found a 2005-era forum thread where posters were dicussing the same problem, trading possible solutions, talking at cross purposes, arguing, etc. Standard forum thread stuff.
One poster included a link to a Usenet discussion (archived on Google Groups) of the same problem, from way back in 1999.
That Usenet discussion contained a bunch of longer, more detailed posts. The thread starter in particular seemed to really know his stuff. His post contained a detailed, technical description of the cause of the problem, some sample code to demonstrate the problem, and a list of work-arounds. There was the usual argument in the thread about whether the issue was a bug in Windows or the result of an intentional decision by Microsoft. But the thread ended when a Microsoft engineer showed up and confirmed the problem was real but that for backwards compatibility reasons, it would not be fixed. Which is a really definitive, final and high-quality sort of answer for a forum thread question.
But something seemed familiar about this thread. I looked up at the top and sure enough, that first post was tagged with a very familiar name.
My name.
There was a time when I sort of knew what I was doing, far better than I do now. And at that time, I thought of myself as helpless, lost, and in over my head.
I'm still trying to figure out where that puts me now.
One poster included a link to a Usenet discussion (archived on Google Groups) of the same problem, from way back in 1999.
That Usenet discussion contained a bunch of longer, more detailed posts. The thread starter in particular seemed to really know his stuff. His post contained a detailed, technical description of the cause of the problem, some sample code to demonstrate the problem, and a list of work-arounds. There was the usual argument in the thread about whether the issue was a bug in Windows or the result of an intentional decision by Microsoft. But the thread ended when a Microsoft engineer showed up and confirmed the problem was real but that for backwards compatibility reasons, it would not be fixed. Which is a really definitive, final and high-quality sort of answer for a forum thread question.
But something seemed familiar about this thread. I looked up at the top and sure enough, that first post was tagged with a very familiar name.
My name.
There was a time when I sort of knew what I was doing, far better than I do now. And at that time, I thought of myself as helpless, lost, and in over my head.
I'm still trying to figure out where that puts me now.
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