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inigyouHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

One time I tried to write an N64 emulator

… One time I tried to write an N64 emulator. I downloaded all the documentation I could find and got writing. My emulator ran a large portion of Mario's startup code and then I got stuck without enough information to proceed. I didn't realize that most N64 and later emulators are ports of existing emulators because they've been battle-tested and - say it with me - the only detailed enough reference is the code itself (or a real N64 which I didn't have). Basically working code is working code and you can never replicate it precisely without either years of work or actual copy-pasting. Even protocols designed to be reimplemented many times have inconsistency problems. Look up HTTP Request Smuggling if you haven't already. The innovation of PDF was that it precisely specifies the font and layout of every element of the document, trying to leave nothing to chance. …

Original discussionHow proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in123 source comments · at import
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MA
mangecoeurHN

This is not true. In my company I decided we would not depend on Microsoft products. We use kSuite that offers everything MS does, ~90% cheaper. The one real problem we run into is PowerPoint decks that look different or get corrupted when used across different Office suites, including ones that are focused on Microsoft compatibility like OnlyOffice. Proprietary formats are a clear lock-in tool, because the cost of dealing with incompatibility is higher than the cost of paying the piper. (Although me being stubborn I made claude rewrite the OOXML to behave, but that's an absurd thing to need to do!) If open formats were the standard and could be reliably exchanged, it would remove a big reason to ever use Office products.

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DE
delta_p_delta_xHN

> There are still differences between PDFs in different viewers Most obvious when viewing PDFs in Adobe Reader versus in Chrome's built-in viewer. The former has subpixel anti-aliasing. The latter doesn't.

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mangecoeurHN

I have written software that saves files and saves to standard geopackage formats. Microsoft is known to have a lot of inconsistencies between its spec and reality. One important part of adoption open standards formats is that when you have real interoperability and competition between consumers of the format, the spec needs to actually work. HTML and the welcome demise of Internet Explorer specific markup through real competition in the browser space is a case in point

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amiga386HN

> I'd bet dollars to donuts you didn't make your format an ISO standard. What matters to me, if I'm communicating with my government (or vice-versa), is that they only use recognised standards. I will need a web browser, email client, document editor... but not a specific web browser, email client, document editor. This takes effort from governments, because the vendors of all the products they consume want to try and leverage their government connection to get lock-in and thus make their products mandatory for everyone in the country. For example, even if government developers only use Chrome browser and neglect to test on Safari, you can end up with millions of Safari or iPhone users unable to perform legally essential tasks, and have no workaround. The same is true for using proprietary office document formats, and that includes Adobe when there's a difference between PDF-as-specified…

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applfanboysbgonHN

> One time I tried to write Doom for a platform, from scratch. I got the 3D BSP renderer working and could move around a space with walls. I was looking for reference for how to implement the rest of the game and didn't find it. I didn't realize you're supposed to port Doom to a platform by starting from the original Doom code and not by writing it from scratch, because the only detailed enough reference is the code itself. This is the greatest misunderstanding of a programmer's job I've ever seen (by someone who apparently programs). Of course you don't write a game from scratch every time you port it to a new platform. You aren't even really supposed to be "referencing" the game code. The game code is built on a series of abstractions over the hardware. You swap in a set of abstractions for different hardware. If the game is properly encapsulated, you may not even need to touch what wo…

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applicativeHN

It doesn’t matter that you like them, a democratic state must burn them all utterly the ground. No state document in a proprietary format has legal significance. This was obvious before but it now settled law across most of the world

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