this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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let's face it, the 10 was chosen for marketing, even if there's a technical reason it can't be "windows 9"
it could've just been windows nine. or any other word that isn't a number
Edit: i don't think this theory is even true. the only source is some guy on reddit whose comments are now deleted. besides, windows 95 is not internally called windows 95, it's windows 4.00.950
Say whatever you want about Microsoft, but they don't mess around with backwards compatibility.
It’s easy to be backwards compatible when you’re backwards in general.
I once heard some YouTuber say Windows uses \ in path names instead of / like everyone else because Microsoft thinks backwards.
As what often happens, using
\for paths is for backwards compatibility.Neither CP/M nor MS-DOS 1.0 had folders. When folders were added in MS-DOS 2.0, the syntax had to be backwards compatible. DOS already used forward slashes for command-line options (e.g.
DIR /W) so using them for folders would have been ambiguous - does thatDIRcommand have a/Woption, or is it viewing the contents of theWdirectory at the root of the drive? Backslashes weren't used for anything so they used them for folders.This is the same reason why you can't create files with device names like
con,lpt1, and so on. DOS 2.0 has to retain backwards compatibility with 1.0 where you could do something likeTYPE foo.txt > LPT1to send a document to a printer. The device names are reserved globally so they can work regardless of what folder you're in.Well, better to be backwards with backwards compatibility than to just be backwards.
looks at Apple
They probably search for windows n(t) somewhere too ;)
But “nine” is a word that is a number