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Comment by Hydraulix989 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how Microsoft decides that building a solitaire app this is the most efficient allocation of people's time and resources.

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The original one was built by one intern[1], so it's quite possible so was this one. Not a huge resource suck when you are delegating one person to the job who just wants to learn.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3zfadv/til_t...

Solitaire for Windows 8 (which forms the base for Solitaire for Windows 10 and iOS) was contracted out to Arkadium Games and then Smoking Gun Interactive. The team that built it was rather large, far more than a single person who just wants to learn.

This shouldn't be that surprising though, as Solitaire is in many ways a "flagship" app, which means it has to work on every single device that supports Windows 10 including tablets and phones and 35+ languages including right-to-left languages.

Toolchain validation on an application that utilizes a large cross section of APIs while being relatively simple.

IIRC Solitaire was a Win32s BVT app - if you could run it, you had a complete and functional install of Win32s SDK. It's been a few years, though.

This comment is hilariously ironic.

It is. Commenter doesn't understand that Microsoft is just trying to regain lost ground & mindshare at this point, hence why you can get Office on your Android device for free, and it works better than it does on Windows.

I was going with the irony of commenter asserting that building the game is an inefficient allocation of MS resources when in fact productive time lost due to the ubiquity of these games has probably been one of the single most contributors to inefficient use of time in the last century (you know, due to people playing the games).

Oh I totally understand, and my point was that Office on Android (or iOS) is much more of a value-add than Solitaire on Android (or iOS).

As opposed to Apple which feels the need to be hyper-focused despite having huge margins and hoarding way too much cash.

Kind of like Game Center in iOS. Probably some intern did it, so no real harm.

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