Was the Windows Registry a Good Idea? (2007)

blog.codinghorror.com

4 pointsLegitGandalf3 comments

Yes it was and yes it is. Developers can write apps that make use of a stable database instead of rolling their own INI file read/write routines. This makes more apps stable, which is great for users. This is something programmers really don't understand (considering every programmer I talk to uses the registry as an example of Microsoft's stupidity and heavy-handedness), which is unfortunate. We should spend more time thinking about our programs as wholistic experiences for the user, not just "is INI file or registry more elegant in my idealized world".

Your comment ignores everything the article talks about.

The Registry could have been designed to be a standard settings store but without the drawbacks of being monolithic, not human-readable, and being one giant point of failure.

They are monolith for the OS, not for developers anymore if they are using appx/msix Win32 apps, it comes with virtualized registry by default. So every app has a different and isolated registry.

There is also C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Packages\APPNAME\Settings

Each app can use registry, and the registry will be isolated to settings.dat. (You can mount that on regedit and see that is just a usual registry hive)

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