> you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break
Wait what, external software calls into notepad?
Wait what, external software calls into notepad?
Patching other people's binaries, turning off features if the app making the request is "problematic-app", re-introducing bugs, fixing should-be-impossible-to-happen calls from programs that were written by hand, it's all there!
Oh good grief.
(Not saying the approach should be the same, just wish the attitude and motivation were as intense and that Win 10+ were less user-hostile.)
Hobbes: This is so stupid.
External software calls into everything. Welcome to Windows development.
It's extremely difficult to implement even "obvious" changes like a dark-mode Notepad when it could potentially break customers who have been depending on specific behavior for decades.
This is why they've had to write shim-specific code for certain vendors. The desire to move forward versus the awful prospect of having to keep those shims in place.