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Comment by ThrowawayB7 | Hacker News Reader

The product is named Visual C++, that it happened to do C was always kind of a sideshow as far as I could tell. Aside from that, I seem to recall that VC++ had the WORD, DWORD, and eventually QWORD macros to specify unsigned 16, 32 and 64 bit types respectively.

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And their names are so frustrating. We don't run 16 bit systems any more. Word is a word that means something and I don't care what a word was on the 8086. The only honest things the WORD macro could expand to are size_t and ssize_t. 64bit is not a quad word, it's just a word.

I find Microsoft method of naming every type with a pointer a major annoyance. This is one reason I find reading non-Windows C applications easier.

Give me `int*` vs `PINT`. Microsoft really likes to over engineer causing you have to pointlessly remember more.

The worst is when they redefine the same structure or union under a different name. Example: `IP_ADAPTER_ANYCAST_ADDRESS_XP` is the exact same as `IP_ADAPTER_MULTICAST_ADDRESS_XP`.

Prior to Visual C++ (the first version of which shipped for Windows 3.x), Microsoft sold a “Microsoft C/C++” as well as Microsoft QuickC:

- https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-c-c/5x

- https://winworldpc.com/product/quick-c/10-for-windows

And in 2012 they officially considered C++ the way to go.

https://herbsutter.com/2012/05/03/reader-qa-what-about-vc-an...

There was a change of heart a few years later, but the wind seems to have stopped after all the security discussions,

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/c11-and-c17-standard-...

They considered C done, for Windows SDK purposes.

https://herbsutter.com/2012/05/03/reader-qa-what-about-vc-an...

A few years later they backtracked on it,

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/c11-and-c17-standard-...

Until the SFI came into play,

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/trust-center/security/secure...

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