Unpopular opinion: Vista was actually a good step forward, but the hardware of the time wasn’t up for the task which made it run like dogshit, and hence the public perception. It brought in better memory management, and UAC for better security among other things.

What worked, worked well and was actually useful was changed, removed, phased out…

MS by contrast just chucks the good things out and doesn’t even let them floating around as something users may add to their system. Cortana, widely hated and unused, was phased out for one… wordpad being gone is so insignificant, it wasn’t even very good at its primary task.

They often replace things, e.g. the Photos app had a Video editor built in but now that’s a separate and better app. I think they’re doing a pretty good job of their software range actually.

What bugs me about Windows is actually their striving so much for backwards compatibility that there’s at least 6 ways to edit things or data and they’re all still officially supported. It’s a bit bloaty and no Devs have any consensus.

Does someone remembers the PowerToys collection?

The newer version is installed on my Windows 11 and is under active development.

Thanks for the info! I have been very slowly making my way through the Rust book, hardly made a dent so far but am enjoying it.

C++ dev with minimal experience of composition here, but this is a great article and it’s something I’ve been trying to play with more and more. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if there are any known big pitfalls to avoid with composition (thinking of things like the diamond problem)?