> Applications controlled multitasking. The apps would signal to Windows that they were sitting idle and another app could take over.
Wait a minute, you're saying we started with await/async, and moved away from it, and then back to it?
jraph · 6h ago
Not exactly, and kinda but definitely not at the same level.
Having to trust that random apps behave is very uncomfortable. If some bug makes an app enter an infinite loop, it's a freeze and you are good for a reboot. So we went to preemptive multitasking and we never went back to cooperative multitasking.
Inside an app written by one entity, why not? We have all the tools needed to manage apps that froze, restarting apps might be less of a big deal, and there is not necessarily the need for competing things inside an app.
To the exception of the GUI, which should remain responsive, so either (1) you make sure computations are always imperceptibly short, or… (2) you are back to a dedicated thread for the GUI, handled with the preemptive multitasking capabilities of the OS. Web apps and Javascript have been more or less (1), but workers have been introduced to have (2), because (1) is quite limited. So, even there, cooperative multitasking has its limits.
qubex · 4h ago
You’re projecting a ‘modern’ concept onto a bygone time. Applications could (and in unfortunate cases, would) monopolise the system and if they got themselves stuck in a loop they’d never relinquish control of system resources back to the operating system. Your system would freeze or you’d get a blue screen of death. You can call it wait/async if you really want, but it’s hugely misleading in the present context of the term. It was a more fragile system, not a more robust one.
jraph · 6h ago
> consumer versions of Windows didn’t get Unix-like pre-emptive multitasking until Windows XP in 2002
What does this mean? I didn't remember Windows 95 and 98 SE as having cooperative multitasking. I'm reading that 95, 98 and ME had preemptive multitasking on a Win32 kernel for 32 bit applications, and only went back to cooperative multitasking for 16 bit apps [1].
There was much marketing directed at the fact that as of Windows 95, applications developed with the 32-bit API onwards would benefit from preemptive multitasking. Legacy 16-bit applications coexisted in some kind of virtual machine (maybe it was called Windows On Windows, WOW for short, or maybe that was an NT thing) but they could accidentally trip each other up and bring each other down, but in theory the system and the 32-bit apps were safe. So yes, the text in the article is pretty confusing and misleading. I exited Windows in the XP SP1 days (2003) and by then most of the mishaps happened due to third-party drivers.
ZeroConcerns · 7h ago
I disagree with the conclusion that "it was Windows 3.0 that put Windows on the map". The 3.0 release was, depending on your taste and requirements, pretty much equal to a lot of other desktop environments on the market at the time: OS/2, GEM, VisiON, TopView, and probably a bunch of others.
Though it looked sort-of pretty at the time, mostly compared to its previous releases, it didn't really do anything that users truly wanted from a new OS (which was, mostly, 'run Lotus or dBase better').
Only when 3.1 was released, with DPMI which, despite being a pretty obscure technology in itself, was an absolute game-changer, as well as the foundations of the never-named (but critically important) VxD "overlay OS", Windows became the powerhouse it still is, at least on the desktop, today.
The "3.11 for Workgroups" release (which should really have been 4.0: the VxD layer was greatly enhanced to great effect, and for the first time Windows had useful networking facilities!) cemented that position.
But 3.0 was really pretty "meh", and history could have gone a few other directions at the time of its release...
freedomben · 6h ago
This more or less matches my recollection as well. Win 3.1 was the point at which there became genuine interest/excitement around Windows. When 3.11 came out was when many of the average people (i.e. normies) around our area were also starting to get a computer for the household, so momentum really built up.
rbanffy · 2h ago
3.1 brought TrueType, which made Windows (without Adobe Type Manager) useful for WYSIWYG.
3.11, with its simple local network functionality doomed NetWare. Unless you needed to connect remote offices to a single network, 3.11 was all you needed.
dblohm7 · 6h ago
The post should have included an asterisk next to cooperative multitasking: _Windows_ applications were cooperatively multitasked. DOS applications were run in V86-mode VMs that were preemptively multitasked.
Biggest Advantage: it's a really old version of windows
Biggest Disadvantage: its still windows
jmclnx · 6h ago
Light grey print on a white background, painful for me to read. Looked interesting but could not get through it :(
AlexeyBrin · 6h ago
I wonder if it is a question of eyesight - I can't stand black backgrounds, my eyes can't focus to read text on a black background. With this website, no problem (for me).
Sohcahtoa82 · 5h ago
You must have your brightness/contrast settings to something wild or something. I was able to read it just fine.
jaoane · 6h ago
Use your browser’s reader mode. For example, on Safari, tap the icon to the left of the URL and then tap show reader.
hagbard_c · 3h ago
You post shows up in medium gray on a light grey background so it seems the HN downvote brigade does not agree with your point. This action leads to them unwittingly agreeing with your complaint since the greying-out is meant to make your post harder to read. The more they disagree, the harder it will be to read your post adding veracity to its contents.
Wait a minute, you're saying we started with await/async, and moved away from it, and then back to it?
Having to trust that random apps behave is very uncomfortable. If some bug makes an app enter an infinite loop, it's a freeze and you are good for a reboot. So we went to preemptive multitasking and we never went back to cooperative multitasking.
Inside an app written by one entity, why not? We have all the tools needed to manage apps that froze, restarting apps might be less of a big deal, and there is not necessarily the need for competing things inside an app. To the exception of the GUI, which should remain responsive, so either (1) you make sure computations are always imperceptibly short, or… (2) you are back to a dedicated thread for the GUI, handled with the preemptive multitasking capabilities of the OS. Web apps and Javascript have been more or less (1), but workers have been introduced to have (2), because (1) is quite limited. So, even there, cooperative multitasking has its limits.
What does this mean? I didn't remember Windows 95 and 98 SE as having cooperative multitasking. I'm reading that 95, 98 and ME had preemptive multitasking on a Win32 kernel for 32 bit applications, and only went back to cooperative multitasking for 16 bit apps [1].
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multit%C3%A2che_pr%C3%A9emptif... (yes, the French version has this info, not the English one)
Though it looked sort-of pretty at the time, mostly compared to its previous releases, it didn't really do anything that users truly wanted from a new OS (which was, mostly, 'run Lotus or dBase better').
Only when 3.1 was released, with DPMI which, despite being a pretty obscure technology in itself, was an absolute game-changer, as well as the foundations of the never-named (but critically important) VxD "overlay OS", Windows became the powerhouse it still is, at least on the desktop, today.
The "3.11 for Workgroups" release (which should really have been 4.0: the VxD layer was greatly enhanced to great effect, and for the first time Windows had useful networking facilities!) cemented that position.
But 3.0 was really pretty "meh", and history could have gone a few other directions at the time of its release...
3.11, with its simple local network functionality doomed NetWare. Unless you needed to connect remote offices to a single network, 3.11 was all you needed.
As usual, there's a Raymond Chen post: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100517-00/?p=14...
Biggest Disadvantage: its still windows