Submission details
Construct whole new UI design, vector icon package and programming API etc for Windows 7
As nice and pretty though Windows 7 is with its scalable vector based icons, Aero UI,WPF apis etc etc, lets face it: its based on a vintage win32 API which was cool and awesome in 1995, but because its now 15 years since, its time for a change methinks.
Reconstruct Windows 7 in whole new ways as suggested in the title.
High
High
Not fixed
Discussion (8 comments)
Sure you can code from scratch, as long as you keep up with the current software till the new one is ready.
I demoted because it doesn't make sense (imho).
@.Chris
Did you even read the link that I just gave?
Quote:
"When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.
You are throwing away your market leadership. You are giving a gift of two or three years to your competitors, and believe me, that is a long time in software years.
You are putting yourself in an extremely dangerous position where you will be shipping an old version of the code for several years, completely unable to make any strategic changes or react to new features that the market demands, because you don't have shippable code. You might as well just close for business for the duration.
You are wasting an outlandish amount of money writing code that already exists."
Okay, so basically you want a new OS? There are other OSes than Windows.
What I said is work on the new "code" while the old code is still being used. Once the new code is ready for market, THEN you can get rid of the old.
The problem with this is that nobody will use it. It is very hard to get developers to commit to code that only works on the latest generation of an OS. There needs to be a path from the old way of doing something to the new that fails gracefully if the new stuff isn't available. This is why HomeGroups haven't seen as much use as they deserve yet. If the functionality were back-ported to Vista and XP, then the majority with mixed networks in their homes could use it. As it is, it'll take a long time for it to be widely use as more systems are upgraded or replaced.
A lot of the confusing stuff in Windows 7, like the links to obsolete system directories, are there because of the need to allow as much old software to run while advancing the platform with new, hopefully better, ideas. It is a glacial process.
+1 Although this submission could have been worded better, vector-based icons are a good idea.
nyp wrote on February 17, 2010, 2:36pm
To be honest, I think this submission is WAY too ambitious in the technical side.
"Reconstruct Windows 7"? Well, that's probably won't happen to the major components like Explorer because of compatibility.
Also, as you might think that it's a great idea, completely coding from scratch is probably one of the most dangerous stuff you can do in a big product:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Comment edited on February 17, 2010, 3:37pm