from Hacker News

Windows dark mode has been embarrassingly incomplete for nearly a decade

by hexage1814 on 2/3/25, 3:02 AM with 1 comments

• by ggm on 2/3/25, 3:23 AM

  I wish I could find them, but I read at least a decade ago, a write up of how hard it is to ship code changes into a system like Windows. Something as obvious to me as "dark mode" comes with so many strings, that modifying a DLL to include it comes with even bigger strings. At the time I read it, they were maintaining at least 5 and probably more like 10 release trains off the same code base. I would think it has got worse.

  The strange thing is that one thing Microsoft did well, was implement huge amounts of code introspection embedded meta-information inside the DLL and EXE. They really do know the code weave. If there was a low hanging fruit here to change, they of all people would know it.

  Later write ups about what motivates C-suites in the FAANG made me think that optimising for end user experience is pretty low in the drive: If you were hired on a KPI to deliver that, you would work harder on it. If you are hired on a KPI to improve shareholder value and somebody is convinced that moving the menu bar 3 pixels left is the thing which will do it, you will get very direct instructions to achieve it.

  Dark mode isn't affecting licence purchases enough to be visible on anyone's radar, where "anyone" means "anyone who can make it happen"

  (I tried to chase down Microsoft X.509 certificate Issuer-Subject chaining issues to make it possible to specify which of a number of certificates I wanted it to apply to some process. It was very painful. The closest I got to this was finding a consultant who at least understood the problem. He was a 20+ year Microsoft industry insider and he convinced me it would never, happen, noting that the US government had marked the problem out 2-3 years before me and it still wasn't fixed)