• B-TR3E@feddit.org
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    3 days ago

    Keeping the common user stupid is the better part of Mickeysoft’s business model. The proposed solution for every problem is guessing what MS’ silly nomenclature might actually mean while poking around in GUIs that do nothing but keep you busy. Then buy something from their app store. RTFM doesn’t work in a system that’s inconsistent and undocumented by design. That’s not the fault of RTFM as a concept but a travesty of it.

    • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Unironically, if you bing Windows API related queries rather than googling them, you’re much more likely to find a relevant manual page that answers your question clearly. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google is actively worsening Windows-related queries to make Windows look bad and sell Android devices and Chromebooks. Another example is that googling msvcp140.dll not found or similar queries gives you loads of dodgy download this individual DLL here and put it in System32 and we promise we’ve not tampered with it websites instead of the page for the universal MSVC redistributable installer that’s the only supported way to get the DLL (and a bunch of other related ones) as an end user.

      As for silly nomenclature, generally on Windows, API functions are much more likely to describe what they do and much less likely to be a town in Wales. If you don’t already know what fstat does, it’s much easier to guess that GetFileTime would be the right function to get a file’s last modification time than fstat, for example.

    • bizarroland@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I have been told that the reason their publically available training, problem solving, and educational material is so terrible is because there is a secret printed guidebook somewhere that makes everything make sense and if everyone had it it could negatively impact the windows economy.

      I do not know if that is true, but I have been told it and it does kind of explain why sites like learn.microsoft.com are so terrible that I would rather reread the world book encyclopedia 1969 edition from A to Z including the index than try to figure out how to run a single powershell command from the educational materials available on that site.