I'm a computer programmer and I have taken the course for windows programming.... its hell. Its such a mess of code and you end up just declaring more stuff than you actually use. The problem is that Microsoft has to maintain backwards compatibility with everything that came before it so they keep code ideas from 10 years ago or older in there.

It's even worse with Windows 8 because that system was designed to be the same operating system for all platforms. No more separate OS for the mobile phone or the Xbox.... Every programmer knows this.

Did you know that most games despite only running on XP, usually have their server side programmed in linux? That's because linux is fast and easy to program. If it doesn't have to run on a user PC then it doesn't need to be in Windows.

Windows 8 would imply your referring to PC developers.

Well, gotta say PC gaming and Windows go hand in hand. Your kinda stuck with what you got. Unless you wanna makes games for MAC lol.

For me MS screw an operating system and make other really good (usually)

The goods 3.1, 98, XP and 7
The bad 95, 2000, vista and 8
The trash ME

or pussy

unless its VEGEMITE!!!!!! =P

yeah ok I definitely dont have it 3 times a day

About the GUI, designing it mainly for touchscreens can make it less suitable for classic mouse+kb use.
About criticisms coming from devs, as others wrote, trying to join PC, tablets and phones in a same OS, while at the same time keeping BC for the legacy Windows PC apps, that is the most essential ingredient of MS near-monopoly on PC market, can make the whole system quite bloated and make devs' life more difficult, or, in the best case, just more boring.
Add to this that with every novelty has the potential of making many people that were happy with the old system unhappy, and that for the vast majority of people an OS is just a tool to make other programs run, and the result is that in such a complicated scenario it's almost sure that evolution and refinement steps like Win 7, and probably Win 9 too, gather more positive reactions than more revolutionary steps, that introduce new ideas, but need the feedback of real world users to receive the necessary refinements and just choose which ones of the new ideas are here to stay.

what's the point of this thread?

About 2000 and XP it's more complicated: both were meant to send the Win9x branch into retirement, both initially were totally crappy and eventually became very good after some Service Packs, but the difference is that due to lack of HW and SW support, Windows 2000 failed at replacing Win 9x, so MS made the half-assed Win ME as a temporary solution for those that couldn't immediately switch to the NT/2000/XP/etc branch. Win ME was so crappy that probably many people (like me too) forced to stick with it blamed also 2000 for not being ready and leaving them in the shit. When I finally replaced all the incompatible HW and SW and switched to Win 2000, it had already received SP4, and it was very good, but alas its life was heading to the end, as MS had released XP as early as possible to solve the transition mess, so 2000 received the shortest possible support, when it became good XP was already out, so not only the mainstream support, but also some time of the 5 years of extended one had already run out, it was doomed to a shorter than usual life for professional versions of Windows. XP OTOH, thanks to being early and Vista being delayed (also due to Intel failing to increase performances as predicted, before it switched to Core 2 Duo), received an unexpectedly long life that allowed it to receive more care and refinements and made people love it overwhelmingly more than all its predecessors.

Can't disagree.. but for me its like one version chock the world but have serious bugs, the other refines and make people happier... and usuallly the ones I listed as bad had too big of a footprint for the available HW when shiped so they run even worst, while the good ones were sometimes lighter and HW were a lot stronger... but at least windows 8.1 isn't total shit (I wanted to kill people because of Vista, couldn't run most of my engineering programs, and my notebook hadn't drivers for XP so I couldn't even downgrade).

True. I forgot I ended up switching to Win 2000 having HW more than twice faster than what I could have afforded when it was released, and with 5 times as much disk space.