I bet AutoCAD will collapse either way if Microsoft decided to purge legacy components from the OS.
I’ve been saying this for years. Their code base is ancient, it’s just makeup on a granma.
The trouble is, I think MS saw through this. Why do you think backwards compatibility suddenly got so good with Win8/8.1/10, while it really sucked with 7 (blue screens all over, especially with drivers from XP). Hell, I’ve installed XP graphics drivers on Win10 x86 LTSC 2019 and everything was hunky dory. Sure, no Nvidia control panel (it just errors out when you try to rum it), but hey, at least they work. Same with software, CorelDRAW 12 was a PITA to get working properly on Win7. On 10, it works out of the box.
I think they were aware that their mobile OS escapades might flop, so they focused on getting better backwards compatibility. If this thing fires back (which it did), stick to your guns, you still are no.1 in the CAD software market.
While I’m not exactly an expert user of AutoCAD (my background is architecture, industrial design and full stack development), I know enough about the software where I can tell it’s based on a lot of legacy spaghetti code.
It’s the same for Solidworks, which I know through and through, including the shitty VBA scripting environment. My CAD teachers always used to say the software is built like a wooden playhouse, which has been extended over the years to include a second story, a slide, a swingset and a roof extension. But underneath it all, it is still the same “don’t fix it if it aint broke” codebase that Dassault has taken their chances on since the '90s.
The second someone invests any kind of money into an open source alternative, the way Blender has done for the mesh modeling industries, both Autodesk and Dassault systemes stand to lose their respective monopolies on 2D and 3D CAD.
But the trend is not limited to CAD software only, it is also highly prevalent in software providers for governmental tasks. Most of which sell the same products for years without iteration on their codebase. The result is that government organisations have to deal with shitty software that requires their individual users to connect to the database (yes, you heard that right, every user has to manually input database credentials that include all grants on all of the relevant datasets). Most of these cronies are reselling badly thought out software, where they’ve outsourced the development to third-world shitholes. Is is a goddamn miracle that there aren’t more major incidents with government organisations.
The only solution for this kind of bullshit is open standards that encourage an open source approach to these kinds of critical applications. Where more parties are actually encouraged to build their own software and where the businessmodel is built around being a service provider and not a magical black box salesman.
If you’re able to stop worrying about generating revenue based on your intellectual property and focus on generating revenue from the service you provide, surrounding your product… you’ll automatically build a better product.
I completely agree, but there is a problem with that approach. It means you have to work hard… which is not what most of these software companies are ready to do.
I’ve been saying this for years. Their code base is ancient, it’s just makeup on a granma.
The trouble is, I think MS saw through this. Why do you think backwards compatibility suddenly got so good with Win8/8.1/10, while it really sucked with 7 (blue screens all over, especially with drivers from XP). Hell, I’ve installed XP graphics drivers on Win10 x86 LTSC 2019 and everything was hunky dory. Sure, no Nvidia control panel (it just errors out when you try to rum it), but hey, at least they work. Same with software, CorelDRAW 12 was a PITA to get working properly on Win7. On 10, it works out of the box.
I think they were aware that their mobile OS escapades might flop, so they focused on getting better backwards compatibility. If this thing fires back (which it did), stick to your guns, you still are no.1 in the CAD software market.
While I’m not exactly an expert user of AutoCAD (my background is architecture, industrial design and full stack development), I know enough about the software where I can tell it’s based on a lot of legacy spaghetti code.
It’s the same for Solidworks, which I know through and through, including the shitty VBA scripting environment. My CAD teachers always used to say the software is built like a wooden playhouse, which has been extended over the years to include a second story, a slide, a swingset and a roof extension. But underneath it all, it is still the same “don’t fix it if it aint broke” codebase that Dassault has taken their chances on since the '90s.
The second someone invests any kind of money into an open source alternative, the way Blender has done for the mesh modeling industries, both Autodesk and Dassault systemes stand to lose their respective monopolies on 2D and 3D CAD.
But the trend is not limited to CAD software only, it is also highly prevalent in software providers for governmental tasks. Most of which sell the same products for years without iteration on their codebase. The result is that government organisations have to deal with shitty software that requires their individual users to connect to the database (yes, you heard that right, every user has to manually input database credentials that include all grants on all of the relevant datasets). Most of these cronies are reselling badly thought out software, where they’ve outsourced the development to third-world shitholes. Is is a goddamn miracle that there aren’t more major incidents with government organisations.
The only solution for this kind of bullshit is open standards that encourage an open source approach to these kinds of critical applications. Where more parties are actually encouraged to build their own software and where the businessmodel is built around being a service provider and not a magical black box salesman.
If you’re able to stop worrying about generating revenue based on your intellectual property and focus on generating revenue from the service you provide, surrounding your product… you’ll automatically build a better product.
I completely agree, but there is a problem with that approach. It means you have to work hard… which is not what most of these software companies are ready to do.