What Language Is Windows Written In?

[Elliot B.]

Just wondering...

[Glowstick]

C, C++ and assembler.

[Elliot B.]

Assembler? Never heard of it :s

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Assembler? Never heard of it :s

You haven't heard of assembler?

I dont even program and I know of assembler!

[giantsnyy2002]

Assembler? Never heard of it :s

yea, assembly is a very old code, its what dos was written in.

[CyberKewl]

Assembler? Never heard of it :s

He means in assembly language (like "mov ax, dx" kind of stuff). Most of it is in C, C++ i believe.

[sukamusiru]

can do assembly for some calcs :D

[neowin_hipster]

Assembly: is a written form of machine code. Basically 1 assembly instruction = 1 machine instruction = many microinstructions (cpu's internal microcode)

yea, assembly is a very old code, its what dos was written in.

You must be sarcastic right!? Lol.

[Fusion]

can do assembly for some calcs :D

o o o, I can do that too :D

[s0rce]

www.grc.com

he writes his stuff in assembly

[realmccoy]

C, C++, Visual Basic, and assembler

[akaladis Veteran]

Assembler, C, C++ for buildup...

Assembler is a VERY OLD and basic type of code... It like direct processor commands... Then, the whole shell should be done in low level code such as C (or C++ for newer OSs) and the rest may be C++... Microsoft tends to use HTML code and now XML for some parts of the operating system such as help system etc... Although these are not used to make Windows, Microsoft uses quite a few to make it all work together... Longhorn is said to be a mostly XML based OS which can explain all that SQL databases... Of course we all know HTML and XML cant be used to make a real OS, but it does help when you have many parts of an OS based on HTML & XML ;-)

/Raptor

[akaladis Veteran]

C, C++, Visual Basic, and assembler

hehehehe.... nah i dont think they would ever use Visual Basic... maybe on older versions of windows (wink to win9x kernel users!) but not on NT based OSes... NT, 2000 and XP look too stable to use VB ;-) I dont think they would ever trust VB for an operating system like XP ;-))))))) Of course, they might have done it again lol!!!

/Raptor

[neowin_hipster]

What do ya mean, visual basic is a perfect way to add bloat and increase the system requirements.

And C is older than x86 asm. C++ is older than many of the instructions typically used on the x86 now adays. It pre-dates all kinds of stuff. I DON'T THINK age should be associated with any language other than cobol and the works.

I'm pretty sure longhorn will feature .NET which means everything is bytecode and "managed".

[eye_see_you]

well c, c++ , now VB.net or old VB and assembler . VB I am sure on because i;m doing that in school and c, c++ also

[the evn show]

Of course c is older than x86 assembler: the x86 chip didn't exist until the 80s. People were writting assembler on stuff like pdp-10's long before c was around (and before assembler they were writting machine code).

Assembler still has it's uses - like on embeded systems. I write z80 asm fairly well, it's used on the C64, GameBoy and Ti-8x (except 89) calculators. I can think of a few times I've _had_ to code in x86 assembler too: one of them being when I needed a higher performance graphics library for pascal.

Visual Basic if microsoft used vb in parts of Windows wouldn't they then need to have windows install the vb runtime libraries as well? IIRC those aren't even included on the cd, so that would make any vb software useless.

eye_see_you: Are you saying you're at one of the schools that has access to the windows source code?

[Kieran]

Of course c is older than x86 assembler: the x86 chip didn't exist until the 80s.  People were writting assembler on stuff like pdp-10's long before c was around (and before assembler they were writting machine code).

Assembler still has it's uses - like on embeded systems.  I write z80 asm fairly well, it's used on the C64, GameBoy and Ti-8x (except 89) calculators.  I can think of a few times I've _had_ to code in x86 assembler too: one of them being when I needed a higher performance graphics library for pascal.

Visual Basic if microsoft used vb in parts of Windows wouldn't they then need to have windows install the vb runtime libraries as well?  IIRC those aren't even included on the cd, so that would make any vb software useless.

eye_see_you: Are you saying you're at one of the schools that has access to the windows source code?

Have you tried the eZ80 yet? Its so much more powerful than the Z80. It has onboard LAN and TCP/IP stack. You should check it out, its very cool! Also, you can program it in C thank god! I have just finished a project which used these chips. You can look at the (very crap) project website at Click here.

[Glowstick]

For all those that claim they used VB for Windows: Get a clue.

[devgrp]

For all those that claim they used VB for Windows: Get a clue.

lol

[akaladis Veteran]

Of course c is older than x86 assembler: the x86 chip didn't exist until the 80s. People were writting assembler on stuff like pdp-10's long before c was around (and before assembler they were writting machine code).

Assembler still has it's uses - like on embeded systems. I write z80 asm fairly well, it's used on the C64, GameBoy and Ti-8x (except 89) calculators. I can think of a few times I've _had_ to code in x86 assembler too: one of them being when I needed a higher performance graphics library for pascal.

Visual Basic if microsoft used vb in parts of Windows wouldn't they then need to have windows install the vb runtime libraries as well? IIRC those aren't even included on the cd, so that would make any vb software useless.

eye_see_you: Are you saying you're at one of the schools that has access to the windows source code?

yeah thats a good point... if it used VB, i wouldnt have to distribute the f***king VB runtimes with my apps ;-)))

/Raptor

[sssqqq]

I could've sworn ONE part of Windows is actually written in VB... or at least it looks that way.

Go to the directory %systemroot%\fonts and click File > Install New Font... that dialog looks so old, no?

[neowin_hipster]

Isn't it possible to "compile" vb files so that they include the runtime in the app itself.

Even if that is VB, which i doubt, that's an application, not windows!

[smurfiness]

Microsoft may have written some of the complimentary apps in Visual Basic. Very doubtful, but possible.

But they didn't use it to write any part of the actual OS. A VB app must be run on top of Windows. Windows runs itself. There's nothing underneath, so there's no possibility any of the OS was written in VB.

--

Danny Smurf

[Tim Dorr Veteran]

For all those that claim they used VB for Windows: Get a clue.

Dude, you know they wrote Windows 95 in C#, right???

:p

[nacs]

yeah thats a good point... if it used VB, i wouldnt have to distribute the f***king VB runtimes with my apps ;-)))

And if you learned/used C++, you wouldn't have to bother with runtimes in the first place. ;)

[Winston]

i highly doubt they would even consider using vb at all...

well VB man i mean yeah to developers its pretty powerful depending on how you use it but to MS making and operating system that needs to be pretty robust and stable i doubt they would consider using VB