Simon Tatham

A "naming things is hard" anecdote I was just reminded of by an old web page:

In the 1990s, when 32-bit versions of Windows were introduced, a new executable file format was needed for native 32-bit programs. The existing 16-bit file format used by Windows 3.x was called "NE", for "New Executable". The 32-bit one was named "PE", for "Portable Executable".

Windows 95 could still run 16-bit Windows 3.x programs. But Windows 3.x couldn't run the newer 32-bit ones. (Ok, there was Win32s, but it had very restricted usefulness.)

In other words, the format called "New" was the older one of the two, *and* the format called "Portable" was the one that didn't work everywhere!

In bare-metal or embedded programming environments, a natural kind of simple example program is one that just counts up from zero, on whatever output device you have – 7-segment display, or in binary on a row of LEDs, etc. But it's quite confusing if the manual refers to it as a "counter example"!