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Comment on Why do Windows functions all begin with a pointless MOV EDI, EDI instruction?parent

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I have never written anything that runs on Windows, regardless of language or API, and I still subscribe to his blog. I feel badly that he gets snarked at so much that he has started injecting pre-emptive snark responses; I think he might write more, or more candidly, if it weren't for the highly vocal peanut gallery he has attracted.

This one in particular seemed worthy of sharing because of a couple of things. Firstly, if you just saw the artifact and not the reasoning, you would probably see a lot of WTF in having 7 bytes of NOP-type instructions, with five outside and two inside each function; it's a great reveal when you find out what it is for. Then my reaction was "Wow - I don't really design good instrumentation/logging/debugging points in my code, do I? I wonder if there's any part of this idea I can fruitfully rip off for my own code?" It was a nice one-two punch.

I can guarantee that the snark is intrinsic to Raymond. He is just that type of guy. He loves a good story, is very sarcastic and likes to troll co-workers.

(I could tell quite a few Raymond stories from when we worked together but it is better to leave it to him. It is a shame that he sticks to technical topics mostly on his blog.)

Actually, I really like the stories about his nieces too. He had one about watching his niece learn to cheat that was fantastic.

Re: snark, I wasn't talking about his own snark; that's great. I'm talking about the bits he adds labelled "Pre-emptive snark: [insert snarky thing a reader might say here, plus his response". Maybe I'm mis-reading his attitude towards those, but he seems a bit weary of them.

I thought I'm the only one doing this. Raymond Chen is worth subscribing to just for his knowledge alone, regardless of what platform you program for.

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