Microsoft Appears to Have Lost the Source Code of an Office Component (Patched a Binary)

Bleeping Computer ^ | Nov 18, 2017 | Catalin Cimpanu

[dayglored]

Having patched a lot of binaries myself over the years (mostly many years ago), I have sympathy for the programmers who were tasked with doing the fixes.

[dayglored]

Binary editing -- not for the faint of heart! ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[fhayek]

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who do not.

[bigbob]

But now M$ will end up with crap code...oh wait...

[dayglored]

> ...10 kinds of people in the world...

I knew my daughter would end up doing programming the day she asked to get a t-shirt with that motto on it. She was 8. And she earned her BS in CompSci this past year. Chip off the old block, she is. :-)

[dayglored]

> But now M$ will end up with crap code...oh wait...

Patching a binary doesn't necessarily give you bad code.

The legendary spacecraft programmers at JPL patched binary code in interplanetary spacecraft, literally "on the fly", decades ago and for all I know they still do. And not just fixing bugs found after launch -- sometimes they add or modify a flight function to take advantage of something they learned earlier in the flight.

The awesome aspect is that they had to send the changes by radio, taking minutes or even hours to get there, and then they would pray that the changes worked. Because if they didn't, they might crash or silence a bird worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Rashputin]

They probably have the source code, just no one who can follow all the tricks and gimmicks the original programmers used then tweaked over time as newer versions of the OS and newer hardware eliminated the need for such things.

[FredZarguna]

I would say that is highly unlikely, because in order to do a binary patch they would have to deconstruct all of those tricks and gimmicks at assembler level—without decent labels in the code segment or data names in the dseg—and that would be a great deal more difficult than figuring it out from the source, however badly written (even if the original source was x86 assembler itself...)

[Rashputin]

Taking it down to assembly level would make it easier to read than a lot of legacy code.

[TaMoDee]

What the Hell are you people talking about? All I want is for my putter to start up so I can get to FR!

[buckalfa]

"They probably have the source code, just no one who can follow all the tricks and gimmicks the original programmers used then tweaked over time - -"

Happened to me a couple of times on Excel macros that I myself had built or modified to create custom reports from a database. It is embarrassing not to have created a log showing steps or rationale. Relying on memory as one gets older and closer to retirement was just sloppy and complicated the needed continuity training of my successor.

[dadfly]

used to do this for NCR back in the day. it is indeed an art.

[dayglored]

> All I want is for my putter to start up...

Many of us older guys are in that same state...

Oh wait, you meant computer...

:-)

[Rashputin]

I've been in the "ummmm, I wrote this?" camp a time or two myself.

[BwanaNdege]

It is embarrassing not to have created a log showing steps or rationale. Relying on memory as one gets older and closer to retirement was just sloppy and complicated the needed continuity training of my successor.

I seem to remember using "REM" to denote 'Remarks/comments' explaining the purpose of the previous line of code. I was going to say that "REM is not only kindness to those who will later work on your code, it is also your friend!", however, I can't find anything online to confirm that.

(it has been SO LONG since I worked on even a pitifully small bit of code.... REM is all I remember on this subject!)

[my mind is a 10mb hard drive in my 8088 computer which has not been defragged in 70 years...)

[steve8714]

Hopefully they lost source code to PowerPoint.

[I want the USA back]

There should be a few thousand teenagers in basements in Romania who would be willing to dis-assemble the code for them.

[dayglored]

> Hopefully they lost source code to PowerPoint.

One can only dream...

[dayglored]

> There should be a few thousand teenagers in basements in Romania who would be willing to dis-assemble the code for them.

There are, no doubt about it.

[AppyPappy]

“Can you run that report that someone ran for me in 2004?”
“Do you have a report name for it?”
“No, it was 13 years ago!”