Rainmaker Redux IV:

Resources? We don't need no stinkin' resources!

Part of the problem here is the weight of the word 'resources'. It's a great word for the rainmakers, as it simultaneously means everything and nothing. No one on the user side really knows what it is, but it sure sounds important if not vital; and no one on the vendor side really cares. When in doubt, call it 'resources' - you win a sale every time.

'Resources' on 9x don't officially exist, and to the extent that they still do, they're part of the 9x miasma you want to forget. Let's recap.

How the West Was Won

On Win16 there was a potential leak in the GDI. Not by virtue of the GDI code itself, which was at times quite brilliant, but by its poor use by brain dead programmers (the usual kind). Most of this was done in the context of device contexts (no pun intended).

A device context is an 'animule' in Windows representing a lot of sensitive 'resources' (there's that word again) which you need to be able to 'paint' anything in your window at all - text, graphics, pie charts, you name it. You need a device context to do it.

System wide device contexts are normally used, and they are precious system resources. Win16 had only a total of five (5) available. When you were using one, no one else could use it. You had to return it first. Obviously, the bone head who forgets to return his device contexts in a tight loop is going to watch his computer go down 'like fast' until he figures out what he did wrong.

  Gimme Back My Box!