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by Doug Thews.
Original Post: Shell Folders - A Registry Key That Should Never Have Been
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Apparently, this was a key used in a beta version of Windows 95 to identify where the OS could find special folders (like Control Panel, Printers, etc). During the beta, they decided to remove the key and add an API (SHGetSpecialFolderLocation) and updated the documents - then left the key in to allow some older OS bits to get updated during the beta process.
Well, as luck would have it, developers latched on to this key and wrote code for it. Not noticing the documentation updates later (and because their programs still worked), these code samples never got updated. So, when Windows 95 was released, new developers (instead of reading the docs), searched the registry for their information and found it - pretty much making the Shell Folders key a legacy key that had to be kept.
So, when you see the Shell Folders key - remember, it's really on there to permit 4 programs written in 1994 to continue running on the RTM version of Windows 95. Very interesting ...
Which leads us to his philosphical point:
If a program never worked in the first place, is it still a bug that it doesn't work today?
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