Humor: Interview with an Ex-Microsoftie Who Used to Name OS Folders
All of the names it makes fun of have perfectly sensible explanations."Program Files" and "Documents and Settings" have spaces to force software to support spaces in paths.system32 for the Win32 version of system makes perfect sense. 64-bit Windows continues to use the Win32 API, and renaming system32 would have broken compatibility with dumb programs that hardcoded the name. SysWOW64 is the system32 directory for Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit. WOW64 is perhaps an overly cutesy name, but it's actually fairly descriptive.