Microsoft's Symbolic Plan
=========================

(Redmond, Microsoft HQ. One year before Windows Vista release. Meeting.)

Marketing VC: 

  Our latest marketing research suggests that UNIX has a
  competitive advantage: _symbolic links_.

Ballmer (throwing a chair at the marketing VC): 

  What the hell are sympathetic links?

Windows program manager: 

  I asked our programmers. They don't know what they are.

Ballmer (throwing a chair at the Windows program manager): 
  
  IMPLEMENT THEM!

* * *

(Redmond, Microsoft HQ. Half a year before Windows Vista release.)

Windows program manager (dodging a chair thrown by Ballmer): 

  We tried hard, but we can't implement them. Our symlinks are shit.

Ballmer (smashing chair over his head): 

  EUREKA! Leave them as they are. We'll make such a terrible sympathetic link
  implementation that everyone would think that symlinks are shit in general.
  Thus, UNIX won't have advantage! Wait, add more horrible things. 
  For example, make a limit of 31 links per path. And don't forget to write in
  docs: "Symbolic links are designed to aid in migration and application
  compatibility with UNIX operating systems. Microsoft has implemented its
  symbolic links to function just like UNIX links.". Muahahahaha!


* * *

(After Vista release. Headlines.)

Slashdot: "Windows has an awful symlink implementation".

ZDNet: "Symbolic links on Windows are ugly."

Windows Magazine: "Symbolic links are shit."

Rails Rockstar Ninjas Magazine: "Why you shouldn't use symlinks."

37signals blog: "We don't use symlinks, because we're awesome. Fuck you!"

Scientific journal: "Symlinks considered harmful."

POSIX:2012: "Symlinks are deprecated."

The Old New Thing, 2015: "Why Windows symlinks are shit? Read on to find out
the <strike>excuse</strike> technical explanation... Our programmers are not
bad, seriously!"