It's time to talk about how to avoid lots of problems. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of charts. (Catchy phrase, isn't it?)
In this chapter, we go over some guidelines and hints to help you write high-performance Windows NT applications. For years, a body of lore has accumulated surrounding the creation of high-performance and well-behaved 16-bit Windows applications. However, Windows NT is a completely new operating system, and the rules have changed. (For example, the constraints of a 16-bit address space have been removed within the operating system, so there are fewer limits on internally stored objects.)
The sophisticated virtual memory manager in Windows NT permits applications to have direct access to very large data structures. Increased protection permits applications to be less concerned about cooperating with other applications, and more focused on being responsive to the user. But costs associated with increased protection and with portability to multiple processors necessitate a rejection of some coding styles of the past.
If you think this chapter is only for programmers, think again. There is nothing more satisfying than going to your lead programmer and pointing out a more efficient way to do something. So if you're a programmer you'd better read this in self defense, and if you're not, this is your chance to get even.