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    They didn't have to jump through these hoops to allow for 32-bit and 16-bit programs on the same system. I don't recall ever seeing a ProgramFiles (16) or some such. Besides, how exactly would a 32-bit program "find a 64-bit DLL and try to load it"? What programs go around hunting for random DLLs in %programfiles%? If it is a shared DLL, then it goes in WinSxS; if it is not shared, then it is up to the programmer to manage their own DLLs. The part about it being done as a convenience for programmers reasonable though.
    – Synetech
    Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 18:40
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    IIRC Win3.1 didn't have a program files directory (or most apps ignored it); as a result there wouldn't be any legacy win16 apps looking for stuff in program files to begin with. Instead IIRC shared libraries were often plonked somewhere in the windows folder itself. Win32 having windows\system and windows\system32 is an artifact of that. Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 19:26
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    Windows 3.1 didn't support long file names, so it wouldn't have been able to have a 'program files' folder. Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 19:29
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    @JarrodRoberson: Quite the reverse, it's because Microsoft values backwards compatibility extremely highly. Commented Jun 27, 2012 at 20:08
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    @Jarrod: Actually, as every developer knows, Microsoft values backwards compatibility too highly. Literally every API they have has legacy methods they refuse to remove, and often serious bugs they refuse to fix, because they are afraid of breaking older programs that were written for that API. The same is true of most API's, but not to anywhere near the extant of Microsoft's. Commented Jun 28, 2012 at 2:38