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I think the reason you're finding it to be so stable is because nothing in that kernel has changed since Windows XP.

A fair amount has been changed or added, I'd say. I recommend the Windows Internals book if you're interested in learning about the Windows kernel. The 7th edition just came out.

That's fair. My comment is not well-informed with regard to whatever has happened in the last 10 years.

The impression I formed back in the late-2000s and early 2010s when I was doing this type of development was that there was very little change in the low-level NT kernel. I actually don't think this is a bad thing; going from XP to Vista was a breeze because nothing about the driver APIs changed in the slightest, and Microsoft even provided a bunch of new filesystem examples with the Vista DDK.

Oh you're totally right about the driver APIs. A fair amount has been added, but that stuff gets a new export to avoid breaking anything. For example, there's a dozen different `ExAllocate`s now. I wouldn't call myself a driver-writing expert but I'm sure that same driver for Vista could be made to target Windows 10 with little effort.

That's just plain wrong.

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