What is meant by “fat32 clients” or “fat32 applications”?

Question

I have heard expressions such as ".NET FAT32 client" or ".NET FAT32 application". When i asked what was meant by that, the answer was "a desktop application". This however makes little sense to me. FAT32 is a file system such as NTFS. Wouldn't it make more sense to say "NTFS application" due to the popularity of NTFS compared to the old and deprecated FAT32 ?

Answer 1

The term Fat client refers to a desktop application usually written as a native application for the user's platform.

"FAT32 application" doesn't make sense. As you say, FAT32 is a filesystem. However, "Win32" refers to a 32-bit Windows application (which is a common implementation choice for a fat client on Windows). I suspect the speaker might have conflated "Fat client" and "Win32 application" into "FAT32 application", which doesn't make sense. Either that, or the speaker actually said "Fat Win32 application".

Answer 2

".NET FAT32 client" is gibberish. As you say, FAT32 is a file system and has nothing to do with .NET or the nature of the application. Applications are not distinguished by the file systems on which they operate, so "NTFS application" is as nonsensical as the other term.

Answer 3

Whoever was talking to you was misinformed, most likely they where referring to Win32 which is the Windows 32 bit API. However when working with .NET you normally do not work with the windows API directly unless you are doing P/invokes. This would apply to C++ applications mainly.