Re: Whoops! The Atlantic Makes Trump Look EPIC In Cover Intended as a Smear

D  <nospam@example.net> wrote:

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024, Lynn McGuire wrote:

I advocate the reading of "Showstopper", it will amaze you.
https://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generation-Microsoft/dp/1497638836
>
"Showstopper is the dramatic, inside story of the creation of Windows NT,
told by Wall Street Journal reporter G. Pascal Zachary. Driven by the
legendary David Cutler, a picked band of software engineers sacrifices almost
everything in their lives to build a new, stable, operating system aimed at
giving Microsoft a platform for growth through the next decade of development
in the computing business."

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This is a great book, and I recommend it.  In some way it's a puff piece,
but it's got some interesting insights about teams working together.
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Unfortunately the end product they came up with was pretty dreadful in the
end, because of compromises caused by the need for compatibility.
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NT turned out to be a shambling monstrosity in spite of the best initial
design efforts.
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You have probably already read it, but I counter with The Soul of a New
Machine!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
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The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book written by Tracy Kidder
and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer
engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a
blistering pace under tremendous pressure. The machine was launched in
1980 as the Data General Eclipse MV/8000.[1]

>
This is a also great book, and I also recommend it.  It's less of a puff
piece than Showstopper and it has more technical information (including
good explanations of technical decisions for nontechnical readers).
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Unfortunately the end product they came up with was pretty dreadful in the
end, because of compromises caused by the need for compatibility.
>
The 32-bit Eclipse machines kind of died on the market, and never made any
real inroads into the vax and system/36 markets.
--scott