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

On 1 Nov 2024 17:02:38 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

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."

>
>
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.
>
Unfortunately the end product they came up with was pretty dreadful in the
end, because of compromises caused by the need for compatibility.
>
NT turned out to be a shambling monstrosity in spite of the best initial
design efforts.
>

You have probably already read it, but I counter with The Soul of a New
Machine!
>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
>
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).
>
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.

And yet XP, IIRC, identified itself as ... NT.

And marked the triumph of NT over the home user versions which gave us
the phrase "DLL hell".

As to Microsoft, I suspect it has been a decade or more since the last
employee who /really/ understood how Windows works left. It has surely
been a long time since they were able to test updates in any
meaningful way, as the current Windows 11 update appears (from the
reports) to clearly show. I may try to hang on to Win 10 long enough
to see if Win 12 is more stable than Win 11.

Then again, twice now Win 10 has installed an update and ... sat there
at 100% "Do Not Turn Off Your Computer" for a long time, perhaps as
long as an hour, certainly, a half hour, with no sign of activity (no
blinking light, no disk drive sounds, no NumLock response). The update
rot is not restricted to Win 11.

The tendency is to add froth, not strengthen the product, over time.
Probably because they just don't have any way of doing so safely. All
they can test is the froth.

Win 10 is supposed to get a final version this fall. I can just
imagine what /that/ will do as the end of support looms.

Then again, I don't have to guess -- I saw it with XP.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"