Inside The Development of Windows NT

mrpuffypants writes "Winsupersite has a 3 part series this month about the history and development of Windows NT all the way up through Windows Server 2003. The author goes fairly in-depth describing how Windows is developed, managed, and how all 50 million+ lines are compiled daily. Part One covers the history of NT from its early days at Microsoft and Part Two discusses how the deployment of the forthcoming server version of Windows is coordinated daily." *shiver*

Comments

hmmm...

[garcia]

The stuffed mascot in the background looks an awful lot like someone else we know ;)

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I think that's Waddle, the Beanie Buddy (a larger version of Waddle, the Beanie Baby). Penguins are cool to a lot of folks - and not all stuffed penguins are Tux.

Re:hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you find it sad that you know that?

Plus, I think it was pointed out b/c it was the "war-room" and there was a penguin in it.

Re:hmmm...

[ShooterNeo]

I'm pretty certain that's Tux. I've got a stuffed penguin like that somewhere around the house, and the color and size is exactly the same. While the face microsoft shows the world is their marketing and management side, believe it or not to make (mostly) working software they have to have many thousands of geeks. While their corporate masters may encourage them to do the bad stuff they are famous for, that doesn't mean they can't joke around.

Re:hmmm...

[MaufTarkie]

Actually, I think it's "Tux Rux" (second entry under Penguin -- compare the grandparent's photo with TR's photo). They were selling these two years ago at our local Safeway supermarket, and I got one as a Christmas present then. When you push his belly, he will alternate with "Hi! I'm Tux Rux" and a very disturbing growl/purr that I can only assume is the sound that a very irate poked penguin would make.

Re:hmmm...

[Knara]

Or more precisely Pokey the Penguin

Re:hmmm...

[gorilla]

We need Steve Irwin to do a show on penguins then. He can make any animal into a very irate version. Crikey! This one's really cranky!

NT compile script

[Limburgher]

First line:

#!/bin/bash

Re:NT compile script

[krygny]

The whole shebang.

Re:NT compile script

[pyrros]

Nah, my money is on:

@echo off

Re:NT compile script

[csguy314]

First line:

#!/bin/bash

Line two:
#By compiling this program you agree to the following terms:

Re:NT compile script

[slaker]

Nope. They forgot to @echo off, too.

Re:NT compile script

[geekee]

Why would they be using unix if they were VMS designers from DEC? It would have been a lot more funny if you were using VMS scripting commands.

Re:NT compile script

[Tyreth]

If we all do a line each, then go back to the start 50 million times, perhaps we could come up with the windows 2003 code, or a very humerous approximation :)

the book 'Show-Stopper!' Ready to Buy? Sign in to

[Anonymous Coward]

This book, from around '95 I think, was a great read. I don't know how much overlapit has with the articles mentioned above, but I enjoyed it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/00 29 356717/103-3105313-8496655?vi=glance

Also available at your local library!

Lines of code != quality

[JPDeckers]

Quote from site:
There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. It's an enormous task, the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this

Accordig to this, we should be getting them in a year or 5

Re:Lines of code != quality

[platypus]

According to this, they are lyying.

Re:Lines of code != quality

[jilles]

Debian doesn't write most of the source packages. All this shows is that what microsoft produces by itself is pretty much equal (in terms of size) to a full blown debian distribution representing the collective efforts of thousands of individuals and organizations.

NT == VAX OS?

[peter303]

I thought the initial NT "heavily borrowed" (MS tradition) from the Digital Equipment Corp (now part of HP) VAX operating system. Then it gradually incorporated parts of the evolving Windows/DOS OS.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[guy-in-corner]

No. Dave Cutler, who was lead developer for NT, was previously one of the lead developers for VMS. I don't think that MS actually took any of the source code from VMS for NT, however.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Drakonian]

NO, MS just hired a BUNCH of DEC engineers. As someone else mentioned, that included Dave Cutler, who held the whole thing together. I'd recommend the book Showstopper! to learn about the creation of NT. Facinating stuff.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[scrytch]

I thought the initial NT "heavily borrowed" (MS tradition) from the Digital Equipment Corp (now part of HP) VAX operating system. Then it gradually incorporated parts of the evolving Windows/DOS OS.

That would be VMS (some VAXen ran Ultrix, poor things). IBM and MS started a collaboration called OS/2, then later decided to part ways. Whatever MS's other motives were in the split, MS was staking its entire future on what was to IBM a toy project, so MS wasn't entirely enthusiastic about development at IBM speed. IBM kept the OS/2 name, MS hired Dave Cutler from DEC, Cutler dubbed the new fork WNT: that's the letters after VMS, and any expansion is entirely a backronym.

NT does include some of VMS's heritage, including strong async I/O support throughout. The DOS stuff is really a matter of emulating the interface -- a whole lot of work went into making drive letters and backslashes work everywhere, believe it or not. Not surprisingly, it tends to share more in common with OS/2, with the supervisor design and the object manager for starters.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Marsala]

That's a pretty big oversimplification of the matter. Basically, David Cutler left Digital after DEC decided to ax a project he was working on to build a new chip and an OS to go along with it, Microsoft offered him a job to work on the chip and the OS, and Cutler managed to recruit most of his dev team from DEC for the new MS squad.

So saying that NT is just VMS part II isn't really accurate, but the same guilty parties are involved. If you can find it, there was a book called _ShowStopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT_ that does a pretty good job of chronicling the history of NT during its early days.

Know thy enemy, and all that. :-)

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Bob Abooey]

Right.

One can't deny that NT was "based" on VMS.

In fact I recall reading somehere that MS was initially promoting NT as VMS on the desktop, or something along those lines.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[SerpentMage]

What I am amazed at is that in the history of Windows NT Dave Cutler was cut so little space. He was mentioned twice. Once at the beginning of the article and then in the timeline.

And from what I remember about the hoopla, etc. Dave Cutler was fairly important in the first version of Windows NT.

But you know it shows just how little MS remembers the people who got it there in the first place!

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[AndyElf]

I believe in late 80's/early 90's Gates was promoting WNT at USENIX conference as a 'new and better UNIX'. This has been mentione here, on /., about a year ago.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[leandrod]

> IBM and MS started a collaboration called OS/2, then later decided to part ways.

Actually MS stabbed IBM in the back by breaking the agreement (MS-W16 never to get 32 bits or a DOS virtual machine, OS/2 forever) without warning by launching MS-W3.1. This effectively killed OS/2 and made going from OS/2 3.0 NT to MS-WNT a no-brainer for MS.

> MS wasn't entirely enthusiastic about development at IBM speed

You mean IBM quality, not speed. OS/2 development speed wasn't so bad; in fact, they decided to go for a command-line only, i286 version initially in order to ship early.

The real problem is that MS wanted to push forward the stupid MS Win16 API inherited from MS Windows 1.0 for the IBM-PC/XT, and IBM knew it was garbage. Also MS realised it could get more money by selling a product without any interoperability or standardisation, while IBM would have made it interoperable, documented and stable -- as they still do with the current IBM OS/2.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Ashran]

If you'd have bothered reading the article you'd know the following:

Originally, we were targeting NT to the Intel i860 (code-named 'N-Ten)', a RISC processor that was horribly behind schedule. Because we didn't have any i860 machines in-house to test on, we used an i860 simulator. That's why we called it NT, because it worked on the 'N-Ten.'"
-Mark Lucovsky
Distinguished Engineer
Windows Server Architect

They are too explaining why MS stopped working on OS/2. RTFA for once?

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[SN74S181]

Wow. There are still OS/2 zealots out there.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Locutus]

I had heard that Microsoft took the NT code with them as the split from IBM but I never heard that they planned on implementing the Windows API's instead of the OS/2 API's BEFORE the split....

Just another example of Microsoft "window-izing" a product and making it their own. How many times has this happened in Microsofts history?

It was well known that the networking in Windows NT 3.1 was basically LanMan running via the OS/2 subsystem.

BTW, IIRC, after Microsoft pilfered DEC's OS people, DEC filed a law suite against them. And so began the "partnership" between DEC and Microsoft which eventually ended up with DEC MIA.

Hmmmm, steal the design, go to court, settle out-of-court, see the "partner" close shop. That's another funny part of Microsofts repeating history.

LoB

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Yankovic]

you know, a lot of people say this stuff, but show me anything ANYWHERE where something was invented from scratch. I'm happy to wait. And because this is all within the world of software, things are going to be even more overlapping. To quote the SVP of IBM who presented at Linuxworld: "Innovation isn't just invention for invention's sake. It's being able to take a product and make it available to the widest amount of people."

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Locutus]

it sounds more like they saw that they could take the core NT design and put THEIR API's on it instead of the API's from the partnership( IBM/Microsoft ).

From the article, they said they went back to IBM and told them Microsoft was going to do a Win32 API and not an OS/2 API on the NT core system.

BTW, you will also notice that it wasn't until they got the i860 AND MIPS stuff working and started on the x86 stuff before they decided to dump OS/2 for their own Windows API's.

Like I said before, they Window-ized the product and said to heck with the "partnership". It's the way Microsoft does business and ANY company would be just plain stupid to "partner" with them. They are the brain sucking monster in "Starship Troopers". IMHO.

LoB

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[AtrN]

Borrowed? Funny word for it. See this article for some details. For a long time the Mica story was buried.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Locutus]

I had heard that when Microsoft released MS-DOS to IBM originally, it didn't work and IBM had to all but rewrite it( PC-DOS ). I'm sure there where many at IBM who knew how bad a coding Microsoft was/is but they "partnered" on OS/2 anyway.

I had also heard that another big fracture between IBM and Microsoft was in the design of the OS itself. Microsoft wanted the application with focus to get most of the CPU and IBM wanted a tight kernel so that all apps got an appropriate amount of CPU time. It took almost 10 years before Microsoft came out with an OS( W2K ) which had decent multitasking for the DESKTOP. Of course THE DESKTOP was now a 700MHz machine with 128MB of RAM while OS/2 still ran great on a 300MHz machine with 64MB of RAM.

It's all about marketing though and that's what Microsoft is, a marketing company. The ultimate snake oil salesman award goes to Bill Gates and Steve Balmer. IMO.

LoB

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Locutus]

you know I just never looked at "business" that way. I guess it means that if you are smart enough to know how to steal someone elses work, you deserve it more. And the ultimate goal is to put the owner of the technology out of business so that you can take all the rewards for yourself. Why didn't I see that before? It's brilliant. It's also bullshit and something I expect from the likes of a tyrant or war lord. It's not what a socially responsible company should be doing and Microsoft should have been smashed into tiny pieces because of it. IMHO.

LoB

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[leandrod]

> Wow. There are still OS/2 zealots out there.

Wow. There is still a Microsoft bigot here.

Seriously, I am a frustrated GNU Hurd zealot, not an IBM OS/2 zealot. My brother loved OS/2, I only found it interesting. But sure it is much better technology than MS-WNT.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[molarmass192]

Makes sense. There was a port of NT 3.1 for the DEC Alpha chip that was RISC based. It seems logical that the DEC defectors would have influenced this decision.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Locutus]

yup, they got that low-end UNIX market by "partnering" with 3 or 4 companies who provided the Win32 API's on UNIX and told the UNIX application vendors that they could have the PC desktop AND the UNIX workstation market by writting to Win32. After enough of the 'important' UNIX apps were ported to Win32, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under the 3 or 4 companies who provided Win32 on UNIX. Only one was "allowed" to exist because Microsoft fed $$$ to them so they could afford the HUGE increase in licensing costs that killed the others. Why else would Microsoft pay someone to put Internet Explorer and part of COM on UNIX? Brilliant marketing more and stupid move by the UNIX app vendors. IMO.

What customers ended up with was no choice but to move from UNIX to MS Windows because the apps could no longer run on UNIX. You have to admire the guys and gals at SoftImage. They were purchased by Microsoft and fought hard to keep a UNIX code-base while under the MS thumb. And now they still have a rebust platform for their customers. Why do you think Hollywood is going back to *nix via Linux? It wasn't because Windows was as good as Bill thinks, that's for sure.

LoB

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[oogoliegoogolie]

as they still do with the current IBM OS/2.

There's a "current" OS/2?? Isn't that like saying "Current Amiga"?

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[JonK]

IBM didn't need Microsoft to stab OS/2 in the back: Big Blue did a perfectly good job of that itself.

IBM quality

You never tried running DOS apps in OS/2 1.0, did you. To say it was buggy was an understatement...

OS/2 development speed wasn't so bad

As long as you weren't waiting for applications which ran on your shiny new requires-4MB-of-RAM-costing-to-boot OS/2? Whatever happened to OfficeVision again ;-)

The real problem is that MS wanted to push forward the stupid MS Win16 API inherited from MS Windows 1.0 for the IBM-PC/XT

No, the real problem was that the marketplace didn't want OS/2: even when Microsoft were fully committed to it (the period thru' mid-89) and pushing it as the best thing since sliced bread, no-one (outside IBM fiefdoms) bought it. If you want to blame anyone for this state of affairs, blame the clone makers who had no interest in handing control of the PC marketplace back to IBM. IIRC, at the time and with all of DOS's flaws, and with both IBM and Microsoft telling the market that DOS was dead and OS/2 was the way forward, DOS was outselling OS/2 by a ratio of about 200:1.

Oh, and targetting the 286 was a bad idea from the get go, but IBM didn't want to eat into sales of their (expensive) AS/400 line.

while IBM would have made it interoperable

... as part of SAA - so it would have interoperated with... ooh, let's see... that'd be the IBM AS/400 minicomputer and the IBM S/370 mainframe and... do we all get the idea here?

documented

As long as you were prepared to fork over $3000 for said documentation

and stable

I get it: you never used OS/2, did you. Because if you did, you'd know perfectly well that when OS/2 shipped it was so flakey it made Windows Me look like a beacon of system stability. Maybe by OS/2 3.0 it had become moderately usable, but OS/2 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 sucked in so many different ways and had uptimes measured in minutes. Datapoint: a customer at the time had about 500 PS/2 Model 60s running OS/2 1.3 w/ Presentation Manager, one in each store. At the time, this was an investment, in hardware alone of about $3 million, plus about another third of a million in OS licences (yes, only ten years ago $700 was considered a very reasonable pricepoint for a desktop operating system licence - if you were IBM...) They were shockingly unusable - as in the store manager would be entering that day's sales into a dBase app and running the numbers and they'd be able to enter stuff successfully about one time in three - the other two, OS/2 or one of the apps running under it would crap itself, lock the queue and once that happened it was goodnight Vienna.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[jkabbe]

As much as I would like to see companies be socially responsible, it's pretty much a fact that the companies that try to "play fair" tend to lose to the companies that don't. It only takes one cut-throat company to force everyone to play by the same rules if they want to succeed. It's just human nature.

As far as innovation goes, creating the basic idea is certainly part of the process. But turning it into a workable product and marketing that product is just as essential. Why insult people that are good at the latter (but not the former)? People who can't make workable products need to make way for those who can.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[leandrod]

> There's a "current" OS/2?

Yes.

> Isn't that like saying "Current Amiga"?

No. OS/2 is still sold and supported both by IBM and third parties. It just is not promoted.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[leandrod]

> IBM didn't need Microsoft to stab OS/2 in the back: Big Blue did a perfectly good job of that itself.

In part, yes. But MS-OS/2 6.0 probably would have been a better OS than MS-WXP.

> You never tried running DOS apps in OS/2 1.0, did you.

You mean the DOS torture box? No one expected it to work. The worse it did was preparing people to accept MS-Win.

> As long as you weren't waiting for applications which ran on your shiny new requires-4MB-of-RAM-costing-to-boot OS/2?

I could not quite make your phrase, but I assume you are talking about performance and resources requirement. I was speaking about the speed at which OS/2 itself was developed. But even so, OS/2 proved to run better and in less memory than MS-WNT.

> the marketplace didn't want OS/2: even when Microsoft were fully committed to it (the period thru' mid-89) and pushing it as the best thing since sliced bread

That is simply not true. MS attempts at marketing OS/2 were feeble at best. It wrote many drivers for MS-W16, but OS/2 was starving for them. It never wrote a graphical Word for OS/2, and killed all apps for OS/2 as soon as MS-W3.1 was out of the barn. It kept promoting MS-Win as needing less resources than OS/2, but that was only true for the then-current MS-W16 systems.

> blame the clone makers who had no interest in handing control of the PC marketplace back to IBM

Agreed, but here the clone makers were not at a fault, but IBM pushing MCA as a proprietary standard. Nothing to do with OS/2, but generated lots of ill-will towards IBM, as did bad memories from mainframe times. Not that MS did not became as bad as IBM ever was, and actually more capable of escaping justice.

> targetting the 286 was a bad idea from the get go, but IBM didn't want to eat into sales of their (expensive) AS/400 line.

If you call the AS/400 expensive or compare it to PCs you never went near one. At any rate, never understood one. The real reason was that i386s were expensive, and IBM ones even more so.

> ...as part of SAA - so it would have interoperated with... ooh, let's see... that'd be the IBM AS/400 minicomputer and the IBM S/370 mainframe and... do we all get the idea here?

Are you malicious or just ignorant? Obviously SAA was part of the picture, as it was also for MS which I remember pushing MS interoperability with SNA. But IBM OS/2 also has interoperability with Unix and the Net, and a better POSIX compatibility history than MS-WNT. And that comes as no surprise, since IBM has its own POSIX system, AIX. Or do you think IBM could pull such a compelling GNU/Linux story had not it POSIX experience before?

> As long as you were prepared to fork over $3000 for said documentation

What is actually quite reasonable for print documentation for an ISV or third-party developer. Remember, this was before CD-ROMs and the Net. Even today, MS documentation is no better, and full of holes.

> you never used OS/2, did you

Yes, I did: versions 1.3, 2.0, 2.1 and 3. It was rock solid, provided you had enough system resources. Many people tried to run it with the minimal resources, which were enough only for booting. Also, drivers were an issue, but here MS also played MS-Win in violation of its promises to customers and partners.

> a customer at the time had about 500 PS/2 Model 60s running OS/2 1.3 w/ Presentation Manager

Sad history, but makes me wonder... did they have enough system resources? Were apps native? This were i286 times, remember. Only Xenix ran better for those loads on a i286.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Locutus]

"Why insult people that are good at teh latter (but not the former)?"

It's a known fact that most of the innovation comes from small companies. By removing the rewards for such innovations, as Microsoft does year after year, they are effectively clean-cutting the forests for their profits today. Partnering can be a good thing but it's almost never a good thing with Microsoft.

It's already almost impossible to get funding for anything that does or COULD cross Microsofts path. That's my beef. There's no Win/Win partnering with them, it's Win/Lose in 99% of the cases.

LoB

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Milo77]

Just do a "plus one" on "WNT" and you'll finally know the truth :)

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Milo77]

I guess I should have said a "plus one" on each character of "WNT"....

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[jkabbe]

Partnering can be dangerous. However, some people created companies with apparently the sole purpose to be attracting attention so they could be bought out by someone with the muscle/money to bring their product to the masses (while making a tidy sum in the process :).

I agree with your last statement, though, and that's why I generally support anti-trust laws (and the Sherman act).

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[JonK]

MS-OS/2 6.0 probably would have been a better OS than MS-WXP

Debateable: by now, MS would have been swallowed up by IBM and IBM, as was seen at the time, Didn't Get It when it came to PCs (in IBM's world-view, your PC was merely a smart terminal for connecting to your leased-from-IBM mainframe). You might as well say that the Hurd probably would have been a better OS than Linux, or that TOPS-10 would have been a better OS than VMS or...

You mean the DOS torture box? No one expected it to work

Except those people who listened to IBM's sales force (the white-shirted, navy-blue-tied ones) explaining how "your investment in software for IBM's PC-DOS is safe because it all runs on IBM's new advanced OS/2" (or words to that effect: I can't be arsed to go digging out ancient marketing bumf)

> As long as you weren't waiting for applications which ran on your shiny new requires-4MB-of-RAM-costing-to-boot OS/2?
I could not quite make your phrase, but I assume you are talking about performance and resources requirement. I was speaking about the speed at which OS/2 itself was developed. But even so, OS/2 proved to run better and in less memory than MS-WNT.

I was actually referring to the complete dearth of applications from ISVs for OS/2 - at the time when OS/2 had a chance in the marketplace (i.e. before the launch of Windows 3.0) you could a) single-task DOS applications in MS-DOS/PC-DOS or the DR-DOS equivalents b) multi-task the same DOS applications using QuarterDeck's (very funky) DesqView or c) multi-task the same DOS applications using OS/2 - an exercise which was both far flakier and far more expensive (due to the fact that you realistically needed at least 4MB RAM to even start playing and 6MB to get serious multitasking done. At the time, that was the thick end of $2500 on RAM alone. Add on $700 for an OS/2 licence and it became a very losing proposition). The killer OS/2 app was going to be, as I alluded, OfficeVision which would run on everything from PS/2s running OS/2 right up to MVS in a VM on the mainframe, would integrate with systems like SNADS, DISOSS and PROFS and generally do everything short of make dinner and polish the furniture. IIRC, it never happened (or if it did, it was so late and made so little impact on the market that I never noticed). Think of it as the Visi-On of the late 80s (remember Visi-On? People think MS are the arch-FUDsters? Heh - how little they remember...)

MS attempts at marketing OS/2 were feeble at best

That's not entirely true: cast your mind back to the late 80s, when Windows was still tiled... At the time, Microsoft was pushing OS/2 fairly hard, and Windows was the red-headed stepchild (and Word? Word was a Mac application, and wouldn't make it to the PC world for another three or four years). It wasn't until the 89-90 timeframe, when BillG realised that IBM were about to eat Microsoft's lunch by turning them from a (reasonably successful) DOS vendor into a spanner shop which would grind out OS/2 code that he went off the idea.

Certainly, Microsoft pushed OS/2 harder than they did DOS

If you call the AS/400 expensive or compare it to PCs you never went near one. At any rate, never understood one

Should I show you my RPG/400 scars :-) I explained myself badly here - I'll try again. At the time, IBM were selling AS/400s starting at about $1/4 million. It was what your SME bought, before they grew enough to need an IBM mainframe. And at the time, the AS/400, while a great box in many ways - wierd-ass architecture and all - wasn't exactly a computing powerhouse. The Small Systems division of IBM were very worried that a (relatively) commodity 386 machine would make them look very uncompetitive on a price/performance basis: who'd buy into DB/400 - OS/400 - AS/400 when then could buy Informix or Oracle on SCO Xenix on a real 32-bit machine at a tenth the price? And once they'd strayed from the IBM fold, how would they be brought back? And if that happened, Armonk wouldn't be happy. So the SS division pulled VPs on the Personal Computers and Personal Systems divisions and got OS/2 crippled so as to avoid cannibalising *their* market share.

This was all recounted to me by a friend who used to work at IBM (from mid 70s to early 90s - he was there during the great days of Big Blue middle management politics) so take it with a pinch of salt... but not too big a pinch - he was in mainframes so had no axe to grind.

Are you malicious or just ignorant?

Neither: I'd suggest that I'm better informed (or at least less blinkered) than you...

IBM OS/2 also has interoperability with Unix and the Net, and a better POSIX compatibility history than MS-WNT

Yes. Since OS/2 3.0 Warp. By which time it had already lost. As I said above, back when it had a chance it had SAA written all over it (OS/2 1.1, which was the first version which even vaguely worked, had as its big selling point for the Extended Edition the fact that you could hang it off your Channel really easily - hell, MicroChannel Architecture was a reference to the real Channel, implying that the bus inside your peecee was equivalent to the one that allowed you to hang thousands of 3270s and 5250s off your 370 box...). Again, back in the timeframe we're discussing, TCP/IP and "the Net" were irrelevancies. You're also forgetting that one of the big advantages of SAA/CA (in IBM's eyes) was that it locked the user in: once you'd invested huge amount of time and effort in learning one SAA/CA application, the rest were cheap, but moving over to DEC or PC LANs would be an expensive proposition.

> As long as you were prepared to fork over $3000 for said documentation
What is actually quite reasonable for print documentation for an ISV or third-party developer

No it wasn't: if you wanted to start writing code for OS/2, you needed a copy of the OS/2 SDK, and any other tools. Cost: $3000, plus the price of your tools. If you wanted to start writing code for Windows, you needed a copy of the Windows SDK, and any other tools. Cost: 25 cents for a stamp, plus the price of your tools. Microsoft were handing out documentation binders and disks like sweeties at just about any trade fair you went to at the time - if you played your cards right, and asked nicely, they'd slip you a copy of MSC 5 as well, with the wonderful Programmer's Whipping Bench. All you needed to do was buy a copy of Petzold.

> you never used OS/2, did you
Yes, I did: versions 1.3, 2.0, 2.1 and 3. It was rock solid, provided you had enough system resources

I was being a bit sarcastic here: you've got all the outward appearances of a Team OS/2 member, and we know what that means :-). Oh, and early OS/2 wasn't rock solid at all: you could take a fully loaded System 80, tricked out with 8MB RAM, load the Presentation Manager from OS/2 1.3 onto it, start up a couple of apps and watch it fall over. Repeatedly. Hell, you could get it to fall over with just the Presentation Manager running. It may have got better later - who cared? Windows was good enough - crashed just about as often, cost about a third as much and ran DOS applications better.

To summarise my observations: when OS/2 had a chance in the marketplace, in the late 80s, IBM blew it by making it a) too expensive, b) too greedy for hardware, c) too much of a blatant attempt at vendor lockin, d) too buggy e) having no software f) being sabotaged by internal competition and g) having no compelling advantages to counter the above. By the time (in about 92 - 93) it overcame these disadvantages it had become an irrelevance. Being "a better Windows than Windows", gaining a TCP/IP stack, having the (admittedly very sweet) Workplace Shell and so on all boiled down to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic: the battle had already been lost.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[drinkypoo]

OS/2 2.1 was horribly crashy on an IBM PS/Valuepoint 486 DX/2 66 with 16mb, even before loading the windows emulation layer, which frequently took the system down when it crashed.

The claim about OS/2 being stable is a flat out lie. I wouldn't say it's worse than any version of windows prior to 5.0 (Windows 2000) except for Windows NT 3.51, which is definitely the most stable Windows I've used, bar none. Too bad it doesn't have support for modern technologies like AGP, USB, ISA PnP, et cetera.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[leandrod]

> OS/2 2.1 was horribly crashy on an IBM PS/Valuepoint 486 DX/2 66 with 16mb

I wonder why so many differing experiences? Perhaps I should not be surprised, I knew some people claiming they had unstable installations of MS-WNT and I myself have a crashy installation of a X Window server.

> Too bad it doesn't have support for modern technologies like AGP, USB, ISA PnP, et cetera.

ISA PnP was never needed, as it do not have the horrible MS-W16 problems with resource allocation. Remember even Linus wanted nothing to do with ISA PnP. But even so you are mistaken, because OS/2 was updated for at least USB. Do your homework check, please.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[leandrod]

> Technically, they are like bastard brothers, usually equally hated by UNIX Lovers.

I am more on the side of Lisp, free software and open standards, than of Unix. But I am not comparing IBM OS/2 to GNU, I am comparing to MS.

> NT at least had file permissions and multiuser.

So had IBM OS/2 with HFS/386, and using far less system resources. BTW, MS-WNT file permissions are too complex, and its multiuser support (Terminal Server) is still substandard. All in all, OS/2 would have been a better stepping stone for the current and future migration to POSIX than MS-WNT.

> By the time the big OS/2 push started most of the cool kids were already running Linux.

I didn't have the technical knowledge then necessary.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[drinkypoo]

But even so you are mistaken, because OS/2 was updated for at least USB. Do your homework check, please.

Im sorry, perhaps I didn't make myself clear; I was talking about those things missing from NT 3.51.

Please make sure you know what is being discussed (it was somewhat arbitrary there, I admit, but neither item was truly indicated) before you get all smart-assed about doing homework. If I cared about OS/2 (as no one but the UK post and a few wankers who are even more lost than Amigans in this day and age) then I would have done the homework.

Re:NT == VAX OS?

[Yankovic]

Tyrant or warlord? Your premise is that things are invented in a vacuum or only one person invents something at a given time. In the vast majority of cases this is not the case. There are laws against stealing, that's not what is going on here. It's taking a technology which may be an open standard or a particular public implementation and being able to do it the best and distribute it the widest. Amazon.com wasn't the first internet bookseller, but they were the best. And how about GNU/Linux? Show me something in the free software world that hasn't been done someplace else and i'll fall off my chair.

NT & VMS

[syr]

Here's more background information including VMS data.

GameTab - Game Reviews Database

WinNT development cycle.

[grub]

0) CVS checkout the latest net stuff from freebsd.org
1) Look at code and scratch head until "A-ha!"; enlightenment.
2) Merge code into Windows source
3) go to 0

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[ImpTech]

> 3) go to 0

Dijkstra is rolling over in his grave...

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[jeriqo]

> 0) CVS checkout the latest net stuff from freebsd.org
> 1) Look at code and scratch head until "A-ha!"; enlightenment.
> 2) Merge code into Windows source
> 3) go to 0

Damn! They use gotos in the development of windows?!
I know understand why it keeps crashing..

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[DaBj]

Damn! They use gotos in the development of windows?!
I know understand why it keeps crashing..

I'm sitting at a Win2K machine at the moment so I can't do a search, but I am willing to bet my karma on that you would find goto statements in the linux kernel code as well...

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[MaxQuordlepleen]

[---snip---]
tanzarian:/$ grep -r ' goto ' /usr/src/linux | wc -l
1543
[----snip---]

that's from 2.4.19

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[terraformer]

You forgot:
x) Profit!

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[JudgeFurious]

4) profit!

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[IamTheRealMike]

There are quite a few in Wine also. I think they're primarily useful as an equivalent to try {} finally {} in languages that support exceptions (obviously C doesn't). If a condition fails just goto the end, where the cleanup code is guaranteed to run.

Used properly, gotos are no more harmful than any other construct.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[Milican]

Well, if you know what you are doing gotos are ok. In addition, they can actually be faster than other options because a goto does not have the overhead that a full fledged function call would have. The one thing you don't wanna do is skip all around your program. Gotos become dangerous when you do that. Stay within the current function and things will be ok. Once you go out of the current function you better know what you are doing. Otherwise variables you think you have may be different because of locality, or not being initialized, or plain not being declared yet. Anyway, there are some gotchas, but if a professional uses a goto they should know this.

JOhn

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[roman_mir]

Not needed. M$ style is to use macro for goto. The 'goto' is always expanded into:

profit.
goto x.

Now you see why M$ has so much money?

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[Dalcius]

Aye. Imagine this:

if (a) {
resource1 = somefunction();
}

if (b) {
resource2 = somefunction();
} else {
close(resource1);
return;
}

if (c) .... repeat ad nasauem.

Now imagine this with gotos. Write cleanup statements only once == easier to maintain. Less code == easier to fit in the L1 cache (important when developing a kernel).

"Gotos are bad" is just FUD; I'm sad to see it come from professors.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[supun]

Agreed.

My Perl packages all have to "goto" statments. They allo me to write 1 entrance, 1 exist subroutines and avoid of conditional blocks that can make the code un-readable.

sub do_something
{
my $rtc = 1;

if( $value != $correct_value )
{
# clean up stuff
goto bottom_of_sub;
}

$rtc = 0;

bottom_of_sub: # LABEL

return $rtc;
}

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft C actually does support structured exception handling with _try/_except (along with termination handlers using _finally), which is vital to the design of the NT kernel. I think it was added to the MS C compiler specifically for NT, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the proper use of C exception handling in kernel-mode NT code (e.g. device drivers) is explained in the NT/Windows DDK docs.

A related point is that I do recall that MS tried to get exception handling added to C some years back (for the C89 standard, IIRC), but failed. It didn't make it into C99 either, unfortunately, although I don't know if MS bothered trying to get it in again. (And people wonder why MS so blithely ignore standards.)

As for gotos, I agree there's nothing wrong with them. Even when exceptions are available as an alternative, gotos can be considerably more efficient in certain cases (e.g. where you know exceptions will never be thrown).

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[Minna Kirai]

It looks like you meant to write the traditional "cleanup code" example, but your pseudocode does not make sense. "close(resource1);" should only be done if it had been opened (when "a" was true), but you have it called based on "b", not "a".

The pattern you're looking for is

if (!(a = open("a"))) return;
if (!(b = open("b"))){
close(a); return;
}
if (!(c = open("c"))){
close(b); close(a); return;
} ...


Anyhow, gotos are still bad (from the academic standpoint that professors use).

The example of cleanup statements is an insufficient argument for allowing goto into a language. That problem can be solved with try/catch exception handlers, or final{} blocks, or even a special limited-goto which can only jump forward to the top-level of the same function.

A real goto statement, however, can do many more things that just jump to the postscript of a function. It can jump forwards, backwards, to/from the bodies of loops and other functions- in short, it can make your program enormously more difficult to understand, analyze, or optimize.

Djikstra alluded to the wisdom that goto should only be used for "alarm exits" or "abortion clauses". But restricting programmers to only use a feature in a few certain ways is less reliable than restricting the language to offer only safer, alternative features.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[moodboom]

I always assumed this was true, and I further wonder if any GPL stuff made it into Windows...
I further opine that wouldn't it be great if it turned out to be the case and they were forced to publish all their source...
then I come to my senses and realize that it would be bad enough to be forced to look at that source if they PAID you well... no one else should be made to suffer so...

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[grub]

wouldn't it be great if it turned out to be the case and they were forced to publish all their source

That would never happen. Money buys justice, look at OJ Simpson the murderer. MS' lawyers would stall the process for years.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[nathanh]

tanzarian:/$ grep -r ' goto ' /usr/src/linux | wc -l
1543

I'm not surprised. Dijkstra's "Goto Considered Harmful" paper isn't gospel. Lots of programmers disagree with it, including core developers of Linux. In fact, I only ever find first year uni students quoting the paper and that includes myself back when I first read it :-/

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[Dalcius]

"It looks like you meant to write the traditional "cleanup code" example, but your pseudocode does not make sense."

I missed the else { return } on the first block. And noting about your pseudocode, that is not the way it was intended. a == "a condition", a != "the resource". The error handling for resource1 = somefunction() is not shown for the sake of simplicity, although there is a good case for including it.

---
"The example of cleanup statements is an insufficient argument for allowing goto into a language. That problem can be solved with try/catch exception handlers, or final{} blocks, or even a special limited-goto which can only jump forward to the top-level of the same function."

To be honest, I hadn't considered a try/catch block, however the language has to support it (I'm making the case for the _use_ of goto, not the inclusion in the language). Even moreso, many times a goto appeals to the style of certain programmers (often linear programmers, as opposed to OOP programmers).

---
"A real goto statement, however, can do many more things that just jump to the postscript of a function. It can jump forwards, backwards, to/from the bodies of loops and other functions- in short, it can make your program enormously more difficult to understand, analyze, or optimize."

I agree; a limited goto as you described would make much more sense as any other use of one would be needlessly complex, IMO.

---
"But restricting programmers to only use a feature in a few certain ways is less reliable than restricting the language to offer only safer, alternative features."

Agreed.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[JordanH]

• Dijkstra is rolling over in his grave...

You might say that he's executing a structured loop with one exit point, at the top or the bottom of the loop, in his grave.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[geekee]

Yeah. I'm sure they guys who designed VMS are real UNIX fans.

Re:WinNT development cycle.

[iankerickson]

Damn! They use gotos in the development of windows?! I know understand why it keeps crashing..

Yes. It's 50 million lines of QBASIC source code.

SUB BSOD (whatExcuse, howHard)
LET hellFreezesOver = FALSE
DO POKE (RANDOM(whatExcuse), RANDOM(howHard))
UNTIL (hellFreezesOver)
END SUB

Or something like that. Hm, that sounds like something an NT developer might say. Or a slashdot poster. I'd batter make sure I mispelld enough wurds before I give people the wrong impression...

There we have it

[Anonymous Coward]

We thought, 'How hard could it be to build an OS?' and scheduled 18 months to build NT. But we had forgotten about some of the important stuff--user mode, networking, and so on."

Either this means that the NT team were actually fairly clueless...or incredibly cocky. Either way, that seems like a pretty stupid thing to say.

Re:There we have it

[chrisseaton]

_All_ developers are cocky - very cocky. It's not just a Windows thing.

Re:There we have it

[e2d2]

Remember, this was in a time when DOS was considered cutting edge tech at MS. But still I bet it was more like "You've got 18 months to do it" imposed from the top down, as are most laughable deadlines are.

Pharoah: You've got 18 months to build the pyramids. Why would it take longer? It's just a few cut stones..

Devel^^^^^ Mason: sir yes sir!

Re:There we have it

[Guppy06]

It could mean that NT was the first time they ever wrote their own OS...

Re:There we have it

[Locutus]

but they didn't, they based it on OS/2 and then put the Win16 API on it after 32-bitting it. They then hacked it up over the years to Window-ize more and more of it. The first networking in NT was provided by LanManager. An OS/2 product.

LoB

Re:There we have it

[joe90]

I don't think Microsoft have ever believed that DOS was cutting edge.

Microsoft used Xenix (Microsoft UNIX) internally for developing DOS and many applications that ran in a DOS environment.

Re:There we have it

[geekee]

No. They wrote NT from scratch based on VMS experience and abandoned IBMs OS/2 efforts

Re:There we have it

[zoydoid]

The shit-canned OS was called MICA, and large chunks of it went into NT, which is how NT was developed so fast, and why DEC sued MS.

Hmm

[CoolVibe]

Both articles feel like "feel-good" articles. There is little mention about IBM and OS/2, and the relationship between the two in the beginning of NT.

It's just a big advertising piece about how NT is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sure, it has some entertaining facts, but I'm still not buying it.

Re:Hmm

[mrpuffypants]

Winsupersite is, for the most part, a very pro-microsoft website...however, even if their reviews and previews may be slanted a bit they still get very early releases of different products and write decent reviews of them...with lots of screenshots!

Re:Hmm

[cushty]

I remember the early days of OS/2 when, if you believe "independent sources", Microsoft counted every sale of OS/2 as a sale of Windows. The last graph I took any notice of had both on an equal footing. Everything these days is spin, whichever side you're on.

Re:Hmm

[tshak]

NO, it's a piece made by developers, you know, people who care about code, not all of the politics and conspiracy theory's around them.

Re:Hmm

[binaryDigit]

NO, it's a piece made by developers, you know, people who care about code, not all of the politics and conspiracy theory's around them.

But the politics and conspiracies are a part of the development process. After all, the NT group was not free to drive the API they thought was superior, they had to tend to the one that corporate wanted them to. Remember that NT was supposed to be OS2 v3 and the corp. decision to drive it away from this had a major impact on development. As a developer I would think that this would be a major point since I've not talked to a single developer who would have chosen the Win api vs the OS/2 api as the one to drive into the future.

Re:Hmm

[CoolVibe]

Like I care about karma. I'm already capped at 50^H^HExellent.

Re:Hmm

[t0ny]

ya, being a zealot is pretty lucrative around here

Re:Hmm

[CoolVibe]

Exactly. It's details like these that are missing from the article.

Re:Hmm

[IntlHarvester]

The article pretty much hits on the main point of contention between IBM and Microsoft -- IBM just wasn't interested in their Windows project.

There was a simmering fight over whether OS/2 should be "Protected Mode Windows" or whether Windows should be "Presentation Manager for DOS". Since neither platform had that many users or developers at the time, it could have gone either way.

The key characteristic of the new API, eventually named Win32, is that, though it was a new API, it looked and acted just like the 16-bit Windows APIs, letting developers easily move to the new system and port their applications. "We made it possible to move 16-bit applications to NT very easily,"

While they make this sound like a Gee Whiz revelation, but in fact Microsoft wanted Windows compatibility in OS/2 from the beginning and IBM wanted a unique API.

Since IBM wore the pants, they won the day originally. However this really bit them in the ass with the the subsequent popularity of Windows 3, because it was difficult to target OS/2, so software was either missing or dismissed as a poor Windows port.

Not that Win32 was a huge success in the early years either -- most software had to be run in the Win 3.1 emulation, and even MS themselves only belatedly produced a 32-bit version of Office and not much other software.

Re:Hmm

[tellezj]

I think you mean dieing.

Re:Hmm

[3Bees]

mrpuffypants noted:

Winsupersite is, for the most part, a very pro-microsoft website

From the aprox 30 sec I looked at the site, it looks like they are supported by or are a part of a magazine called something along the lines of "Windows and .Net". It is hardly surprising that they would be pro-MicroSoft/pro-NT and herald both as super technologists. After all, without those technologies they wouldn't have a magazine!

Re:Hmm

[LO0G]

Not quite right....

In the early days of OS/2, IBM shipped a copy of Windows in in every OS/2 box (that's how they made it "better windows than windows"). But the license MS had with IBM required that they pay a royalty for every copy of Windows they shipped.

And IBM started claiming millions of copies of OS/2 sold but they only reported to MS that they had sold a couple of thousand copies.

Some bright lawyer at MS noticed the discrepency and asked IBM what was up...

And IBM magically reduced their number of units of OS/2 sold.

Alpha

[deacent]

I see a lot of complaining in the article about how some architectures were not ready for NT on a timely basis (Intel i860, PowerPC), but I see no mention how they were so slow to bring NT to the Alpha. I recall that DEC actually ended up porting VMS to the Alpha because they were waiting on MS for their promised NT release. I'm a bit curious to hear from the developers about their perspective on that.

I've used both NT and VMS on the Alpha (as well as a Unix varient). NT is sooooo slow.

-Jennifer

Re:Alpha

[garcia]

I have actually heard that NT ran better on the Alpha UDB than other OSs that run on it. The Alpha UDB was designed to be a small NT workstation.

Linux runs fine on mine but from what I hear NT also runs on it fairly well. I guess we would have had to be running it when the UDB first came out to make any sort of educated descision on that.

Anyone have first-hand experience w/NT on the UDB?

Re:Alpha

[vondo]

As I recall, Alphas with NT pre-installed were offered for about 25% less than the OSF/Digital-Unix/Tru64 versions because they SPECed about 25% slower.

Re:Alpha

[4of12]

how they were so slow to bring NT to the Alpha.

Really.

I was surprised to learn from the article how the early NT was so non x86 centric, shifting from i860 to R3000, etc. They even boast of the portability to different hardware because they weren't tied down to the x86 instruction set so tightly as were the 16 bit Windows developers at the time.

So, why, then, did the Alpha port of NT take so long? And, from what I understand, it relied heavily upon the ability of the early Alpha chip to run in some FX!32 compatibility mode to emulate the x86 instruction set.

The Alpha/NT story just doesn't seem to add up to me. There's some missing dark matter.

Re:Alpha

[Elbereth]

Yeah. NT on the UDB was actually pretty tolerable. I ran NT4 Server on a 166 MHz 21066 (first generation Alpha). I found it to be quite usable. I didn't keep NT4 on the Alpha for all that long, as this was just an experiment. I had the NT4 disc, I had a UDB, and I had some time to waste.

You have to remember that NT4 was a 32 bit operating system, even on the Alpha. Therefor, you didn't really gain much by going to the Alpha, except for some nice speed boosts (it was definitely the fastest CPU on the market for years).

It was similar to running NT4 on a Pentium Pro 166 or 200.

The biggest problem I had was finding software. However, everyone's favorite telnet app, putty, comes compiled for NT4/Alpha.

The Register previously offered Windows 2000 for the Alpha, if you asked them for it. I never did, since my UDB was seriously underpowered (128MB RAM, 166 MHz).

Re:Alpha

[Shimbo]

And, from what I understand, it relied heavily upon the ability of the early Alpha chip to run in some FX!32 compatibility mode to emulate the x86 instruction set.

The compatibility mode was all in software; at that time Alpha had a sufficient performance gap to emulate an x86 at a tolerable speed.

What really happened was that the speed gap lowered, and AMD became a serious competitor to Intel in the high x86 space. Once that happened, the motivation for Microsoft to maintain multiple architectures went away.

Re:Alpha

[Shimbo]

I recall that DEC actually ended up porting VMS to the Alpha because they were waiting on MS for their promised NT release.

I don't believe that for a minute. Just look at the PALcode on Alpha: it was designed to allow porting tricky VAX/VMS features (like atomic queue manipulation instructions) to a RISC architecture.

Besides, VMS on Alpha shipped months *before* any released version of NT.

Re:Alpha

[mattACK]

I had a Raptor Alpha 433 running NT 3.51. It was fast fast fast. FX!32 didn't come along until 4.0 (or _just_ before it, actually). Also, 486 emu didn't show up until NT4 either. That's why I had to use Photoshop 2.5 for photo editing instead of the newfangled 3.0.

Also, the computer was purple and yellow. It was like a Barney rice box and I loved it.

Re:Alpha

[trailerparkcassanova]

I did cross-development for i386 Win32 targets using my 233Mhz (overclocked to266Mhz) NoName and Visual C++/Alpha. It worked out really well.

Re:Alpha

[Beast Of Bodmin]

I had the privilege of a donation of two of Digital's AlphaStation 500/500. One was used to run NT, the other Digital UNIX 4.0a.

The DUX machine was sooo fast. I had (have) never seen X run so fast.

The NT box was much slower by comparison. For example the hourglass (!) that appeared on logging in, as the nasty piece of shit OS did whatever it did. Disgusting!

Re:Alpha

[Sloppy]

Ha ha! That's just what I was thinking.

Amazingly, I know a company that is doing that. They recently "upgraded" their system, and part of their upgrade is that the main app that they run all day (doing that one thing is all that most people there do), is just a character-mode app running on an expensive IBM RS6000-(?)something. (I guess it's running AIX? I didn't ask.) Not necessarily stupid, except when I realize that another part of this "upgrade" was that they bought a bunch of new Windows 2000 and XP workstations -- which will be used almost exclusively for telnetting.

And people get paid for this. And the checks don't bounce!

Re:Alpha

[batzo]

> I have actually heard that NT ran better on the Alpha UDB than other OSs that run on it. The Alpha UDB was designed to be a small NT workstation.

I ran it for some number of months on an Alpha 500au workstation. (miata) - it absolutely smoked, subectively it was as fast as 1Ghz intel boxes. emulated stuff under FX!32 wasn't quite as fast, but it was certainly useable.

Re:Alpha

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't know if any of the replies to you have any of this:

I haven't used VMS or Tru64 on my Alphas, but NT 4 actually felt snappier than faster x86 style machines running same operating system.

I had a UDB and despite how turdish the box was, its UI still behaved sleeker than a PII running twice as fast.

I also have a 500MHz Personal Work Station and it was the most reliable computer I've ever used, and its UI behavior under NT 4 still toasted a 500MHz PIII Xeon with a _much_ newer video card.

Despite that, for total processing power, the x86 version was faster in part because they were much newer systems, they just didn't seem so quick off the line.

BTW: The NT4 CD also included PPC and MIPS versions of the OS. Scuttlebutt is that there were a few Apple Macintoshe models that could boot and run some version of Windows NT. If I knew which, I'd grab one and install it to really tweak a Mac fan. :)

Re:Alpha

[sp1nl0ck]

Until recently, I managed an AlphaServer 8200 running NT4 and (believe it or not) Exchange 5.5.

It was solid as a rock - we only rebooted it for service pack updates and the like. The downside was getting a decent virus scanner, as we originally had Norton (which sucked). Trend eventually did the job for us, though. The other PITA was that VNC wouldn't run on it - something to do with the video card not supporting (IIRC) the Nagle algorithm. Of course, that might just be my memory playing tricks with me...

What did make me laugh, though, was that it had a single, measly 10Mbps NIC in it (there were 100Mbps and gigabot cards available, but there was this long-running plan to bin it and buy an Intel-based box, so it never got a higher bandwidth card). And this was the main Exchange box for a 200+ user site. I'm amazed we didn't get more complaints about the response from it.

Sadly, I had to decommission it recently. The company that owned it got bought out, and the lucky buyers wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. Oh, and they're using E2K, which kind of precluded any future for the trusty 8200 anyway...

Alan.

I can see the round table discussion now. . .

[bplipschitz]

"You compile it today."

"No way--*you* compile it!"

"No way! Hey--let's get Mikey, he'll compile *anything*!"

Re:I can see the round table discussion now. . .

[theguru]

Acording to tradition, the last guy to break the build has to stay late and babysit the build process.

In my office, you break the build, you buy a round of beer for every member of the team. :) Build breaks go way down as teams approach 10+ members.

Re:I can see the round table discussion now. . .

[pixel_bc]

I'm Canadian. We had to actually ban this policy because the entire team would be soused by about 10:30am.

Re:I can see the round table discussion now. . .

[RatBastard]

Sounds like the last time I used Linux.

VMS + 1 = WNT

[jjga]

It is interesting how incrementing each of the letters in VMS gives WNT. It is something similar to IBM and HAL.

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[illtud]

It is interesting how incrementing each of the letters in VMS gives WNT. It is something similar to IBM and HAL.

What, an urban myth?

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[Ed_Moyse]

Er. I don't think that "incrementing each of the letters in VMS gives WNT. It is something similar to IBM and HAL" can be called an urban myth.
More like true? Correct? Accurate? Factual? Of course, whether this is a coincidence or not is another matter, and might be the basis of an urban myth. ;-)

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[Guppy06]

Not that it had any "signifigance" back when the project was still being called "OS/2 NT"...

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[zoombat]

Funny. Actually, the link you provided seems to indicate to me that IBM/HAL is NOT an urban myth, but rather for whatever reason the author is probably denying the origin of the name. I guess we'll never really know for sure...

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Clarke explicitly stated (in "The Lost Worlds of 2001), and had Chandra state in 2010, that it was a coincidence. He said had he realized it at the time he would have changed the name, because IBM had been extremely helpful during the development of 2001.

HAL stands for Heuristic ALgorithmic. In 2010, one of the characters comments that you could hear Chandra capitalize the letters when he says the phrase.

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[jjga]

A good example of how the term 'Anonymous Coward' can suit somebody so perfectly.

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[jjga]

I don't really understand why there are so many enraged, obnoxious people around. I just exposed what I believe is an interesting coincidence, and there you are foaming through your mouth!

Re:VMS + 1 = WNT

[jjga]

I had the same significance then as it has now: none. I was just pointing out an somewhat interesting coincidence. That's all. Do not think too much about it.

Security?

[elliotj]

"By late 1989, the NT group began growing. They added a formal networking team and expanded the security team beyond a single individual who, incidentally, had also been previously burdened by file system and localization development."

You mean they've got more than one guy working on security for Windows? Oh come on, who's gonna believe that?

Re:Security?

[intermodal]

It's quite simple, really. They just had the rent-A-cop who makes sure everyone has parking stickers doing the file system and L10N at first, which explains quite a bit about NTFS, and then they added a night watchman to the roster as well.

Re:Security?

[t0ny]

I think if you compare NT with the security of a lot of platforms that came out around the same time, you will see a very similiar set of holes.

I still remember all the programs all over the internet you could use to grab NetWare passwords, so its not like MS was the only one with holes.

What is a difference, however, is that people are still using NT4, whereas none of its contemporary OSs are around anymore (or at least, not around in a significant installed base).

Re:Security?

[stratjakt]

Thats a point many (purposefully) ignore.

NT was designed in a pre-internet era, where security for the office PC's was still mainly the guns-and-guards model. Users and passwords were there (from your average managers POV) to keep Jim from accidentally deleting or overwriting Sally's spreadsheets.

None of the 'holes' can be exploited if there's no access to the system whatsoever. It was a non-issue until the .com explosion when everyone decided that every digital device needed to be plugged into the interweb.

Re:Security?

[thrillseeker]

None of the 'holes' can be exploited if there's no access to the system whatsoever.

Ah ... now I see ... it was secure as long as no one tried to use it in an insecure manner.

Re:Security?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Actually, it's more like 'the fact that your vest isn't bulletproof doesn't matter until somebody invents the gun.'

UNIX had the exact same problem; the entire point behind UNIX was that it was MULTICS with a bunch of the security stuff REMOVED. Go look on some old security lists; many daemons, such as sendmail or lpd, would give you root just for the asking.

Re:Security?

[IntlHarvester]

NT was designed in a pre-internet era

For example, the HUGE reliance on RPC for remote administration in place of timesharing access. (Which most NT admins don't even seem to know about anyway...)

It's not that they didn't think about networks -- networking is completely core to the system. But their entire philosophy is incompatible with the idea of untrusted networks like the Internet, and it's bit them in the ass over and over again. (to be fair, Unix has had many similar problems)

The place I was working at in 1994 stuck their NT 3.51 servers directly on the Internet so that users could login from home. When they were hacked, they yelped how Microsoft said it was "secure". MS just didn't have any sense of security outside of a LAN where you 'trusted' everyone anyway. (It turned out that many of the old LanMan exploits published in the 80s worked against NT.)

Re:Security?

[t0ny]

Very true. And not only that, but a lot of the legacy services, such as sendmail, have their security holes buried so deeply that the only recourse is to not use them. That is why there are many alternatives to sendmail, ssh, etc; when you need to replace something, many people put their own 'spin' on it.

For a really good look at how hacking had to be done back in the day, go rent "Wargames". While factually incorrect on several things, the scene where he was wardialing was very much correct.

The percentage of companies allowing any kind of outside access to their system was much less than 1%, and it was mainly used for inter-site communication.

Email? largely unknown at the time.

Message bases? We would call up the local BBS and use their message base; essentially a forum like any other, but a much smaller user base. A really successful BBS would have a whopping hundred or so members!

Anyway, I could continue on the 'back in my day' speach, but I need to save material for future posts =)

Re:Security?

[Steveftoth]

It's not that they didn't think about networks -- networking is completely core to the system. But their entire philosophy is incompatible with the idea of untrusted networks like the Internet, and it's bit them in the ass over and over again. (to be fair, Unix has had many similar problems)
but where they went wrong was not learning from the many mistakes that unix made, and then improving on them. If you look at the history of Windows security, it's like they covered their eyes with regard to unix or something. As if what they were building had nothing in common with such an inferior product.
This attitude is way too common in the software industry. To learn from other's mistakes is something most software engineers don't do.

Re:Security?

[Deadplant]

I still remember all the programs all over the internet you could use to grab NetWare passwords, so its not like MS was the only one with holes.

netware, ha!
Netware doesn't count, it was intentionally built to be hackable so the CIA could spy on the europeans et al. ... sound like a conspiracy theory doesn't it?... the real world is a scary place.

Re:Security?

[IntlHarvester]

Well, Microsoft made all the same coding errors the Unix people did, but that wasn't really an known issue back then.

Shit like NFS and NIS was seriously inferior to NT -- almost to it's benefit because nobody in the right mind would ever say that it was "secure". MS's hashed passwords, single login, ACLs, authenticated RPC, etc was superior -- just not superior enough to run over the Internet.

What MS missed was the underground trend in the Unix world to tighten up the technolgoy that was already in place -- better file permissions, services that don't require root, "secure by default", etc.

Re:Security?

[Tony-A]

What MS missed was the underground trend in the Unix world to tighten up the technolgoy that was already in place -- better file permissions, services that don't require root, "secure by default", etc.
Hmmmm, I wonder how much of that is due to the OpenBSD crowd.
Considering its origins, I think Unix would tend to have security appropriate for a department, about the level of the locks on office doors and desks. For security you would use physical isolation and/or something actually designed for security. All things considered, Unix security does pretty well. It does seem optimized to give about the most effective security for the lease amount of effort.

Compiled?

[patvan]

I thought it was forged deep within Mt. Doom...

Re:Compiled?

[JudgeFurious]

First it was compiled, then the entire sorry mess was trucked up to Mt. Doom for a quick forging.

Then of course before they even made it halfway back to Barad-Dur an orc ran up with a fistful of bug reports and they had to turn around, walk all the way back to mountain, and forge it again. Then up runs another orc with more complaints...

Eventually they settled on regular trips back to Mt. Doom to keep the thing together. They call them Service Packs.

Re:Compiled?

[moosesocks]

From a rec.humor.funny posting (slightly edited) by dated 19 March 1996.

What you did not know about Windows NT

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit.

As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows NT on my PC. I told him how happy I was with this operating system, and showed him the Windows NT CD. To my surprise he threw it into my microwave oven and turned the oven on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw a inscription, an inscription finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE 10 E510CC98D444AA08E1324

'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said.

'No, but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'

One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...

History of Windows

[Toasty16]

Bill Gates: "We need an OS that doesn't suck."

Engineers: "No problem, we'll release betas every year and you can sell them to the public for the price of a finished product."

Bill Gates: "Good idea. What do you think Steve?"

Steve Ballmer: "Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers...*wheeze* *hack* *cough*...."

Bill Gates: "It's ideas like those that will make you CEO in 10 years."

Re:History of Windows

[SN74S181]

It has always amazed me that Steve Ballmer and his 'Developers, developers....' rant gets so much play, and everybody forgets that it's yet another thing that Microsoft stole from Apple. I mean, Ballmer may be somewhat amusing to observe, but the real court jester of that kind of highjinx was good old Guy Kawasaki. What a clown he was!

Re:History of Windows

[geekee]

NT4 came out in 95. Win2000 in 2000. No charges were made for service packs in between. How many versions of MacOS did Apple charge people for in that time period? Your isn't would be funny if it had some basis in fact.

Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[defile]

...so full of shit?

To step around the topic for a second:

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows is dedicated to providing all of the information you need to evaluate Microsoft's current and upcoming Windows operating system technologies. These exciting products include Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows XP Media Center Edition (code-named Freestyle) Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Media 9 Series (code-named Corona), and Windows Server 2003, which will launch in April.

Sounds like it'll be an EXCITING, unbiased, hard hitting, honest review to me!

Maybe that's not the best example. But even when you read technical treatises on Microsoft technologies the authors always manage to pack in gushing, surrealist praise.

Wasn't there even a book? THE AWESOME POWER OF DIRECT3D? Amusingly enough, it was released several months after John Carmack and the rest of the gaming industry started bitching Microsoft out for pushing Direct3D over the clearly superior OpenGL.

I'd hate to be all conspiracy here, but damn it's either that or believing that all Microsoft reviewers/writers are really stupid.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[FatherOfONe]

Sir, if I had any mod points, you would get them.

Well put.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> John Carmack and the rest of the gaming industry started bitching Microsoft out for pushing Direct3D over the clearly superior OpenGL.

Rest of the gaming industry? From my viewpoint it was Carmack alone.

Clearly superior OpenGL? Depends what you're using it for. OpenGL certainly wasnt (and still isnt in many cases) faster on consumer level cards. Direct3D was developed alongside consumer level hardware supporting features that actually exist, OpenGL was designed on paper.

By and large 3D gaming was being written for glide, and developers absolutely loved an open api specifically targetted for game development.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[Alric]

I have had this thought myself, more often lately. I have come to the conclusion that it's probably not an active conspiracy by MSFT. Instead, I think it is a passive effect of a monopoly system.

My example:
Reviewer A writes a technical summary of some new MSFT product. Reviewer A invested months learning this new product and how it fits into MSFT's overall strategy. Reviewer A runs a consulting firm that specializes in MSFT products. That firm has invested time in training its people to know the new MSFT product. Reviewer A is probably not conciously being unethical, but he needs people to use this new MSFT product so his firm can make money helping companies solve the new problems that this product created. He writes a review/book that highlights the good points and downplays the bad points.

So, his review is biased, but it's not exactly a conspiracy by MSFT.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[jeeptj]

If you would have actually noticed that it is NOT a review but a small overview of the actual development cycle for Windows 2003 Server you wouldn't be whining about all "reviewers" being full of shit. Hate Microsoft all you want but for pete's sake; get real!

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[The Bungi]

Not that people who review the latest Linux distros that ArE pOiSeD tO TaKe OvEr THE dEsKtOP AnY DaY NoW wItH SoMe AmAzInG FeAtUrEs AnD ThE AdDeD BoNuS OF A GrApHiCaL InStAlLeR* ever do that.

Nah.

* lame caps filter

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[kfg]

This isn't a conspiracy. It's an effect of what my granny would have called "knowing what side your toast is buttered on."

It's endemic in the entire "review industry." In fact, it's rampant in the media industry. Do you think The Filthy Critic gets invited on junkets, or out on the yacht with all the hot, willing little starlets?

Many reviewers are nothing more than karma whores. That's the reason for the founding of Consumer Reports.

The ones who are not get "modded down" to the fringes and you're less likely to even come across them.

That's the way it is, that is the way it shall be.

KFG

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[rjung2k]

Yeah, whereas even the Mac zealots will ding Steve Jobs when Apple screws up. Just look at the dot-Mac fiasco as an example.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[dasmegabyte]

Case in point: Tom Pabst. The guy was the BEST reviewer of all forms of hardware in 1999. I wouldn't trust anybody else. The guy had the know how and the connections.

Then, he gave a couple bad reviews. To people like Intel. Suddenly, he wasn't getting the latest chips. Suddenly, he was borrowing them from other people, violating NDAs, or waiting for the release like the rest of us. His site became "great, but old news" instead of "just in time answers." I moved my eyes to the more "read between the lines" style of Anandtech.

Moral of the story? If you're a corporate whore, you'll benefit from it pretty much every time.

By the way, I love NT. Windows 2000 is the best system I've ever used and it's mostly because it developed organically. If linux had a bunch of eggheads worrying about ease of administration and intuitive GUIs instead of hooking everything through the command line and scoffing at developers who want to get paid, I wouldn't be tapping this into Internet Explorer.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[EnglishTim]

John Carmack and the rest of the gaming industry started bitching Microsoft out for pushing Direct3D over the clearly superior OpenGL.

Before Direct3D, All games using 3D hardware had to have a different rendering subsystem depending on what graphics card you had - 3dFX, Rendition, PowerVR etc...

Direct3D was an attempt to allow a game to be written to a single API and run on any 3d card. But why not use OpenGL? You have to remember that those first set of cards weren't very powerful, and they didn't support all the base OpenGL features. At the time, due to the kind of things that OpenGL was being used for, it was accepted practice that if your hardware couldn't do some part of the standard, it would emulate it in software. Obviously you can't do that with games, so Direct3D was designed so that you could find out what features a card supported and just use them, degrading gracefully. It was only when Carmack got together with 3dFX and they produced the OpenGL minidriver, that people started pumping out incomplete OpenGL implementations for gaming.

It's true that DirectX was pretty crappy at first - version 3 was the first usable version, and it didn't really start getting good until version 5. Certainly by version 6 OpenGL was not 'clearly superior', and I would say all the versions since then have outclassed OpenGL. OpenGL 2 is looking pretty promising, though...

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[Steveftoth]

Direct3D was open? Is open? I guess if you are a large video card company (ATI, nVidia, S3 ) then it was 'open' as MS actually asked them what they wanted in the API. But for anyone else it was hardly 'open'. OpenGL on the other hand has an extension mechanism, which is not 'the best' but it does work. It allows anyone to write an extension and put it in the OpenGL driver. So basically all you have to do is write an OpenGL driver and then users can link to your extention. How do you add more features to DirectX? You can't unless MS does it for you.

However, you do have to hand it to MS for adapting so quickly to the PC gaming market. Without them, we would not have the advances in gaming that have happened over the last 10 years in the windows world. Us users would still be tweaking config files and rebooting just to play certain games. I for one had many startup disks just so that I could play games like X-Wing, Doom etc.

DirectX is the reason that the gaming landscape is unified in Windows.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[mav[LAG]]

Rest of the gaming industry? From my viewpoint it was Carmack alone.

He certainly started it but many agreed, and continue to agree with him.

OpenGL certainly wasnt (and still isnt in many cases) faster on consumer level cards.

Speed wasn't the primary concern to him, it was the design and functionality of the two APIs.

An excellent chronology of that period (Christmas 96 to around October 97) can be found here.

By and large 3D gaming was being written for glide, and developers absolutely loved an open api specifically targetted for game development.

At first. But when 3dfx kept pushing our their GL drivers - and actively targeting with lawsuits any developers who dared to write wrappers - the time was ripe for a change, and it came with the TNT.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[Locutus]

if the technology doesn't ONLY RUN on MS Windows, Microsoft will come up with their own version. It all comes back to saving Windows. Wasn't it Bill Gates who said "Does anybody remember Windows?" when Microsoft developers got to excited about Java?

Is there any open standard today that Microsoft hasn't already or isn't attempting to make a proprietary MS Windows-only technology?

Do you really think that Microsoft did Direct3D to solve more than a MARKETING problem? Couldn't they have provided a better solution quicker by working with the OpenGL group? Don't kid yourself, it's all about owning the API's and if OpenGL v2 starts gaining traction, a few $100 million from Microsoft and another MS-API will show up. Or they'll buy all the companies with interesting OpenGL v2 apps( Coopers and Peters... ). IMO.

LoB

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[Shawn Baumgartner]

There's nothing inherently wrong with bias. The problem lies when that bias isn't made readily apparent to the reader/viewer/whatever. Hell, biased sources are often great points of reference simply because of their increased access to information from those they favor, as the site of this article has demonstrated. Demonizing them with accusations of conspiracy or stupidity for their openly professed bias is simply the other side of the coin of your own complaint.

If your hatred for all things Microsoft runs so deep, read more sites like that one. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and all of that. :)

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[Watcher]

Rest of the gaming industry? From my viewpoint it was Carmack alone.
Incorrect. There were a number of developers who agreed with Carmack, not the least of them Chris Hecker.

OpenGL certainly wasnt (and still isnt in many cases) faster on consumer level cards.
This was not the point of the developer's complaint with Direct3D. The problem with Direct3D was (from what I've heard things have gotten better, but I have little use for D3D these days) development speed. It typically took an order of magnitude more code to implement the same feature (such as, say, rendering a triangle) in D3D as it does in OpenGL. Anyone out there remember the difficulty of getting geometric operations functional in D3D? This was built in from day one in OpenGL, so OpenGL apps used the GPU without modification? Microsoft missed the point of the argument as well, and publicly embarassed themselves when they paid an intern to write an OpenGL wrapper for Direct3D to show that GLQuake ran just as fast through D3D as OpenGL. Sure, it was the same speed-but that wasn't the point!

Direct3D was developed alongside consumer level hardware supporting features that actually exist, OpenGL was designed on paper.
And so, unlike OpenGL, requires additional effort to grow the design for new hardware. I would far rather be able to let the library figure out what can work and what doesn't than having a half dozen code paths to handle all of the various hardware out there. D3D at the time (version 3 and 5 era), did not grow well for new features, and made code maintenance a nightmare for a large project. Also, OpenGL was designed by people who had a great deal of experience in graphics software development-DirectX (and Direct3D especially) was designed by people who openly admitted to having limited experience in graphics and game development. Hence the numerous complaints with the design.

By and large 3D gaming was being written for glide, and developers absolutely loved an open api specifically targetted for game development.
Glide was a nice library, for the time. There were a couple downsides to it, however: 1) it was only for 3Dfx hardware. This didn't win over the portability benefits of OpenGL. 2) It was designed for the hardware of the time. Like D3D, it didn't always expand well, although it was far better designed. Also, I really wouldn't consider it any more "open" than D3D, as there was no standards body beyond 3Dfx.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[EnglishTim]

You're certainly right that Direct3D was created to boost the popularity of Windows - when the first version came out, it was to try and get people gaming in Windows rather than DOS. I remember when they first did this thinking - Windows? Pah - that's just for wordprocessors - games will run too slowly in it. You also have to remember that Windows didn't have nearly the same competition in the PC marketplace that it has now - Linux was an interesting oddity, and there certainly weren't any games of note running on Linux at the time. Also, hardware accelerated OpenGL was still confined to the very high end - Intergraph Workstations and the like. Home PC hardware acceleration meant cards like the original Matrox Millennium. I doubt very much that Microsoft were intentionally going against OpenGL because they didn't want an API that people could use to port games to other platforms. There weren't any other gaming platforms to port to at the time, apart from the Mac. I think it's much more likely that OpenGL was seen as too high-end, and not suitable for PCs of that era. The real competitors that Direct3D had at the time were things like Renderware and BRender, which could both abstract the underlying hardware and provide good software rendering, which was important at the time.

Re:Why do Microsoft reviewers always sound...

[nathanh]

Rest of the gaming industry? From my viewpoint it was Carmack alone.

Then your viewpoint is myopic. Carmack had a petition going at the time with dozens of signatures from professional game developers. Direct3D really sucked back then and game developers were not amused that Microsoft was pushing an inferior technology. There is good information here:

http://www.exaflop.org/docs/d3dogl/ind.html

The signatures are on an open letter to Microsoft demanding better support for OpenGL. An interesting signature - once you get past Sweeney and Carmack - is Seamus Blackley himself. Even Mr Xbox didn't like Direct3D back then. That really says a lot.

Punted to longhorn

[dracken]

"On the day I attended, one feature group had four of its bugs punted to Longhorn because they had failed to shown up for War Room. When someone argued that they should be given another day, Wanke simply said, "F#$% 'em. If it was that important, they would have been here. It's in Longhorn. Next bug."

Did one feature group have its *feature* postponed to longhorn or the *bug-fixes* postponed to longhorn ? hmmmmmm interesting.

Re:Punted to longhorn

[thoth]

It is hard to tell. Bugs are filed for the obvious (software errors) but also things like new features desired, performance enhancements to be had, and occasionally things like rearchitecture needed (say, redo horribly confusing UI to something better).

It is true though, when the war room meets you have to have somebody there to vouch for any fixes checked in to resolve bugs. Mostly the war room wants to hear about impact, if the fix was tested, any issues that arose from the testing (regressions and/or new problems), and if the fix is really needed.

best quote from the article

[babycakes]

"For Windows Server 2003, the War Room is run by Todd Wanke, who we eventually found to be an amazingly likeable guy. However, in the hour-long War Room sessions, Wanke rules with an iron fist" :)

Re:best quote from the article

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.english2american.com/dictionary/w.html# wanker

Re:best quote from the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Wanke rules with an iron fist

That's gotta hurt...

Re:best quote from the article

[JudgeFurious]

Oh no, we get it. Not like Wanke "gets it" but we do get it.

Re:best quote from the article

[dubstop]

I thought that the best quote was near the end of the second article: "There's no swearing on Saturdays."

Re:best quote from the article

[FyRE666]

Yeah, the different interpritations can be amusing... I've always wondered what the Americans thought of the first line of that Robbie Williams track "My breath smells of 1,000 fags"? Maybe that's what doomed his attempts to make it big in the US???

Incremental build?

[BenjyD]

"...compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week

So they rebuild Windows from scratch every day? Somebody send them a copy of make, please.

Re:Incremental build?

[BZ]

If you look at other large projects of this type (eg Mozilla), both clean builds and dep builds using make are done on automated build systems. The two types of builds will find different types of issues.

Re:Incremental build?

[SnowDog_2112]

In all the software groups I've been involved in, it's considered good practice to do a full clean build nightly. Doing incremental builds is fine for developers, but when you want to make a drop that goes into an automated testing suite, etc., you do a full clean build each time, "just to be safe."

Re:Incremental build?

[sohp]

Incremental builds are fine for development, but you really do want a from-scratch, or "clobber" build for the gold version. Dependencies are complex, and tools like make and pre-compiled headers are not perfect. For highest quality you really want to start clean and be sure everything gets rebuilt.

Re:Incremental build?

[mark_lybarger]

i'm not sure i follow that logic. if i've got a piece of software that uses libX, and links either statically or dynamically with libX. if my software is being updated, but libX isn't, then i wouldn't want to recompile libX "just to be safe". to me rebuilding libX throws another wrench into the fire. when libX source changes, then rebuild it and re-test all the software the uses it, but not till then.

Re:Incremental build?

[utahjazz]

So they rebuild Windows from scratch every day? Somebody send them a copy of make, please.

They do have make. They start by using a technique you may not have heard of:

make clean

Re:Incremental build?

[jensend]

You mean "somebody send them a copy of ccache? As others have pointed out, ofttimes a clean build is needed. ccache can speed repetitive clean builds up quite a bit.

Re:Incremental build?

[sheldon]

"to me rebuilding libX throws another wrench into the fire."

Exactly!

If rebuilding libX is going to cause you problems, then you want to know about that NOW and fix it. I don't see any benefit to waiting to address build issues. Do you seriously think you're going to improve your productivity?

Re:Incremental build?

[thoth]

They use build.exe which winds up calling nmake, Microsoft's make.

The build process is divided up as well, each major group has a build lab (e.g. COM, Networking, kernel, shell) where they build their part of the product daily. Builds mean generating free, checked, for all SKUs (server, advanced, datacenter, etc.) and all CPUs (x86, ia64, amd64). When each group's build achieves a level of stability/quality, they integrate their changes into the master build lab, and eventually there is a reverse integrate from master to group to pick up other group's changes which might effect your area.

There's a morning and evening build, but we just started to ignore one of them because it was way too much time to be installing and/or upgrading twice a day.

So "they" aren't just building from scratch every day, the master build lab is building 5+ SKU's, free/checked, for 3 CPU's every day. And the group build lab's (called virtual build labs) are doing the same, but just for their area ;)

Re:Incremental build?

[SnowDog_2112]

"my software is being updated, but libX isn't, then i wouldn't want to recompile libX"

I guess it depends on exactly how much you trust the software that decides what depends on what and what's changed. Can you honestly tell me you've never had a problem that doing a "make clean" fixed?

All I'm saying is that for the groups I've worked in, the cost of having the automated script do a "make clean all" as opposed to "make all" each night is considered acceptable for the peace of mind that knowing that absolutely every change is accounted for and there's no possible dependencies that got dropped in by make.

Re:Incremental build?

[Thud457]

Yes, but Microsoft has taught us that COMPUTERS CAN'T BE TRUSTED!

So many people go to great lengths to minimize the possibility of some automated cock-up.

Re:Incremental build?

[Arkaein]

Not only that, but they probably can't trust their compilers and linkers to get incremental buildds right. I develop using Visual Studio/C++, and in just about any multi-project application changes to core files used throughout the app almost never result in all affected files being rebuilt correctly.

If I'm lucky this leads to compile errors. Sometimes though, it appears to build the EXE correctly but I end up getting run-time errors seemingly unrelated to the changed code. A "Rebuild All" fixes these problems.

I think the problem is that the compiler/linker tries to be clever deciding what files need to be rebuilt. Rather than just looking at timestamps for file modifications, it tries to ignore changes that do not affect synta, like comments and whitespace. Whatever the problem, it manages to screw up a lot, especially with inter-project dependencies.

Re:Incremental build?

[Osty]

That depends on how libX is integrated into your project. Do you actively develop libX in your source tree, making changes to it and building it at the same time you build your product? If so, then you need to rebuilt it nightly (you can get cute, and look at changelists for your build and not rebuild some portions of your tree based on that, but it'll usually take about as long to determine that as it would to just build the thing).

However, if libX is developed by another team, you shouldn't be building the source code at all. Take drops of the library (and maybe that means you take source code drops and build the lib once yourself, or you take binary drops), and only when there are significant changes in libX that would benefit your product. That way, you're not rebuilding libX, and you're fairly well-protected against changes in libX (you only get a new libX if you need a bugfix or new feature).

Re:Incremental build?

[sharkey]

So they rebuild Windows from scratch every day?

That explains why MS tech support thinks simply reinstalling Windows every day isn't a big problem.

Re:Incremental build?

[foriegnb]

Yep we do an incremental build every night, and a system build (clean build) once a week. Of course, we build a compiler and then use that to compile our own code each week, which used to add an interesting wrinkle when some one broke the checker or linker the night of a system build. these days we have a delivery system that does a build, and only if that works (and passed automated tests) does the delivery system pass the component into the nightly, and then weekly build. we've been doing that since I wrote the delivery system 5 or 6 years ago. we compile 2 compiler/ide products (think visual studio like) a code analayse tool and an integration server 5 days a week. takes about 3 hours to build each compiler/ide suite and 1-2 each for the analasis /IS tools. Of course MS also used to have a tester per developer (not sure they still do) so unit testing gets done each day by someone other than the developer. I still have to do my own :-(

Re:Incremental build?

[cookd]

In a complex build environment, the BUILD ENVIRONMENT ITSELF changes from day to day. The various compilers, linkers, and "makefiles" (actually "sources" files in the Windows build system) change, and things like that don't get picked up from just an incremental build. For a complicated system, there is more to the build system than just "build the out of date files."

Did someone say cocky?

[Anonymous Coward]

...the War Room is run by Todd Wanke...

Oh dear. Poor Todd.

The NT Kernel Is Good

[DakotaSandstone]

I know this is the equivalent of Flamebait on /., but the NT kernel (borrowed though it may be from other OS ideas) is actually darn good.

Passing IRP's (IO request packets) between drivers creates a much more well-defined interface that a bunch of globally namespaced functions just calling each other (like some other OSes we all know). It also lends itself to a layered driver model (Bus Driver, Physical Driver, Functional Driver) much better.

I really like the NT Kernel. What driver developers do with it isn't the kernel's fault.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Elbereth]

The NT kernel was good. Then Microsoft moved the GUI into the kernel. We all know what happened after that. Okay, to be fair, the NT kernel is still pretty nice, but it's deeply annoying that Microsoft is so willing to sacrifice stability for a little more speed. I find it difficult to crash Win2k and XP, but it does happen... mostly from PC games.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[stratjakt]

I partially agree. I would have preferred to see it implemented both ways, then let the user/admin decide.

If I want to run the GUI and video drivers in userspace for stability on a server or workstation, then I could. But the kernel mode is definately a huge speed boost for gaming, multimedia (remember how impossible it was to do anything like that under NT 4.0?)

All in all, I probably like it better the way it is. I've never had a problem so long as I stick with WHQL certified drivers. It'd be nice to be able to choose.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[DakotaSandstone]

Good point. That was a mixed blessing. But then again, so is the fact that any 3rd party can write a kernel driver (although MS is trying to assuage this with things like driver signing)

I've read some interesting defenses of moving GDI to the kernel. Some of the rationale was:

• GDI crashing, be it in the kernel or user mode, is basically a fatal system error. As designed, it is not clear how NT could "restart" a crashed user-mode GUI subsystem. Even if GDI is user mode, if it crashes, you'd probably have to reboot anyway.
• There are many other complex subsystems that exist in the kernel, and have been made pretty bulletproof (scheduler, disk subsystem). What makes the graphics subsystem any more dangerous? Yes, moving code to the kernel requires less buggy code, but we're Microsoft, and we're up to the challenge. It can be done.

Personally, I would love to see an OS take advantage of more than 2 of the 4 "rings" an x86 processor has. In such an OS, one could theoretically have a driver crash, and could still recover.

Until that day, though, I agree - GUI subsystem code is hard to make bulletproof, and moving said code into the "sacred" kernel is pretty gutsy.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[captaineo]

One might argue that direct function calls are better because they allow explicit checking of types and function signatures (by the compiler) and invariants (at function entry points). Just passing structs around is easier on programmers, but can lead to very hard-to-find bugs if somebody makes a mistake somewhere (imagine a large C program where every function took one void* argument).

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[dildatron]

I have crshed Win2k Advanced server quite a number of times. Here are the latest few I can remember:

Had three downloads coming down with Mozilla, nearly maxing out my connection (each about 700KB/s). Then, the machine bluescreened and said TCPIP.SYS (or something similar to do with networking... i forget exactly what it was) had dumped.

Another instance was when I accidentally started 3 instances of outlook. The machine just bluescreened and rebooted. these are two different machinines. They are dual boot Linux/Win2k, and Linux works fine doing the same (type of) thing.

I have also crashed linux, so don't think I am just trashing the NT kernel. Linux and NT could both use some work to get where some of the commercial unixes are. But, I think Win2k and Linux are fairly solid, but there is definately room for both kernels to improve, and we don't need to get started on the older VM problems either.

I remember one day about a year ago when we managed to crash an N-class HPUX server. I thought the world might end - it is that stable. We found out it was a hardware failure that didn't manifest until several months down the road. Still, HPUX and Sub boxes are a lot more stable than windows or Linux, luckily that gap is getting smaller though and we get more stability for less money.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[modicr]

Yesterday I installed Windwows XP SP1
with Novell Client 32 4.83 SP1 on the
following machine:
1. Pentium 166 MMX (on i430VX chipset)
2. WD 80GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache
3. 128 MB RAM (4*32 EDO)
4. VGA S3 2MB

It works GREAT!!! I just couldn't
believe my eyes. Something like
this is more than enough for simple
office work (email & word).

Roman

P.S. Installation did take some
time, but who cares ...

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Elbereth]

That would have been very cool.

That way, when you were gaming, you could have all the speed you wanted, while risking the occasional BSOD.

I've got WHQL drivers, too, but I can still crash XP. Like I said, it really doesn't happen often. But it's possible.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[IamTheRealMike]

I really like the NT Kernel. What driver developers do with it isn't the kernel's fault.

Well....... maybe.

I seem to recall an MS employee claiming that it was entirely Microsofts fault Windows was so unstable, even though crashes were normally caused by faulty drivers. His theory was that if MS were more open with the kernel code, driver manufacturers could work more closely and easier with them, and the overall stability would go up. Instead what happened (they claimed) was that they would investigate a crash, find that some dodgy driver was screwing about with the kernel and so they'd tighten up the interfaces, get even more secretive with the code. The driver developers, faced with a brick wall, would then invent even more elaborate (and fragile) hacks to do what they want, so the stability went down, not up.

So, you can't really blame the kernel as a thing per se, but perhaps you can blame the management of it. Linux is now facing a similar problem with the growth of binary only drivers - they tend to hook into the ksyms and cause extremely hard to track down bugs, which is why they are no longer allowed to use those hooks.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Crowley]

If one was to argue that direct function calls were better, then one could use the Microsoft sanctioned kernel mode direct call interfaces. PCMCIA is one of the main contenders for direct call interfaces, it's used in all the sample code for the IRP minor function IRP_MN_QUERY_INTERFACE.

Simplistically, a driver publishes an interface (a GUID) and registers it. Other drivers which need this interface, do a bit of houskeeping, then send the QUERY_INTERFACE IRP to the target driver, getting a structure full of pointers to functions.

So even NT developers thought that direct call functions were a good idea.

--

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I'm pretty certaion it wouldn't work, unless you installed in on a faster machine and put the hard drive in the Pentium 166.

AFAIK, WinXP won't install on anything slower than 200 (266?) MHz.

(Not that I care... I use Gentoo Linux and Win2K)

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Yep. NT3.51 had a rock solid reputation that I haven't seen on an NT system since (though W2KSP2 comes fairly close).

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Personally, I would love to see an OS take advantage of more than 2 of the 4 "rings" an x86 processor has.

Can you say OS/2?

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Billly Gates]

"The NT kernel was good. Then Microsoft moved the GUI into the kernel",

Boy, its a good thing that no frame buffers are in the Linux kernel.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[nani popoki]

Can you say Multics? If not, you are not up on the history of the art. (We used to refer to the Multics System Administrator as the Lord of the Rings.) I've written stuff for Multics that ran in multiple USER rings -- four and five, at least. I remember few details (after 25 years!) but it seems to me that ring 0 was kernel and ring 1 was drivers. Check out www.multicians.org and alt.os.multics.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[person-0.9a]

> Passing IRP's (IO request packets) between
> drivers creates a much more well-defined
> interface

Passing around IRPs is no better interface than what some other (well known) OS'es have, and if you've done it, then you know the flaming hoops you have to jump through when you get backed into a corner have to roll your own.

But I agree, the NT kernel is well designed, and at times, Microsoft has executed very well on that design.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[JonK]

I would love to see an OS take advantage of more than 2 of the 4 "rings" an x86 processor has

IIRC the reason NT doesn't do this is because not all the hardware they originally targetted had more than two rings - the MIPS chips (I think) were particular offenders here. With regard to the GDI being in the kernel: anyone that's running an NT-based OS as a server runs it with the generic VGA driver rather than whatever dreck the chipset manufacturer's shovelled out of the door...

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[JonK]

Well, there's no option but to put the video drivers into the kernel since they need direct hardware access and you can't get that from userland. It's also worth noting that the GUI per se is all in userland (it's better known as explorer.exe...). What happened in NT4 is that a large chunk of GDI (the abstraction layer for graphics primitives and surfaces) moved from userland into the kernel. Since chunks of GDI are (or at least can be) provided by the hardware manufacturers - modern video cards have hardware acceleration for GDI primitives such as "draw a line from here to here" - you've suddenly a) added an additional large chunk of code into your kernel and b) added a bunch of other people's code into the kernel - both potentially bad things.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[rhavyn]

Big difference between the frame buffer and the entire GDI. We're talking about window management, widget painting ...

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[orim]

The only thing I hate about XP is the way it looks right out of the box. But once you take the 20-30 seconds to make it "conform" to your old Win2k desktop, you're in business.
It seems to me like a better product than Win2000. (purely anecdotal remark).
The first OS anybody's making their drivers for these days is XP. The remote desktop feature is finally mature enough to be usable. (work->home)
It has emulation modes (95/98/Win2K) for running your old games/apps. It behaves a lot less jerky while copying files/during intense computing operations/etc.
And I'm going to draw an instant hatred of all 100 Slashdotters, but I think it's well worth $120/copy.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[WiPEOUT]

Unfortunately for you, it will install on Pentium-class systems running at frequencies less than 200MHz. Tom's Hardware managed to install and benchmark WinXP on a Pentium 100, despite Microsoft's claimed minimum system requirements. TH also claims that, at least in theory, you could install WinXP on a 486.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Jugalator]

I seem to recall an MS employee claiming that it was entirely Microsofts fault Windows was so unstable, even though crashes were normally caused by faulty drivers. His theory was that if MS were more open with the kernel code, driver manufacturers could work more closely and easier with them

At least in my case, I have no longer any special crash problems with WHQL certified drivers.

And Microsoft managed to get a couple of companies to create certified drivers:

https://winqual.microsoft.com/parentorgs.asp

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[IamTheRealMike]

GDI crashing, be it in the kernel or user mode, is basically a fatal system error.

Right. Ditto for X freezes. It always makes me laugh when people say "Oh, if X freezes just ssh in and kill it". Uh, right. X is dead man, you just lost all your apps. Getting back to the login screen by killing X is the same as rebooting effectively on a desktop machine, except faster.

That's not a rationale for moving X into the kernel of course. Having it as a separate userland process can be very useful - servers don't need a GUI. It can be upgraded much easier. If it can't start for some reason, you can simply failover to a command prompt. And so on.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[mcgroarty]

Okay, but there are a total of zero certified general purpose Bluetooth adapters, for example, and MS hasn't even got a certification program for it, despite the devices having been available for some time now. To even implement Bluetooth, you have to make all kinds of guesses about the NT kernel's internal workings.

The only Bluetooth device with partial WHQL certification is MS' own dongle for their wireless keyboard and mouse, and its restriction to keyboard and mouse is completely arbitrary.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[modicr]

Trust me, I installed it :>. Well, I said
that I couldn't believe my eyes.

Hey, editors, maybe this is a topic for
another thread: What are the REAL minimum
requirements for INSTALLING (not ghosting)
Windows XP Professional??? And what about
minimum requirements for similar Linux GUI ;)
I bet that WinXP is more hardware friendly...

OTH, who cares? I will use Windows 98 SE forever!

Roman

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[drinkypoo]

If most of what you're running is running in X, then you're using your linux box as a desktop system and it doesn't matter so much anyway because all your data is stored on the server, right?

If you're running X for administrative tools on a server, then when X hangs, it's not a nightmare. Of course, you're probably just running X clients on it and the server is on your desktop box.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Herbmaster]

And yet, it's still nowhere close to as fast or smooth cursor movement as a 10 year old Macintosh.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[jilles]

I installed it once on a PII233 with 64 MB (just to see what would happen). It worked (and reasonably fast too). I even got office XP going (lots of swapping though).

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[orim]

Running on identical boxes? Hmmm... haven't tried that one. :) I upgraded the hardware (as is almost always necessary with msoft), but it wouldn't surprise me to find XP slower in your case.

I really think the main advantage is compatibility... XP is there to stay, and the hardware manufacturers know it.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Darren Winsper]

Err...if X is in the kernel, when it crashes, everybody else logged into your system loses their apps. If X isn't in the kernel, when it crashes, only one person loses their apps.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[Herbmaster]

Yes, although it's only slightly harder when you do. Consider that the mouse is just about as well handled in MacOS X as it was in System 1 through MacOS 9.

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[IamTheRealMike]

I'm just repeating what I read. Yep, in a perfect world well documented interfaces would rule the day, and you'd never need to see the code. In practice, code is not perfect, sometimes there are bugs in the kernel, sometimes overriding a particular function and replacing it with a faster one gives you the performance boost that puts you ahead of the competition etc...

Re:The NT Kernel Is Good

[MooseGuy529]

I know this is the equivalent of Flamebait on /.,

Well it was Flamebait to some M1 and I M2'ed that M1 Unfair! Your post was Informative even though it [gasp] praised Windows!

The layered model is a lot better than a bunch of functions. When I write just simple programs that have many different interfaces (like a SMSAIM gateway in perl) I find it a lot easier to divide things up into separate parts that interact with specific things. Like all the AIM code was named (I didn't go very far, but it was organized) starting with aim_, and when the command-processing part (cmd_) wanted to send a message received by the email-processing part (pop3_) over AIM, it called aim_send_msg instead of directly calling the AIM connection object.

Sorry the post's a little offtopic, but I'm agreeing with what you said.

Not Win NT again !

[shamitbagchi]

Win NT being the backbone OS for 2K, XP and upcoming Longhorn needs a good reading to come up with the basics.
But memory management, driver support, file system mgmt and OS system utilities have changed way too much. And so I feel

IT WOULD BE MUCH MORE USEFUL/BETTER TO STUDY ABOUT THE BETTER FEATURES GOING INTO XP AND NEWER LINUX SYSTEMS.

Though the BSODs are still harrowing . . .

I just got rid of an NT system at workplace and got a Compaq Evo with P4-1.8MHz and XP + 2K dual-boot.

Re:Not Win NT again !

[HaloZero]

I just got rid of an NT system at workplace and got a Compaq Evo with P4-1.8MHz and XP + 2K dual-boot.

XP or 2000 [Pro, I hope] at 1.8 megahertz, eh? You must have a LOT of free time. :-)

argument clinic

[Mr_Silver]

If there are one or more bugs in IIS, for example, a representative of the IIS team needs to be present to not only explain the merits of the bug, but whether customers are affected, how the fix might affect other parts of the system, and how soon it will be fixed.

To be honest, I don't see why they just don't hold these bug fixing meetings around the IIS guys desk :o)

Re:argument clinic

[bofkentucky]

What about the MSSQL guy, and the ActiveX/COM project in IE, and the Outlook/OE teams, they are responsible for tons of bugs too.

Re:argument clinic

[GPFCharlie]

I think it was mentioned in the article that actually there are separate smaller "war teams" for each of the individual teams (like IIS) - that review bugs first, and then after they have a fix it gets bumped up to the main war room.

If you consider how late in the cycle the article was written (weeks away from going gold) this would make sense. You wouldn't want to waster a lot of time on process for what are relatively a small number of bugs - you'd just punt everything up to the top, since you want to be changing as little as possible. I'm sure earlier all kinds of bugs are being reviewed at smaller team levels without requiring some kind of executive approval at the "Wanke" level.

Dear God, I was just itching to put that in somewhere... :-)

Interesting...

[tshak]

There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003.

I think it's safe to say that they're most defniitely _NOT_ using VSS!

Re:Interesting...

[ostiguy]

Yup. In fact, last article I saw re: this stated that their code is on *nix boxes.

Re:Interesting...

[Phil Wilkins]

It's a branch from an older version of Perforce. It's considered a mission critical internal app, they don't sell it, and they only admit it exists under pressure.

Quality is Unrewarding

[Waffle Iron]

"NT 3.51 was a very unrewarding release," Thompson said, contrasting it with Daytona. "After Daytona was completed, we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware. But because of this, NT 3.51 was a solid release, and our customers loved it." NT 3.51 eventually shipped in May 1995.

I guess this statement neatly sums up the attitude behind much of their corporate culture.

50+ million lines of code?

[grub]

Remember a while back when Bill mandated a whole month of nothing but bug fixes? I find it highly unlikely that their people were able to go through 1.667 million lines of code per day (assuming a 30 day work month. I'm generous)..

Re:50+ million lines of code?

[SteveX]

According to the article they have 5000 developers on the Windows team; continuing your analogy that's only 500 lines of code per day per developer (and that's not including weekends).

- Steve

Re:Not stupid. . .

[Bastian]

. . . just naive and inexperienced.

You know how to an 8-year-old boy, his dad's favorite sports team is the greatest thing in the world, able to turn lepers to supermodels and bath beads into geltabs? It's basically the same phenomenon.

It stops being amusing after a couple years reading the /. GNU/Linux crowd do the same thing.

Re:Finally...

[StressedEd]

Off topic but....

Give a man a fish, he owes you one fish.

Teach a man to fish, you give up your monopoly on fisheries.

My favorite...

Build a man a fire and he will be warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

I think that is because the articles are trying to give a very general overview of the life cycle of NT. The various corporate dealings of Microsoft aren't of consequence when discussing how a huge project such as NT gets off the ground and how new demands cause new solutions to be found. And the article did mention that the choice to go to Win32 rather than OS/2 helped to sour the relationship between IBM and Microsoft. What more did you want?

And while you're right that this article is a very happy view of NT, it's interesting from the standpoint of how a project grows and new versioning control systems are added to handle such growth. Sure, the articles are heavy on fluff and light on details - but Microsoft is closed source. They're not going to give you much more. I honestly am not sure why you're so upset with these articles.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[CoolVibe]

I think that is because the articles are trying to give a very general overview of the life cycle of NT.

They do somewhat, but not really. But more about that later.

The various corporate dealings of Microsoft aren't of consequence when discussing how a huge project such as NT gets off the ground and how new demands cause new solutions to be found. And the article did mention that the choice to go to Win32 rather than OS/2 helped to sour the relationship between IBM and Microsoft. What more did you want?

I know they went for win32, but what about OS/2? Why no information what happened to the IBM code base? Windows NT 3.51 had an OS/2 2.x subsystem in there. No word about that in the article. If they are going to "spill the beans" about the history of NT, the site should have reported on Microsoft's love relationship with IBM as well.

Also, I'm not upset with the article. It's probably not for me. Judging from the information that _is_ in the article, Microsoft made lots of design decisions that make NT the piece of horsemaneur it is today (IMHO of course). Also, what I don't understand is WHY Microsoft abandoned all those other platforms (MIPS, Alpha et al) and decided to go with IA32 only, which was a fundamentally STUPID move (also IMHO).

I would have loved to have seen a more objective story about NT from persons inside MS, without all the feel-good fluffyness. But I guess one can only get stories like that from ex-MS emplyees that are past their NDA due date, and the MS marketroids don't have a grip on.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[AndyElf]

> Windows NT 3.51 had an OS/2 2.x subsystem in
> there.

So did NT4, so does (seems to at least) 2K. When you start the installation, the message about loading it into still flashes on a screen.

> what I don't understand is WHY Microsoft abandoned
> all those other platforms (MIPS, Alpha et al) and
> decided to go with IA32 only

Agree with you here 100% -- especially considering that at the beginning they spend quite some time praising modularity, etc. -- how easy it was to port to MIPS/x86/Alpha! Then they seem to have realized that maintaining all of that is not as easy as porting...

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[FatRatBastard]

Also, what I don't understand is WHY Microsoft abandoned all those other platforms (MIPS, Alpha et al) and decided to go with IA32 only, which was a fundamentally STUPID move (also IMHO).

I can think of a few... no application support, MIPS, Alpha, PPC harware was not as available / cheap as the i386 platform. If I'm a buyer of systems and I have a choice of buying hardware from the i386 market (Compaq, IBM, HP, Dell, etc.) AND have, while not the best, but pretty good backwards compatibility with my DOS apps which system am I going to choose?

Cheap and backwards compatible is going to crush not as cheap (nor abundant) and not backwards compatible. That's how the market shook out.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[SN74S181]

Linux zealots tearing at Windows all the time is just as stupid and as much FUD as Windows zealots that tear at Linux all the time.

There's a history behind this phenomenon in the 'Linux community.'

In the early days of Linux, everyone involved was a Unix enthusiast. There was a snobbish tendency at that time to dismiss anything Microsoft, but there wasn't the anger and hostility that there is now.

As the Microsoft Batallion rolled on, the expatriates from all the losing platforms (Amiga, Atari, OS/2, some Mac people) crowded onto the Linux 'ship.' Now there is a solid subsection of the 'Linux community' that actually represents the majority of vocal Linux users, who are bitter 'Anything-But-Microsoft' naysayers.

These people really foul things up. They bring a strong taint of negativity to the community. Much of what they constantly push Linux to become (these are the 'We need ONE UNIFIED DESKTOP to DEFEAT MICROSOFT' people) actually ends up hurting Linux and Open Source.

It sure used to be a lot more fun to run Linux.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[CoolVibe]

(First, IANALZ (linux zealot))

These people really foul things up. They bring a strong taint of negativity to the community. Much of what they constantly push Linux to become (these are the 'We need ONE UNIFIED DESKTOP to DEFEAT MICROSOFT' people) actually ends up hurting Linux and Open Source.

Indeed. Although I don't care much for Linux anymore (I'm more of a BSD enthousiast myself), it's still way cool that Linux and the whole movement exists. Us BSD folk profit from it, and *gasp shock horror* even the people that use win32/NT do.

I'm a right-tool-for-the-friggin-job man, if Linux does something best, I use it for that purpose. If Windows NT does, I use NT (although I have yet to see a NT box do a server task better than a *BSD machine). As a workstation, NT is fine. For gaming, the windows platform seems to rule supreme, but for real developing tasks, well, I grew up on cc, vi and makefiles, and the best environment for those is *nix. KDE takes care of all my other desktop needs while I'm in beanie land.

It sure used to be a lot more fun to run Linux.

Exactly, which is why I defected to the BSD camp. And I never regretted that decision.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[zog karndon]

NT 3.51 did not have an OS/2 2.x subsystem. It had an OS/2 1.x subsystem. And Microsoft abandoned MIPS, PPC, and the other architectures because they didn't sell. I heard that the sales of all versions of PPC NT numbered (at most) in the low hundreds, and MIPS sales was in the low thousands. Microsoft wasn't in the mood to expend the effort to support platforms that couldn't carry their weight.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[Locutus]

"Microsoft wasn't in the mood to expend the effort to support platforms that couldn't carry their weight."

In 1994, they sold less than 400,000 copies of NT and had less than 700,000 total market for NT. IIRC. Not a very large market but they had just finished putting 100's of millions of dollars into MARKETING Windows 95( aka Chicago ) and IBM said it was going to push OS/2 into the server market. 100's of millions of dollars were dumped into MARKETING Windows NT into the server space. They are very much like vultures. They feed on the technology and markets of others. Go throw $50 million at a market and you'll see Microsoft throw $100 million at it while they figure out what the market is and how it make it only work on MS Windows.

Yup, the reason a company like Microsoft left the MIPS/PPC/Alpha/etc market was because there wasn't anybody in that market to kill. They weren't very large and Apple killed the PREP & CHIRP platform for the IBM/Apple/Motorola partnership and the last hope of an alternative DESKTOP hardware platform. When the $$ behind that market dried up so did Microsofts interest outside of x86.

There were very large companies putting $$$ behind those platforms and Microsoft had to be sure they'd be there to crush any other OS on those platforms. When the big $$$ leaves, so does Microsoft. They are not going after Linux because a bunch of developers like messing with it in their basements. It's because there is big $$$ behind it now and $$$ being paid for it as a solution base. IMHO.

LoB

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[xswl0931]

Perhaps it was because customers realized it was cheaper to buy a ia32 NT box than a MIPS, PowerPC, or Alpha NT box? From a customer point of view, there's a lot more ia32 NT software than any other platform.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[Proc6]

I think you mean Michael Landon "was" your cousin.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[drinkypoo]

More to the point, there was simply no market for it. It works like this; Sure you can port NT to run on another architecture (obviously) as it's now been native on no less than six architectures; R3000, i386, PowerPC, iTanium, and x86-64. But are there enough customers to pay for it? Alpha types want maxmimum number crunching power, they're not going to waste their CPU on windows. PowerPC? A niche market at best unless you're talking embedded. Like someone's going to buy a mac and then put windows on it? Much less an RS6k. And MIPS? Bahahaha. MIPS is another one which has gone embedded... The R3000 itself powered the Playstation, and it's not much of a computer. It's barely got enough ram to run windows 3.1. :P

The simple fact is, there was no market at the time. iTanium is here to stay, as is (likely) x86-64, so it was worth doing ports to them even though prior ports ended up not bringing home the bacon.

Re:Michael Landon Is My Cousin

[Tony-A]

Now there is a solid subsection of the 'Linux community' that actually represents the majority of vocal Linux users, who are bitter 'Anything-But-Microsoft' naysayers. [emphasis added]
I'm sorry you think we're fouling things up, but methinks you're maybe misidentifying the 'We need ONE UNIFIED DESKTOP to DEFEAT MICROSOFT' people. I'm sure that Microsoft would love to have just ONE UNIFIED DESKTOP to target instead of such as KDE and Gnome which seem to do a fairly good job of running each other's applications. I'm sure a lot of it is the tendency for newbies to want to offer "helpful" suggestions without taking the trouble to understand the situation, but I'm enough of a conspiracy theorist to think some of it is an attempt by Microsoft to try to get the target to stand still so it can be shot at. There's an interesting comparison in the handling of the latest round of exploits between Open Source and Microsoft. Open Source maybe could have handled it better and smoother, but the handling would have had to be incredibly worse for the exploits to have actually accomplished much of anything. If the patch for slapper hadn't been out already, Microsoft would have had an incredibly hard time of it.

Inside the Development of Windows NT?

[labratuk]

"My god, it's full of crap!"

NT source

[ptaff]

Oh, so now we learn that NT is not from "New Technology".

So in a couple of years we'll learn that:

• ME: Miserable Everytime
• CE: Cramped Environment
• XP: Xor Performance
• Office: Other File Formats Imply Collaboration: Encrypt!

Re:NT source

[DeadBugs]

And of course when you combine their server (NT) with the Desktop (ME) and portable OS (CE) you get predictable results

CE-ME-NT --- Cement.

Re:NT source

[David_Bloom]

Have you ever noticed the Win2k 'splash' screen? It says 'Based on NT Technology' - does this mean it's based on 'New Technology Technology'? Who invented this technology of new technologies? This is revolutionary!!!

Re:NT source

[Surak]

You forgot one:

MICROSOFT: Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers

Re:NT source

[cookd]

As far as I know: ME and XP actually mean what they are advertised to mean (i.e. have no additional history beyond their invention by some guy in marketing) -- Millenium Edition and eXPerience.

NT, we now know (assuming our source is accurate), comes from N-Ten. Some marketroid came up with "New Technology" and a lot of perceptive geeks noticed that VMS --> WNT, but neither is the real origin of the acronym.

It took me almost 1 year actually WORKING on the Windows CE team before I found out what CE officially stands for (a lot of people on the team knew, but I just always asked the wrong people, and didn't really worry about the question very much...). CE means (or originally meant) "Consumer Electronics." However, for a while there was a whiteboard in the hall with a growing list of new interpretations for "CE"...

Developer Count.

[Grendel Drago]

You forgot the five thousand developers.

Each person would need to review 50,000,000/(5000*30) = ~333 lines of code per day. Not quite so intimidating.

--grendel drago

Re:Developer Count.

[grub]

~333 lines of code per day. Not quite so intimidating

Actually it is. Each person would have to work with whomever is responsible for whatever other 333 lines of daily code their code communicates with. What if some of that code wasn't scheduled fore review for another 3 weeks?

More developers != better development.

Re:Developer Count.

[delus10n0]

[chanting] Developers, developers, developers, developers!

Re:Developer Count.

[IamTheRealMike]

You forgot the five thousand developers.

The wierd thing about that is that a while ago there was a leaked presentation claiming that the development of W2K had 5000 developers and it was nearly unmanagable, and that in future they weren't going to have as many. So, either they improved their communications techniques considerably, or the numbers are kind of not quite accurate. Probably just internal politics.

Re:Developer Count.

[pmz]

Each person would need to review 50,000,000/(5000*30) = ~333 lines of code per day. Not quite so intimidating.

Actually, that is very indimidating. As a person who writes software for a living, I know it isn't uncommon for even a few lines of code to leave me stumped for much of a day, due to interactions with distant code or bug in APIs, etc. Given that Windows is written in C and C++, I'd say that 333 lines a day would be overwhelming.

Re:Developer Count.

[pmz]

Likely you aren't very smart.

Likely you haven't debugged 13-year-old C programs that have spanned four operating systems, two GUI toolkits, suffered from many different developers over the years, and run embedded as a shared library within a much larger proprietary graphics system. Oh, and the documenation sucks.

Yeah, I'm just another retard.

Scariest quote:

[pmcevoy]

"The first two weeks of development were fairly uneventful, with the NT team using Microsoft Word to create the original design documentation...Finally, it was time to start writing some code."

Does anyone else design an OS in two weeks?

Re:Scariest quote:

[bstadil]

using Microsoft Word

That is why Word is part of their productivity suite.

Just think what you could do if you got a copy, or Linus.

Re:Scariest quote:

[DarkStar-63017]

>Does anyone else design an OS in two weeks? I'd say that 2 weeks worth of design is far better than suggesting the software will "evolve."

Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[Lethyos]

The most amusing bit I found was this:

"NT 3.51 was a very unrewarding release," Thompson said, contrasting it with Daytona. "After Daytona was completed, we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware. But because of this, NT 3.51 was a solid release, and our customers loved it."

How horrible for a monopoly software company to have its programmers sit around and do bug fixes! My God, how ever did they survive? Fixing bugs at Microsoft must be like... Hell.

Re:Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[Junta]

Even though I agree that attitude is incorrect, I wouldn't go so far as to call them a monopoly in NT 3.5 days, at least not with respect to the market NT was targetting. NT was hardly a blip on the radar in professional systems.

It is so regrettable that MS has had such sucess in its inroads into professional computing. I think if the competitors (HP, IBM, Sun) had at least made a half-assed attempt at a price/performance ratio that could compete with x86 boxes, NT would continue to be seen as nothing more than a toy OS. People can say what they will about NT being a reliable system now, but it is quite clear that the system was not architected from the ground up to have the reliability of Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, etc. It is sad that a company that puts flashy, fun, marketable features before reliability and bugfixes has such a hold on the market.

Re:Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[mccalli]

C'mon though - bug fixing is dull. That's what they meant by unrewarding - personal satisfaction. They weren't quibbling the necessity.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[kawika]

Yes, unfortunately, a lot of programmers seem to believe that scratching their own itches is much more important than scratching their customer's itches. If they could enjoy the satisfaction of coding the perfect algorithm AND the satisfaction of making their customers happy, they would be more likely to succeed.

Re:Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[spells]

It is sad that a company that puts flashy, fun, marketable features before reliability and bugfixes has such a hold on the market.
Or is it because they put marketable features before reliability and bugfixes?

Re:Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[Bishop]

quite clear that the system was not architected from the ground up to have the reliability of Solaris, AIX, HP-UX

NT was designed from the start to match the reliability of Unix. However Unix had several more years of experience and bug fixes. What killed the reliability of NT were the marketing driven "features" that were pushed in later.

Re:Microserfs find solid products "unrewarding".

[Watcher]

Its not "more important"-for many of us building a product that people actually want to use is very rewarding. I can tell you from my own experience that there is nothing more boring and draining than spending months on end fixing unending bugs without writing something new to break the tedium. Feeling like there is no end in sight and you are fighting an unwinable battle is draining for everyone, not just programmers. At times like that I've been thankful for even a day where I could get something new written.

That's one of the reasons why we see a lot of turnover in support. All those folks ever hear is negative news. And then they get their raises.

Only Daily?

[sohp]

Daily Builds are for Wimps! And they only have one architecture to build for. Compare for example Mozilla's Tinderbox.

Re:Only Daily?

[RedWolves2]

Apparently you didn't read part 2. The build takes all night. I think comparing Mozilla's Tinderbox to Windows Server 2003 is like comparing apples to oranges.

Re:Only Daily?

[sohp]

I did read part 2. Look again, there's a comment about how the build process has been expanded to include more analysis. It's quite likely that it doesn't need to take 12+ hours, and if continuous integration were the goal, it could be done.

Re:Only Daily?

[Froqen]

Actually they build for 2x3=6 architectures. (x86, ia64 and amd64) x (free build and checked build), then each of thoose gets sorted, filtered and processed to create the 5 different finished server products (add two more when they build client). So 6x5=30 end product builds a night. Then there are different Virtual Build Labs that are responsible for most of the changes for a major section of the code branch (I think about 7 plus the main). So 30x8= 240 max builds a night.

No, no!

[Grendel Drago]

Write once, blue-screen anywhere. Is that the best you can come up with?! Even when faced with MS's abandonment of MIPS, PPC and Alpha with NT4? What about the Linux folks beating them to the punch with ia64 support? Come on, there are a hundred actual reasons why MS's porting strategy/porting support is a joke.

--grendel drago

Is their focus security/stability or marketing?

[Mostly a lurker]

A year ago, Micro$oft claimed the future focus was security and stability. According to Part 2 of the article, the biggest issue now is the name change (from Windows .NET 2003 to Windows Server 2003). So, is this change for greater stability or something to do with marketing?

Re:Is their focus security/stability or marketing?

[thebatlab]

The biggest issue now is the name change b/c, according to the article, they have made the product extremely secure. Remember, a name change is a "big" change. If you buy Windows 2003 and keep seeing "Windows .NET" everywhere in the OS, you're gonna wonder what the f*** is going on.

Thank that fscking IIS guy...

[siskbc]

...for not showing up to the goddamned meetings with his bugfixes.

Re:Dave Cutler's "Vision"

[nemaispuke]

I remember reading an article in 1992 where Bill Gates said "Windows NT will be a better Unix than Unix". So I don't think the vision was limited to Dave Cutler. I am still wondering how Bill could say that when Windows NT/2000 has minimal Posix support (1000.3 System Calls), is single user multitasking (unless you use Terminal Services, another Microsoft product you pay through the nose for), and has the worst scripting language ever! I guess that is why MKS (MKS Toolkit), Interix (OpenNT), and Cygwin are around, to fill the gaping holes in the "vision" of Bill and Dave and bring Unix to Windows because Microsoft can't or won't do it!

eating their own dog food..

[Suppafly]

Luckily for the world, the NT team likes to eat their own dog food. Unluckily, there isn't any indication that the team that released ME even booted it up before they shipped it.

Sure part of the problem is OEM's using crap hardware, but there isn't any excuse for windows me.

Re:eating their own dog food..

[SN74S181]

It should be pretty clear to anybody with a clue that Windows ME was a market-driven product, a stopgap to bridge from Win98SE to XP. As such, it was probably considered a stinking ghetto of a project to work on at Microsoft.

Scalable Architecture?

[the_skywise]

I find it amusing that they claim that the NT architecture is so wonderful because it's the exact same architecture that's been used since the original "N-Ten" design.

Right.

Translation: "The kernel is easily portable in 18 months".

All the app developers code to the Win32 layer. This used to include the windows GUI shell which they had to REWRITE for every platform, and that oftentimes requires rewrites by the app developers. (Yeah, that MS Word app "scales" real well to pocket PC's.. oh wait... I need MS Word - Pocket PC!)

Bug handling

[vrt3]

"NT 3.51 was a very unrewarding release," Thompson said, contrasting it with Daytona. "After Daytona was completed, we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware. But because of this, NT 3.51 was a solid release, and our customers loved it."

Does that mean they only solve bugs when there's nothing else to do?

Re:Bug handling

[SN74S181]

No, it's kinda like what a Red Hat dot.zero release would be like if they took an additional 9 months to test it.

I mean, I have not-so-fond memories of using Red Hat 5.0 for a short while. They included a new graphical tool for installing and administering RPMs to the system called Glint. However, the Glint binary was broken that they bundled with the system. So one had to download the bugfixed glint rpm and manually install it.

At the time I found this amusing. Then I went back to using the Slackware I'd already had good luck with for several years.

Re:Bug handling

[geekee]

A->B does not mean B->A. That is: no other work -> fix bugs does not mean fix bugs -> no other work. Your logic skills need some work.

Re:Bug handling

[vrt3]

Cool down, I was just trying to be funny. Bad attempt perhaps, but we'll have to live with that.

Linux?

[13Echo]

"Getting all those people going in the same direction, cranking out code, is an enormous task. Building the results of their work, compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week. It's the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this." And Microsoft compiles the whole thing--all 50+ million lines of code, almost every single day, he said. "We're evolving the development environment all the time," Lucovsky noted."

I think that they were forgetting about that orher large-scale software engineering task, in which thousands (tens of thousands?) of people crunch out code and compile software every day.

What's that called?

Linux.

Re:Linux?

[Aniquel]

Sorry, not trying to flamebait here, but how long does a Linux kernel build take on a 3GHz P4? 2 hours? Tops? There's an order of magnitude of difference between the complexity of Windows and Linux (which may or may not be a good thing).

Re:Linux?

[bravecanadian]

I think you forgot that Linux is a collection of thousands of small projects, almost all of which are going largely in their *own* direction.

It's a different philosophy.

Re:Linux?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yes, and they quite clearly say that they're not compiling the NT kernal, they're compiling the contents of the CD; everything from notepad, calc and solitare to the admin tools and everything in between.

Re:Linux?

[IamTheRealMike]

A better comparison would be to a full gentoo compile, which apparently can take up to 24 hours on fairly normal hardware. Those build labs won't be running anything like normal hardware, so I'm guessing the size of Windows and Linux is roughly similar.

Re:Linux?

[AxelTorvalds]

Line of code count, NT is up there. If not number one then it is damn close.

I think Brookes quantified the OS360 development effort in terms of man years and it is probably the largest engineering effort on any kind undertaken by a private entitiy ever. On the order of man centuries of development effort and time.

Re:Linux?

[burns210]

recompiling "notepad, calc and solita[i]re" every single day seems just silly. how many times has the code been change from win95 to xp? any revisions would be done all together, which is on average likely less than a day every year(considering the release cycle).

save 5 minutes of the 12 hours spend compiling, leave notepad alone.

Damn lightweights

[YAN3D]

There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003.

50,000,000 lines of code / 5,000 developers= 10,000 lines of code for each developer/

Spread that over a 3 year development cycle. Thats only 9.13242 lines of code a day per developer! How much are they getting paid? Sign me up!

Re:Damn lightweights

[Aniquel]

Surprisingly, there have been studies showing that average output (in lines of code) per developer per week is less than 50. Keep in mind that this is for complete (and correct!), debugged code. Also, refactoring may actually reduce line count over time. Doing the #lines/developers calculation as you did gives a quite apocryphal impression.

Re:Damn lightweights

[AHumbleOpinion]

Spread that over a 3 year development cycle. Thats only 9.13242 lines of code a day per developer! How much are they getting paid? Sign me up!

Did you forget the smiley? You do know that 10 lines per day is a classic software engineering number, unrelated to DOS, Windows, MS, etc. You don't count only the days in the zone typing new code, 10 lines is an average. One day there may be hundreds of lines, then there are other days with meetings and interruptions, days spent writing documentation, days spent peer reviewing others code, 1 week spent finding a bitch of a one line bug, etc.

Linux is probably even worse than 10 lines per man-day. All that time with those extra eyes scanning the source code count.

Re:Damn lightweights

[jilles]

I've seen studies (on large industrial systems) where the average amount of code written per day actually drops below 1 line of code during maintenance (and most development today is maintenance). Writing new code is fun but maintaining old code is hard and typically requires lots of research. Inexperienced programmers always find this hard to believe whereas I've heard several senior software architects confirm that this was probably correct for their organizations.

GUI Team

[poisoneleven]

I'd like to heard from their GUI Team, if you don't likw any other aspect of windows, it's pretty to use. It has a uniform look and feel. You can copy and paste between all different applications. I'm not trying to start another flame war or anything, but their GUI is second only to one (OSX of course)

Isn't that Tux in the War Team Photos?

[jaclu]

In the first picture of part two (http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/war_te am_85.jpg)
Look at who is sitting beside the monitor in the background!

It lost its independence with 4.0

[idiotnot]

In the same article, it mentions the changes with the graphics subsystem in NT 4.0. IIRC, NT 4.0 only supported i386 and Alpha, while NT 3.51 those, plus ppc and mips.

They moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel, and it ceased to be a microkernel. When pretty much everything lives in userland, portability is pretty easy. In fact, you can essentially write a new kernel (with the same external interfaces) for each architecture if need be. You also get neat features like being able to restart networking or the graphics system if they crash, without bringing down the system.

The problem that you have on i386 is that context switching is expensive (read: slow as a dog). On other platforms (sparc, ppc), it's not that big a deal.

Now, Windows doesn't look like a microkernel at all. And it's not at all portable, either. From what I understand, the Itanic port is giving them big headaches, and Intel is none-too-pleased about it.

Re:It lost its independence with 4.0

[Thud457]

"They moved the graphics subsystem into the kern"

"Windows doesn't look like a microkernel at all. And it's not at all portable, either. From what I understand, the Itanic port is giving them big headaches, and Intel is none-too-pleased about it. "

HAHAHA! Stupid fuxx0rs!
Write it right, THEN optimize!
Do these guys even know what the hell they're doing?!!

Sorry to sound like a typical M$ bashing post, but this doesn't speak too well for their competency.

Re:It lost its independence with 4.0

[Guy Harris]

After that, the coders didn't have to bother with endian neutral code

As far as I know, both the MIPS and PowerPC versions of NT expected a little-endian byte order, as did the Alpha port (yes, you can do big-endian on Alpha).

Re:It lost its independence with 4.0

[Guy Harris]

When pretty much everything lives in userland, portability is pretty easy.

Perhaps Microsoft should've done that, then, rather than doing an OS with file systems, networking stacks, and device drivers for the devices used by those components running in kernel mode. (See "Inside Windows NT" and its successors.)

Heck, most UNIX systems (including, I have the impression, the fruit-flavored one) have managed to keep most of the graphics subsystem out of the kernel; does that make them more microkernelish than NT 4.0 and later?

Also, even when lots of stuff doesn't live in userland, portability isn't necessarily made much worse, if it's made worse at all - parsing pathnames, checking free-block bitmaps, cracking IP or TCP headers, constructing IP or TCP headers, looking up routes, etc. aren't exactly processor-dependent (and if you want to do processor-specific optimizations such as, for example, fast Internet checksum routines, that's something you can do in the same fashion in the kernel or in userland, and probably would do in userland as well as in the kernel).

Now, Windows doesn't look like a microkernel at all.

As far as I know, it never did look anything like what I'd call a microkernel. Yes, some parts of the userland APIs are implemented by sending messages to subsystem processes, but many other parts are just implemented by library calls to NT native system calls, and even on Boring Old Monolithic Kernel UNIX Systems you have processes such as userland automounters involved in the implementation of open().

And it's not at all portable, either. From what I understand, the Itanic port is giving them big headaches, and Intel is none-too-pleased about it.

Is it giving them any bigger headaches than other IA-64 ports, such as the Linux port or the FreeBSD port?

Re:It lost its independence with 4.0

[rhavyn]

The linux port was finished when IA64 was nothing more then a emulator. I'm pretty sure that didn't give them too much trouble. Linux is pretty easy to port since its already maintained on so many platforms, the developers are pretty wary about making things specific to a certain architecture.

Re:It lost its independence with 4.0

[nusuth]

I don't think parent knows what he is talking about portability of NT. Even though newer NTs came in x86 flavour for the masses, all had internal builds of all platforms NT historically supported. It builds, it runs. I don't know just how well it runs, but that is another issue.

IA-64 might be giving them trouble because NT is an 32bit OS and Itanium is a 64 bit processor. I'm pretty sure they can release "XP for PPC" in a year if they ever need to.

Re:It lost its independence with 4.0

[drinkypoo]

Process and memory management has always been done by the kernel and not by the HAL, so NT has never been all that microkernelish. Nevertheless when they moved video into the kernel (thus removing the need for context switches between GDI and User for speed) they not only made it much less stable, but even less like a microkernel? Coincidence?

Daily build=daily hack

[nagora]

Imagine you're working on something which will result in a failed compile on a 50Mline project and its 30min until tonight's compile. Do you

A) Take a stand and tell your boss "It'll be ready when it's ready" (and clear your desk), or

B) Kludge something together and hope you get a chance to do it "properly" sometime before release?

Daily builds are not a good idea.

TWW

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[IDIIAMOTS]

You do "A", because in order to check in you had to have done tested changes yourself, done a full clean build, hand the binaries to a tester(s) who more thouroughly verify that your intended changes do a.) what they're supposed to do, b.) don't immediately break anything else. Once your "buddy" testers sign off, you do another clean build of your subcomponent and THEN you check in. That is that process that many other groups follow at Microsoft and I would certainly hope Windows does.

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[jstepka]

Hmmmm....

Checking in code should be considered holy. If you check bad code in, you sure as hell better be ready to come back to work and fix it. I work on projects with developers teams that have about 5-10 coders. When one person checks in code that hasn't been unit tested it can have a severe impact on the rest of the team.

The point is: test your code before you commit, nobody wants to look at your halfass implementation.

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[MrChris2]

Definately 'A'.
If something isn't going to work in the time period set aside for it the manager needs to know - preferably with more than 30 mins to spare!
If anything that is the fault here, as soon as it became obvious the fix would take enough time that testing would be minimal the developer should have escalated.

Sorry if I'm being harsh here but this is definately the dev's problem and provided it isn't a recurring fault in the developer (some people don't like to escalate, these need encouraging).

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[nagora]

That is that process that many other groups follow at Microsoft and I would certainly hope Windows does.

Perhaps if they had it wouldn't have taken 20 years to come up with a Windows that doesn't crash daily.

TWW

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[nagora]

nobody wants to look at your halfass implementation.

In a project this size, probably no one ever will.

TWW

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[nagora]

Sorry if I'm being harsh here but this is definately the dev's problem

I disagree. I'm all for frequent builds but to say that a project this size has to be in a buildable state every single day is just a not reasonable point of view and puts the individual programmers, regardless of their quality, under too much pressure to "perform".

Of course, this ignores the question of is there any good way to handle this size of project?

TWW

Re:Daily build=daily hack

[nagora]

When will we get a version of mozilla or KDE that doesn't? I'm still waiting!

Dunno, I don't use either. The wonders of choice...

TWW

Tux, undercover...

[Capt_Troy]

Looks like one of our guys is on the inside. Caught him on film. He's infiltrated the war team. Check him out, in the background by the TV...

See it here

War team triages

[Anonymous Coward]

I was an employee with Microsoft for sometime and was there when the RTM march was on for Windows XP and I can definitely tell you that war team during the last few weeks before escrow is a lot more than just inconsequential bugs. Its staggering how many bugs that are punted to the next release are actually rather serious in the grander scheme of things beyond the "ship windows" horizon. This is a very happy and flowery view Paul has given but it is not very accurate.

Re:War team triages

[OSgod]

Real programmers ship. Not like Mozilla.

1. Code a decent product
2. Do you best effort at testing
3. SHIP to a date
4. Support (bug updates, fixes, etc.)

Start cycle again with new design

5. Profit.

Secret .NET language leaked

[jsse]

When someone argued that they should be given another day, Wanke simply said, "F#$% 'em. If it was that important, they would have been here. It's in Longhorn. Next bug."

C#, J#, S#....now we have F#....shall we pronounce it "Fuck Sharp"?

Re:Secret .NET language leaked

[ChristopherLord]

F# Exists!
It appears to be similar to Caml.

His message: "No more yanky my Wanke!"...

[GojiraDeMonstah]

...or your stuff gets punted!

Quite Ironic

[Pharmboy]

After reading this interesting, but somewhat cheerleading article, one thing struck me:

Microsoft has 10,000 programmers who must meet strick deadlines, secracy rules, and put up with hard ass project leaders in order to make NT. It requires ungodly amounts of investment and centralized leadership to incrementally improve the final product.

Linux also has thousands of programmers, but they contribute code in between downloading porn, drinking beer, eating pizza and playing online games. This is generally done on computers ranging from low end pentiums to state of the art servers, scattered all over the globe, for virtually free.

Then I compare how far each has come in the last 5 years.......

Perhaps MS needs to install a pizza oven and keg with tap in their war room.

Re:Quite Ironic

[SN74S181]

When I compare how far NT has come in 5 years, I bear in mind that my present W2K system hasn't totally crashed more than a few times since I started using it when W2K came out. With NT 4.0 bluescreens were as frequent as a Linux zealot's fantasy of them happening.

They've come quite a ways in 5 years. So has Linux.

Your folkloric description of Linux programmers sounds a little eggagerated, by the way. You described the Slashdot demographic, not the kernal hacker demographic. Also, lots of the best stuff going into the Linux kernal these days is coming out of cube farms at places like IBM.

Re:Quite Ironic

[Pharmboy]

They've come quite a ways in 5 years. So has Linux.

Oh I absolutely agree, NT is way better as well. But IMHO, Linux wasn't nearly as usable 5 years ago compared to NT. Im just saying Linux would get the award for "biggest improvement" in this period, partially because it was further behind then. (no flames please, just my opinion) My first install was RH4.something, and I have installed every NT since 3.1., and using that as a basis to compare. Maybe closer to 8 years ago, NT was easy to install, and Linux was a bitch, for me.

Your folkloric description of Linux programmers sounds a little eggagerated, by the way...

Yea, perhaps, but it sounded good. Maybe just Karma whoring ;)

Re:Quite Ironic

[TheLink]

But all Linux was doing initially was redoing Unix stuff already done before.

You've got to remember this was 1988

[BoomerSooner]

I love when people slam something as common that very few people were using at the time. At least they were honest in their silly (in retrospect) assumption they could complete the OS in 18 months.

MS didn't become the 800lb Gorilla by being stupid. They use every advantage possible. I'm not a MS fan by any stretch but I sure wish I'd put that $2000 i had in 1991 into msft.

BS

[Erris]

_All_ developers are cocky - very cocky. It's not just a Windows thing.

Blanket statements are stupid, but we can make a few observations that show trends. Have you ever seen a pdksh develper argue with Korn that pdksh was "fully compatible" with the ksh? Nah, me either, but an M$ rep did. Ever see a kernel hacker say that all computers should run the Linux kernel? One or two might say that all computers should run free software, but there is nothing egotistical about that.

Of course there are a few things we can say about Windows developers in general too. Code Red, Sir Cam, "I Love you", and all the rest. Humiliation is a Microsoft thing and will be till they fundamentally alter their development model. Marketroid driven closed source software does not work.

Re:BS

[SN74S181]

Marketroid driven closed source software does not work.

I feel ridiculous for even having to say this, but the first line in your comment was 'Blanket statements are stupid....'

Don't you feel like an idiot now? You should have clicked 'review' and looked closely at your message body before submitting.

Re:BS

[chrisseaton]

Since when have reps been developers? Idiot.

Re:BS

[JohnFluxx]

Well obviously not all blanket statements are stupid, otherwise the statement "all blanket statements" would also be stupid, but it wouldn't be since it would be correct - a paradox.

Since he didn't explicitly say "all" in the statement about blanket statements, we should assume that he realised this and just meant "most". Perhaps he then just left that for the reader to deduce - being the most logic interpretation.

Re:BS

[chrisseaton]

Moronic posts? I'm pretty proud of my posts. I have excellent karma and 7 posts in my info page which are modded over +2, and all but two are above 1. Plus, I don't hide behind anonymity when saying something controversial (or bullshit, as your post is).

Competition

[sql*kitten]

It's really interesting to see how Microsoft actually relate to their competitors. They wanted to run on PPC, but IBM messed them around. They wanted to work with Novell, but Novell weren't interested. Even Intel failed to deliver on the promise of i860.

Given that, is it any wonder that MS would rather do things "in house" than rely on third parties?

Re:Competition

[Junta]

I would say it is more along the lines of they thought they *had* to run on PPC, Novell, i860, etc... to be considered serious for business. I could certainly understand Novell wanting to stall MS if possible, they had an iron grip on a segment now rapidly being taken over by MS. If MS had been unable to access Netware shares, NT probably would have gotten nowhere.

As far as the processors, they never dreamed businesses would ever feel that the x86 platform would be up to the task of doing 'real work', and thus they pursued architectures that would be more workstation and server quality.

Re:Competition

[SideshowBob]

MS probably wanted to work with Apple, but Apple screwed up right?

I'm sure MS wanted to work with Stac, but they must've "messed them around"

I'm sure MS wanted to work with Cytrix, but they must've not been interested

I'm sure MS wanted to work with Netscape, but ... start seeing a pattern yet? Does any company that has a relationship with MS *not* get stabbed in the back at some point? Of course, in the aftermath MS always points the finger and says (paraphrasing) "We wanted to be nice guys, but they just wouldn't let us"

What a Laughable Piece of Fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed out loud over the assertion that the Win32 API is easy to work with. I guess you can get away with lying when you know your audience won't go and check.

Go get a complete listing of the API function reference sometime. It looks like 12 different groups of developers came with 12 different coding styles (few of which could be described as elegant; or even safe for that matter) and got in a fist-fight. They were all beat up and too tired to fix it at the end of the day, so they just shipped the mess that is Win32.

Wonder why they re-invented all the ANSI C functions. The new functions do the same things, but with different names.

NT was a great operating system until 1990, then it went to hell from there.

A. Penguin User

I LOVED NT

[TerryAtWork]

It was a great piece of software.

The only thing I DIDN'T like about it was that it only went up to Direct X 3 so it couldn't play modern video games.

So I switched to XP when it came out, but I was very happy with NT.

Thanks Bill!

PS - you owe me a house for this, ok?

Re:the book 'Show-Stopper!'Ready to Buy?Sign in to

[Anonvmous Coward]

This book, from around '95 I think, was a great read. I don't know how much overlapit has with the articles mentioned above, but I enjoyed it.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/- /0029 356717/103-3105313-8496655?vi=glance
Also available at your local library!

Whoah, you should have set up the hyperlink there, dude. There might be a Mac user watching...

It was NT 5, aka Win2K

[AHumbleOpinion]

IIRC the NT4 retail CD shipped with MIPS, ix86, Alpha, and PowerPC. NT5/Win2K was developed on ix86 and Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC had poor sales - x86 had price Alpha had performance, but Alpha was dropped before it shipped. I'll have to look for an NT4 CD later to confirm the above recollection.

Re:It was NT 5, aka Win2K

[SN74S181]

I have a Compaq OEM Windows NT 4.0 CDROM, and it boots on Alpha or Intel boxes, if they support bootable CDROM.

Mind you, this is a Compaq OEM CD from long before Compaq bought Digital. There was NO REASON for them to be distributing a CD that booted on a competitors architecture at that time.

It's not labelled 'Compaq', btw, it's just one that was bundled with a Compaq system originally.

Re:It was NT 5, aka Win2K

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I had MSDN Universal at the time. NT4 had all four architectures: MIPS, Alpha, PPC, and x86.

Only the Linux KERNEL is 5 mln lines

[stevenp]

Only the size of the Linux KERNEL is currently about 5 mln lines, while the size of the WHOLE Win NT is about 50 mln. lines. This includes the whole GUI, OLE/ActiveX/COM+/InternetExplorer/OpenGL/DirectX and so on shebang, and also a myriad of printer/camera/scanner/etc drivers included in the default install.
The size of the WinNT kernel is nowhere near the 5 mln lines of code, I believe it is well below 1 mln. lines.
The WinNT is also only compiled for Intel platform, so it does not include code for other platforms.

Re:Only the Linux KERNEL is 5 mln lines

[Phroggy]

The Linux kernel also includes code to mount a root filesystem over NFS after obtaining an IP address from a DHCP server, then route TCP/IP packets between an 802.11 wireless LAN, ham radio, and an AppleTalk network (using an ISA LocalTalk card), with QoS. If WinNT can do that, it's not all in the kernel.

Re:Only the Linux KERNEL is 5 mln lines

[sweede]

The NT Kernel can run on any platform. what makes it run on other platforms is the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and its associated support files.

If you read the article, NT was not designed to run on the Intel x86 processor but a MIPS processor instead. However, because MIPS was not meeting the NT scheduale( *Note the MIPS was not the origintal destination of the NT kernel but another Intel chip that never made it to production), they looked into the Intel x86 platform. because of how they wrote the kernel and the HAL, it took them a couple weeks to have a working kernel on the x86 platform.

This is what makes the NT Micro-kernel so different.

you can port the NT kernel to any platform simply by writing a new HAL for it. (which you cant do because MS has the docs needed)

Re:Only the Linux KERNEL is 5 mln lines

[clarkc3]

The WinNT is also only compiled for Intel platform

I thought it was compiled and used a HAL written for i386, alpha, and powerpc - that was supposed to be part of the beauty of NT - just write a HAL for an archticture and you could put NT on it

Wasn't Alpha shipped a few months after x86?

[AHumbleOpinion]

... but I see no mention how they were so slow to bring NT to the Alpha

My recollection is that WinNT 3.1 for Alpha was available a few months after x86 and MIPS shipped. I was receiving beta CD for NT 3.1, I'll have to go scrounging in old dusty boxes.

I'm calling BS on this one

[drew_kime]

"We've really extended the time that we service our products," Thompson said, because when Microsoft ships a server product, customers may use it for up to ten years. So-called volume, or mainstream, service lasts seven years, but the company has constantly evolved the way it supplies updates and fixes over time.

So if I call Microsoft and ask for help with an NT4 bug they'll help me with it? Gee, I got the impression they'd just tell me to upgrade to the next version. Because that is the official fix for it. And let's not get into the fact that they're trying very hard to move to an all-subscription model with built-in forced upgrades.

M$ story == take a free cheap shot!

[Thud457]

Yeah, both started with something good and wholesome, and ended up with something psycopathic and dangerous!!!!

Where's the profit?

[YetAnotherName]

That "goto" in line 3 prevents lines 4 and 5 from working:
4) ???
5) Profit!

(Not that Micro$oft needs anymore of that.)

Broken record security?

[Lethyos]

Wanke said that the server team had already fixed all of the known security vulnerabilities. "We're very happy about security," he said. "It's fun to see where we are [with security]. I'm personally very impressed with the work that went into it, the fixes and the thought process. We all think it's very secure..."

Yes, just keep telling yourself that and eventually you'll believe it. Meanwhile, the rest of the security-conscious community will write things that are secure rather than things that they think are secure.

Re:Broken record security?

[geekee]

Like who? I've yet to see a secure OS except by disconnecting the network cable.

Remind me of ...

[Etyenne]

Thompson elaborated on the importance of NT's foundations. "Our core architecture is so solid, that we were able to take NT from 386-25's in 1990 to today's embedded devices, 64-way, 64-bit multiprocessor machines, and $1000 scale-out server blades. We've been able to deliver a whole array of services on it."

Remind me of some other OS ...

Re:Remind me of ...

[SN74S181]

Yes. It reminds me of NetBSD, too.

Re:Remind me of ...

[Etyenne]

64-way, 64-bit multiprocessor machines ...

Re:Remind me of ...

[SN74S181]

Okay, then. Solaris.

Re:Remind me of ...

[Etyenne]

I hate to nitpick but ...

... from 386-25's in 1990 to today's embedded devices, 64-way, 64-bit multiprocessor machines, and $1000 scale-out server blades.

Really, Linux is pretty much the only OS today that can scale from 386-25 and embedded device to really big SMP or NUMA machine

now that you've read the sugar, time to . . .

[kraksmoka]

read something a little more descriptive of the winblows development process. Mark Lucovsky wrote this ppt presentation to share with the world why windows has "issues". paul's junk looks like its ready to go into third grade readers and whatnot. though i do like the colorful metaphors like "bowels of microsoft".

Re:now that you've read the sugar, time to . . .

[James_Duncan8181]

want to know why they are called the bowels? cos they certainly put out enough s...anyway, time to move on

Staff

[mccalli]

• "We've sent out calls at 3 a.m. when the build is broken, find the developer that broke it, and get him into work right then and fix it immediately."
• "We let people bring their kids in on Saturdays, it's a family day. There's no swearing allowed on Saturdays. But you still have to be there, and we still have to make a build."

Hmm. Not a life for me, thank you very much. I have a wife and daughter, and jealously guard my time with them. You can forget being called at at 3:00am to fix bugs, and you can forget being required to be in on Saturdays too.

Cheers,
Ian

Yeah,....

[Steveftoth]

after reading this I will make sure that I never work with this guy. He seems to value flash and features over software that works! Maybe he just is in the mindset of programming himself into a job.

Architecture

[Petronius]

"Our core architecture is so solid, that we were able to take NT from 386-25's in 1990 to today's embedded devices, 64-way, 64-bit multiprocessor machines, and $1000 scale-out server blades."
-David Thompson
Vice President
Windows Server Product Group

Reality:
Our architecture is so solid that a new virus for Windows gets written every day.
It only took 10 years to merge different variants of the Win32 API.

He, Thompson, let us know what you're smoking!

don't be happy

[newsdee]

That mascot is probably reserved for voodoo rituals :-) Geek or not, it's still MS... :-)

Damn MS subliminal messages

[sfled]

However, in the hour-long War Room sessions, Wanke rules with an iron fist,..

Bug fixing is "unrewarding"

[jetmarc]

> "NT 3.51 was a very unrewarding release," Thompson said, contrasting it with
> Daytona. "After Daytona was completed, we basically sat around for 9 months
> fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware. But
> because of this, NT 3.51 was a solid release, and our customers loved it."

I wonder why I think so bad about Microsoft products?!

Spamming Slashdot?

[rjung2k]

This is the third plug for this book in this article already. Who's spamming /., and can we shoot them?

Re:Spamming Slashdot?

[bheer]

You don't say someone is spamming TAOCP when he recommends a good book on data structures/algorithms, do you?

I suspect this book gets mentioned so much because it's a very good book -- it reminds me of a software companion to Tracy Kidder's _The Soul of a New Machine_ (which is another fine book if you haven't read it) and gives us the story behind NT development much better than this article did.

biggest software engineering task ever attempted??

[theManInTheYellowHat]

So how does this really compare?
If you concider the kernel, GNU and KDE | Gnome (either one w/o apps) I would think that there is as much to them.

I would also wonder about the big iron OS dev teams.

Also as with any huge corporate project you have to assume 1/2 of the 10,000 people are dead weight PHB types.

Re:it's tux, troll.

[frenetic3]

Waddle does not have a red eye. [iluvcollectibles.com] At least not on the TY site and he was discontinued in 98. You must have been paid to make that silly remark, that or very stupid.

Where is my "+1, Huge Nerd" mod option when I need it... :P

-fren

The best

[Apreche]

The best thing I got out of this article was the in-depth war room description. It's good to know exactly how so many bugs get into Microsoft Software, and don't get taken out. It's also cool to know that there are indeed nightly builds of Windows.
This means that in the event Microsoft decides to be nice, they can publicize the bug database and the nightly build iso files along with the source code to people, and they can fix windows bugs. Especially the really big ones that this Wanke(r) guy doesn't think need fixing until the next version.
Of course, this will only happen when Lucifer soars upon a winged hog in the snowy August winds. But its nice to know that the same thing that OSS people do via bugzilla and cvs are the same things that MS does in its big ol' proprietary house.

Win api vs the OS/2 api

[lseltzer]

I think real world circumstances belie this stance. The reason MS decided to push the Windows API on NT instead of making it the new OS/2 was because the software industry was writing Windows apps, not OS/2 apps. They believed - correctly - that migration to the 32-bit platform would be more successful from a successful 16-bit API.

I remember prior to the divorce over this dispute that Gates was often in the illogical position of asserting that OS/2 was a natural migration path for Windows developers, when that was only true in the broadest terms, such as making your C program event-driven. But migration from Win16 to Win32 was more natural.

Anyway, Microsoft was right. Developers did migrate their Win16 programs to Win32 and the market success of both drew more developers and more users to Windows. OS/2 could have been considered a success if they had lesser expectations of it, but the market in general did not move to it, and even companies that did write OS/2 apps (Word Perfect, Lotus) didn't work very hard on them. I tried them all and they basically all sucked.

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[binaryDigit]

But now we're talking chicken/egg. This was all going on about the time of Win 3. Before then there was Win286/386 and there were not that many apps written and it didn't have the market penetration that it currently enjoys. It could (not would, but could) have been a natural point to migrate apps over to 32bit. Remember, the migration didn't really start happening until NT, NOT 3.0/3.1. With 3.x we got the bastard Win32s, which wasen't true 32bit anyway.

Anyway, Microsoft was right. Developers did migrate their Win16 programs to Win32 and the market success of both drew more developers and more users to Windows.

No, they weren't right, they left developers no other choice. Before the rift, you were choosing between legacy (16bit) and the future (32bit), all of a sudden the future got split into two, and the choice became Microsoft vs IBM. This came at a time where with OS/2, you HAD to port to 32bit, which developers didn't want to do right away, so they had the easier approach, stick with 16bit and existing market share.

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[lseltzer]

No, they weren't right, they left developers no other choice. Before the rift, you were choosing between legacy (16bit) and the future (32bit), all of a sudden the future got split into two, and the choice became Microsoft vs IBM. This came at a time where with OS/2, you HAD to port to 32bit, which developers didn't want to do right away, so they had the easier approach, stick with 16bit and existing market share.

I was there at the PDC in San Francisco 7/4/92 when MS released the first Win32 SDK. In fact, I wrote the first hands-on review of it (PC Week; I think that review is quoted in the "Show-Stopper!" book mentioned elsewhere in this thread). OS/2 2.0 was shipping already and there had been 32-bit OS/2 developer kits probably for years.What do you mean they had no choice? They had no choice if they wanted to write for a Microsoft 32-bit OS, but IBM was still pushing OS/2.

This is the late 80's/early 90's: At the time there were still plenty of people who thought OS/2 would be successful, and if people had bought it it would have been. Nobody held a gun to anyone's head and said "you may only write for Windows."

BTW, there was a 16-bit OS/2 you know, and developers could have written to it if they wanted. There were 16-bit versions of Word and Excel, 1-2-3/G, Describe (of course).

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[binaryDigit]

What do you mean they had no choice?

Meaning that at least with a unified Microsoft/IBM product and a (seemingly) clear migration to 32bit, developers "knew" that they had could migrate to the "more powerful" system as their app's required. When Microsoft split, developers were faced with the fact that to move to 32bit would be taking a huge risk suddenly. So for most developers, they were left with no choice but to stick with the 16bit Win api as the move to both 32bit AND now a competing OS was way to much of a risk. That was my point, that by causing the rift, MS effectively "took away" the incentive to move to 32bit at that time.

This is the late 80's/early 90's: At the time there were still plenty of people who thought OS/2 would be successful, and if people had bought it it would have been. Nobody held a gun to anyone's head and said "you may only write for Windows."

True, but having Microsoft suddenly become a "competing" OS when there was effectively no wide spread application support was lethal. If you were an isv at the time, you still had to choose between writing for an os with a fairly large market share or one where the market share was small and IBM pushed the OS as a high end corp solution. I managed to convince my company to take that risk, mainly due to OS/2 excellent support for DOS, but trying to convince someone to come out with an office suite to compete with Office would be tough (I know people tried, but again, market share is/was king and MS was already established with Word and Excel).

BTW, there was a 16-bit OS/2 you know, and developers could have written to it if they wanted. There were 16-bit versions of Word and Excel, 1-2-3/G, Describe (of course).

I know, I was using OS/2 starting with 1.0 (waiting pateiently for IBM to release 1.1 with the wonderful new Presentation Manager :) AFAIK, Microsoft never officially shipped Word for OS/2 (the company I worked at had beta copies) and I don't ever remember seeing Excel. 123/G was nothing and even 123 was well on the way out by then. And I always hated Describe, it was buggy, the interface clunky, and it just didn't feel like a polished app (maybe later versions did, but not the ones I was using with 1.2 and 1.3).

Don't underestimate the power of market share and "do as Microsoft does" when it comes to making decisions about what platforms to write software for. Yes, OS/2 had a very small window (NPI) of opportunity, but it was too late and MS nailed the coffin shut when they dropped it. Developers could see this happening and coding for OS/2 was considered risky compared to coding for Windows, so to try to say that Windows won based on a fight with equal footing would be misunderstanding the market totally. At the time most developers would have loved to have chucked their kludgy Win16 pieces of junk and start fresh with a more sane API (never mind also having a more robust OS around it), but they were scared by the marketplace.

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[lseltzer]

AFAIK, Microsoft never officially shipped Word for OS/2 (the company I worked at had beta copies) and I don't ever remember seeing Excel. 123/G was nothing and even 123 was well on the way out by then.

I used both Word and Excel for OS/2, if only briefly. The printing system in OS/2 was totally busted until about 1.3 so I couldn't really give them a fair shot.

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[binaryDigit]

OOC, were they release versions or beta's? I didn't think that M$ every officially shipped any major app for OS/2 (other than compilers).

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[lseltzer]

I don't remember them being betas, but I don't remember them getting a lot of press either. It's like 13 years ago so I'm not sure. I'll try to look it up

Re:Win api vs the OS/2 api

[lseltzer]

I found copies of Excel for OS/2 for sale (although listed as out of stock)

the sheer numbers of developers involved...

[davejenkins]

I am astounded at the sheer number of developers involved-- well, let me clarify that-- the number that are being paid, overseen, and managed by a single entity for this code. Clearly we know where all the money from those licenses is going, but it's structurally flawed: as software evolves, it will take an increasing number (linear? geometric? exponential?) of developers to build and maintain that OS. However, by trying to maintain them all under one roof, with one management structure, one 'political system' if you will, will always either make the process needlessly inefficient or horribly expensive.

I am reminded of the massive engineering projects the Soviets used to do just because they could-- it wouldn't make sense in terms of feeding their people or making their lives any more secure, but they did it because the central planners knew they could plan it.

This seems similar-- NT will become such an incredible beast that the bureaucracy to maintain it will suffocate it, or they'll start taking shortcuts.

Re:the sheer numbers of developers involved...

[IamTheRealMike]

There's an interesting presentation on how they manage this here. Basically they have 5000 team members, not necessarily actual computer programmers....

Branding Issue Bugs?

[RoboLobster]

On that day, WinServer 2K3 had just a few active bugs, and at least a quarter to one-third of those bugs were simple branding issues.

What is a branding issue bug?

Re:Branding Issue Bugs?

[odaiwai]

A 'branding issue bug' is when you have morons who hard code the name of the OS into the source files instead of referring to a specific variable or a fixed file.

As a quote from the interview says: "I went out and handpicked the three best developers on the team and said, 'just go and fix it.' One developer fixed over 7,000 references to [Windows] .NET Server. Let's just say that there are people I trust, and people I don't trust. I told these guys, 'don't tell me what you're doing. Just do it.'"

So clearly a lot of the developers are hard-coding certain things into the code rather than relying on a solid design document. Sloppy, very sloppy.

dave

Re:Branding Issue Bugs?

[Dave2 Wickham]

Either that or they used a variable over 7,000 times and the developer decided to change that ;).

Re:Daily build != daily hack

[Jack William Bell]

Sorry, the answer is:

C) Your feature doesn't make it into the build tonight.

Believe me, at any large shop doing a big project, the last thing you want to do is break the build. I would rather miss a meeting than break the build...

Just plain nauseating...

[mcrbids]

This is a sickening PR fluff piece. It's like reading $cientology "literature"... filled with "Thanks to the modularity of the NT kernel"...

I'll probably lose some karma for this, but it's all praise and no objectivity!

Move along, nothing to read here.

ReactOS

[dcuny]

Why not have a look at ReactOS, an open source clone of NT?

Unlike some doomed attempts to make a "better" Windows clone *cough*Freedows*cough* that degenerated into a puff of vaporware, the fine people at ReactOS have been keeping their noses to the grindstone and quietly worked away at getting an NT clone working. It's still a long way from replacing NT, as this screenshot of the one and only GUI application shows.

But if you want a free and open look at Inside the development of [a] Windows NT [clone], ReactOS is a good place to look.

They've done a number of things right:

• Shut up and coded...
• Picked NT as a target instead of the more glitzy Win9x
• And coded...
• Focused on core features instead of the GUI
• And coded...
• Borrowed from Wine where it seemed sensible

Did I mention they spend thankless hours coding?

Re:ReactOS

[geekee]

Yeah, they're doing a great job at copying something MS did years ago but MS coders are releasing "vaporware" such as Win2K and WinXP, which are more advanced. Shut-up with the slashdot-speak already. You sound like an idiot.

Re:ReactOS

[Arjen]

Did I mention they spend thankless hours coding?

Coding alone has never resulted in anything worthwhile. Actually thinking about the code you're about to write and writing a specification has.

How MS "punishes" bug meeting truants

[dpbsmith]

Let's see if I've got this right:

"This late in the development process, bugs are often passed along, or "punted," to the next Windows release--Longhorn--if they're not sufficiently problematic."

"The atmosphere in War Room is intimidating, and I spent most of my time in the room, silent and almost cowering, praying that Wanke wouldn't turn his attention to me or my group.... The most virulent treatment, naturally, is saved for those foolish enough to blow off a War Room meeting. On the day I attended, one feature group had four of its bugs punted to Longhorn because they had failed to shown up for War Room. When someone argued that they should be given another day, Wanke simply said, "F#$% 'em. If it was that important, they would have been here. It's in Longhorn. Next bug."

So... in this macho atmosphere, reeking of testosterone... the punishment for not being that the bug meet is that... YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIX YOUR BUGS UNTIL THE NEXT MAJOR RELEASE?????????

Words fail me...

Re:How MS "punishes" bug meeting truants

[MeanMF]

So... in this macho atmosphere, reeking of testosterone... the punishment for not being that the bug meet is that... YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIX YOUR BUGS UNTIL THE NEXT MAJOR RELEASE?????????

The NEW FEATURE that the group was working on gets moved to the next release.

Re:How MS "punishes" bug meeting truants

[Froqen]

If they punt your bug and it's important, you fight back (the next day). However every day closer to the ship date, the bar for what bugs will get taken (roughly: regression risk X bug impact) goes up. By not showing up, you lower the chance that your bug will get taken. Also, if a bug is critical enough (as dictated by a paying customer) the fix will get issued as a hotfix, and rolled out to everyone else in the next service pack. Lastly, there are multiple forks to the code tree, the dev has fixed the bug (by the time it get to war) and it'll checked in to the longhorn branch; it just won't get released till the next "ship vehicle".

The war team is all about the needs of a feature team against the needs to ship a stable product. Anytime such needs clash tensions run high.

Re:How MS "punishes" bug meeting truants

[BigJimSlade]

It sounded to me like this was more of "if you're not here for the meeting and there's a problem in your feature, your feature is not going to be in the next release". And I would imagine that if their compensation stems partially from getting those features in, that could be quite a blow for the team.

Re:How MS "punishes" bug meeting truants

[LordSah]

By the time bugs make it to the war room, they've already been fixed. That meeting is exists to look at the risk of the code change, the importance of the bug, and the thoughts of people who are involved with the bug. I imagine it really sucks if you had put a lot of work into a fix, and then it doesn't ship because you missed a meeting.

Bugs

[sstory]

If they're really that fix-crazed, how come outlook has had the same bug (overly persistent and reappearing send/receive dialog box) for years now? I first got that bug on Outlook Express on Windows 95. Fast forward 5 years, and I have that bug on Outlook on Windows 2000.

Re:Bugs

[TheShadow]

Because they care more about Windows than Outlook. Linux must have been a wake-up call for them years ago. It made them realize they needed to get their act together as far as product quality and reliability is concerned or they would be in trouble. Without their OS "monopoly" MS is nothing. And if you have noticed, Microsoft's OS products (well, the NT based ones anyway) have been getting more and more solid as time goes on. If Win2k3 is as much of an improvement over Win2k as Win2k was over NT4.0... MS is going to make a significant dent into the server market.

Re:Bugs

[sstory]

Yeah, I use W2K, and it rox pretty hard. I went a year without a crash. But the Outlook bug pissed me off so hard I switched to Mozilla at home.

I disagree - not spam, just a great book.

[Ndr_Amigo]

Load of crap, I doubt anybody is spamming slashdot for a book this old.

It is simply the BEST look at the insides and development of NT around. The article on Paul's site is dry and doesn't even remotely express the truth behind NT.

For example, ShowStopper reveils the amount of disgust the NT team (or at least Daves side) -really- felt towards Win16 compatability. The canned articles says how 'easy it was' and what a 'good idea' it was.

Show stopper explains how rejected it REALLY was from most of the team and how much of a complete and utter headache it was to implement the Windows 'personality'.

The articles linked are not bad when talking about the latest version of Windows, but it's very much preaching and definatly doesn't tell much about how NT started out and it's effect on Microsoft as a whole.

The whole GUI thing was actually pretty much a laugh to the DEC people Dave dragged over with him, and the practice of 'eating dogfood' at Microsoft was really first imposed by Dave himself. And there's intresting background on the IBM/MS OS/2 debacle (Windows NT was originally going to be OS/2 NT!) and how Windows very nearly didn't have anything approaching usable graphics until Michael Abrash himself came in with his 'new trick' that actually allowed NT to show graphics at a usable rate and was the first step to removing the console.

Anyway, I don't want to do a book review here, let's just say that the above articles are far too preachy, the book shows the REAL story and I recommend it. And I'm sure that's why the other three people have plugged it also :)

no

[Twister002]

If it's going to break the build, ou don't check it in to the main branch for the daily build.

Innovation, whether you like it or not

[t0ny]

Another major thing that people ignore when they bash NT is that, given the history of OSs, making a modular component OS was very new thinking at the time. The quote in part one, where he says why they didnt develop for 1386 and it would have hurt their longterm prospects for short term performance, was really what prevailing logic of the time was about. The OSs were very much tied to the architecture of the machine they were running on.

Unfortunately, for various reasone, they didnt end up making Hardware Abstraction Layers (HALs, as they are called) for different OSs after a while, but the groundwork and ability to do so is still there. I would imagine the reason they dont make Alpha versions of current NT OSs is due to either legal difficulties in doing so, or because the support costs would outweigh the income gained.

Re:Innovation, whether you like it or not

[t0ny]

Quoted from article: September 1990, truly, was the turning point for Windows NT. Not coincidentally, that's also when Dave Thompson, previously heading Microsoft's LANMAN for OS/2 3.1 advanced development team, joined the NT team. "We threw the switch," Thompson told us, "and the team went from 28 to about 300 people. We had our first real product plan."

So this is why NetBIOS in NT (basically LANMAN) has a cobbled-on feel to it. Because it was.

the Netware port was strategic. Novell was ambivalent about the NT desktop - they didn't know if they wanted to build a client. We offered our assistance, but they kept messing around and ... well. We did our own. And it just blew them away. Ours was the better Netware client, and customers used ours for years, even after they finally did one. That client enabled the NT desktop, because Netware was the prevalent server in the market. We wouldn't have been able to sell NT desktops otherwise."

This was how things worked (or didnt work, as the case may be) back then. Each company was jealously protecting their market share, their 'turf', if you will, any way they could.

MS was the only one who went in for interoperability, that that is why they won the desktop wars- because they were the only ones to fight that battle. While others, like OS2 and Apple, were working to protect their own market share and keep it running on their own hardware, MS was making an OS that had the potential to connect with anything else, on potentially any hardware.

"NT 3.51 was a very unrewarding release," Thompson said, contrasting it with Daytona. "After Daytona was completed, we basically sat around for 9 months fixing bugs while we waited for IBM to finish the Power PC hardware. But because of this, NT 3.51 was a solid release, and our customers loved it." NT 3.51 eventually shipped in May 1995.

most people today view NT3.51 as the first 'real' version of NT. In fact, you can still find it in use today. I remember years ago we experimented with IBM's new (at the time) "network PCs", which were the first real attempt at a PC thin-client. It ran on NT3.51 and could run MS Office 97; this was maybe a year or more before NT4 Terminal Server Edition came out. We never really went for it, because the costs of buying one big server and the thin client machines never worked out to a cost savings. It would have been cheaper in terms of support, however, but thats what happens when accountants run IT departments.

, Windows 2000 didn't have a codename "because Jim Allchin didn't like codenames," Thompson says.

LOL, I still occasionally call it NT5. Is that a codename?

Re:Make turncrank - solaris - hmm.

[ronaldcromwell]

This is because windows NT is secretly Solaris 2.6, just rebranded. I bet you didn't know that! - Bill G

penguin

[Glass of Water]

did anyone else see this? (right side of TV in background.) there is a spy in their midst!

Still and always.

[Richard Steiner]

You've been living in a cave, perhaps? ;-)

7000 "bug fixes" for one developer

[gosand]

The speed at which the team was able to fix all of the branding graphics, text, and registry entries in the system is a testament to the company's dynamic process for fixing bugs, Wanke said. The problem was that several thousand changes needed to be made, and that would normally require several thousand new entries in the product's bug tracking system. "I went out and handpicked the three best developers on the team and said, 'just go and fix it.' One developer fixed over 7,000 references to [Windows] .NET Server. Let's just say that there are people I trust, and people I don't trust. I told these guys, 'don't tell me what you're doing. Just do it.'"

Ahh, good ol' sed. I wonder if he used the Windows version, or if he booted up the Linux box? :-)

This just goes to show that even the biggest software developers have to deal with "simple" requests like name changes that are very inefficient uses of engineers time. I want to know what super-duper advanced bug system they use.

Re:7000 "bug fixes" for one developer

[tunah]

I want to know what super-duper advanced bug system they use. Bugzilla.

Re:7000 "bug fixes" for one developer

[bheer]

> Ahh, good ol' sed

It's normal practice to keep 'marketing' names, branding information etc in resource files, which can be searched and edited separately from the code. However, searching within the resource files for *bitmaps* which have version names within them (e.g. the Help|About box in Win2000/XP) is slightly more difficult -- especially if some cretin had not labeled the graphic resource properly. I'd suspect that bitmaps would have taken most of the time, and that the devs who fixed this probably ran macros inside their resource editor (which has a fairly neat macro system based on VBA actually).

Sounds like typical Micro-FUD to me, bud

[ausoleil]

Microsoft's record of "innovation" has sunk to a new low -- now it looks like they are going to embrace-extend-exterminate Tux. These bozos can't even invent their own mascot...but then again, a furry, squishy bug (the animal most reminiscent of Windows, IMHO) isn't the most inspiring marketing tool.

Bet they claim they had a penguin for a mascot all along and it was those hippies, foreigners and un-American freaks that stole their idea and made Tux the mascot for that mean ole' Linux.

How typical.

The same old story

[jkabbe]

"I went out and handpicked the three best developers on the team and said, 'just go and fix it.' One developer fixed over 7,000 references to [Windows] .NET Server. Let's just say that there are people I trust, and people I don't trust. I told these guys, 'don't tell me what you're doing. Just do it.'"

When the drek hits the fan, everyone is CMM level 1. Heroes! LOL.

Do as I say, not as I do...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

"We expect all of our customers to install the security fixes,"

Except for our own people, in the case of Slammer!

Re:Not stupid. . .

[SN74S181]

I recall reading a Usenet post or two written by someone who had just loaded and ran Opera for the first time. It's similar to the behavior of people who get online with Linux for the first time.

They act like a dog that's gotten off a leash for the very first time.

They are soo, soo, sooooo liberated and free. Or something.

Re:The voice of opposition.

[MortisUmbra]

HAHAHAHAHA omg, that is TOO funny, -1 Flamebait. Well at least I was RIGHT! Nothing but a bunch of MS bashing retards in here, I have NO IDEA why people consider some of you to be immature. Throw a little medicine back your way and you flip

Automated Builds...

[Tsali]

[evil bash]

Well, if you have demonic minions of the Beast working overtime working psionic circuitry, a daily build seems anything but impossible.

[end evil bash]

wow...

[SirHalcyon]

"We should be able to reproduce that [build] three years in the future, using the various tools, compilers, and scripts we used at that time."

amazing... they figured out CVS, aren't they special.

Flamebait??

[Bishop]

The NT kernel was good. Then Microsoft moved the GUI into the kernel.

This is pretty much spot on, not flamebait.

To be fair to MS they had to do something to improve GUI performance in order to move NT onto worstations, and to a certain extent compete with other servers. NT3.51 was fine as a server, but painfull as a workstation. Win3.1 and later Win95 both provided much better user response. It is hard to sell your "high performance" OS when it feels slower then the old tech.

Talk more about version control/bug tracking

[mnemotronic]

They say they are using a new source code control system with "acquired technology" , apparently because the previous version (which I'm assuming is SourceSafe) wasn't up to the task. I'd like more details please ... we are considering ditching a very old version of PVCS where I work. Bitkeeper won't do it, and CVS + Bugzilla isn't a solution.

History is written by the losers

[Anonymous Coward]

(of the anti-trust case)

Microsoft is pushing awfully hard to sell their version of NT's history. The fact is, that even if someone was on Microsoft's payroll to tinker with some "new technology" since 1989, there was no NT product until 1996, when Windows NT 3.5 came out. It was a flop, because it still had the old Windows 3.1 GUI, and everyone was enarmoured with Windows 95's look and feel. Their official "NT 3.5" was actually just a bolted on netware client to windows for workgroups (16 bit.) NT 4.0 was just a GUI upgrade, but wasn't really usable for a couple of service packs. NT started having "server" functionality around 1997, and that was really just back office -- whose main feature was a network printer driver!

Re:History is written by the losers

[Junta]

Should be moderated as -1, WRONG.

I think NT is crap. But the existance of NT 3.1 cannot be outright denied, it was there. NT 3.5 was released before Windows 95. It was not because the GUI was Win3.x-like that it failed to make much inroads. NT4 happened to be the version out when the conditions were ripe for an increasing market share, and until 2000 was released, a lot of places continued to ignore NT as a toy. Home PCs really became drastically more popular while Windows 95 was standard. I think that is the reason why a lot of businesses started to think they wanted to use it in their work, so it would be like their home computer.

And saying NT was just WFW with Novell client tacked on is dumb. NT really did/still does maintain a separate, non-DOS based core. It was a truly 32 bit system. NT4 was mostly just NT 3.x with a shell upgrade, but the 3.x series needs more credit. Windows 95/98/ME were all increasingly complex hacks running on top of DOS. Really messy, really crappy. NT is crappy and messy, but not NEARLY so much the train wreck that is the 3.x/9x series.

Re:History is written by the losers

[Zapdos]

NT 3.X 4 used a 16 bit shell. The first true 32 bit system from MS was windows 2000.

Re:History is written by the losers

[MikeBabcock]

I ran and helped maintain Windows NT 3.51 systems for a few years and they were stable as long as you didn't tinker with them at all. Maintaining modems on them was hell, and you certainly didn't want to run Visual C++ on it.

Applying hotfixes was hell as well, fwiw.

12 hour compiles!!!

[zackbar]

Yikes.

I figured someone here would post about MS recompiling 50 million lines of code every day.

Does this mean they update each program source every day? The kernel, as well as each of the dlls? It seems like overkill.

Or at least it seems like major code bloat. Perhaps it's too much in the OS itself.

Doesn't linux separate the file system from the user interface? Seems there has to be a better way than the way MS does it.

Re:12 hour compiles!!!

[Procyon101]

No, it means they run a clean automated daily build, which is common practice for most projects. Incremental builds are great for devs, but the official build is most always done clean.

Even as a dev, I try to run a clean build of my systems when I leave Friday. I can't tell you how many times a weird bug has been caused by some missed dependancy that the make system wasn't rebuilding.

Re:12 hour compiles!!!

[LadyLucky]

No, that's the way.

I just implemented a complete, automated daily build for our app. Completely trashes the existing build, clean get from source control, build, run tests, package, deploy, configure and email the result to the team.

OK, so it's a java app with less than 100k of lines and it only takes about 20 min to do the full cycle, but it finds things before any developers do. It also runs the unit tests, automatically, every day. Once a test is written, it isn't even at the whim of the developers to run them, they actively protect the code, every day.

A complete clean and automated build is an essential part of software development. There is no such thing as overkill when you just get some leftover box to do it every day. Takes too long? just start the build earlier.

There is no way I will let the software head out under incremental compilation. No way whatsoever.

Re:12 hour compiles!!!

[zackbar]

I think perhaps I wasn't clear.

I make full rebuilds of my projects regularly as well rather than depending on incremental builds. What I meant was that the entire project seems to consist of all the pieces, from notepad.exe to the kernel itself.

Re:Where does the FUBAR memory model come from?

[BigZaphod]

There are bugs in the STL shipped by Microsoft. There's some unofficial patches here. The one you're looking for is "Fix to <xtree>."

Re:it's tux, troll.

[jonnythan]

The red thing is a beak, not an eye. Notice the yellow collar, which tux does not have (yet waddle does).

It's not tux.

50+ million lines of code!

[vena]

all brought down routinely by 5 line scripts :(

Re:50+ million lines of code!

[tengwar]

> all brought down routinely by 5 line scripts :( Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail. (R Kipling, "Frontier arithmetic")

Wow! Really?

[DakotaSandstone]

I did not know this! Thanks for the info!

Maybe a half price bookstore will have an OS/2 kernel programming book. Unless you have any suggestions for web resources about OS/2 architecture.

Source Code Control System

[dbk25]

I was interested, a frankly a bit bothered, by this:

"The source code control system we use now is new, because we really pushed the scale of the previous version with Windows 2000. Mark [Lucovsky] personally lead the development of the new system and introduced it post-2000."

The process described in the article depends heavily on branching and migrating changes between branches. Microsoft's version control product, Visual SourceSafe (VSS), has some serious and well known weaknesses in precisely those areas, which is why we are looking at a replacement.

VSS development has been minimal for years. Since Microsoft advertises that use the same development tools (Visual Studio, Visual C++, etc.) that they sell, I find it frustrating that for version control they've gone forward internally but left us VSS customers behind.

Re:Source Code Control System

[johnnyb]

Don't worry, they're probably just using CVS like the rest of us.

Re:Source Code Control System

[MikeBabcock]

Or bitkeeper :)

What a waste!

[AlgUSF]

All that time/money/effort, and Windows is arguably as stable as linux has been for years. Microsoft and Windows is a scam, can you imagine if all of that time was invested into Linux. I just downloaded SP3 for my machine at work, and played around with the "set program access and defaults" tab they added, and it errored out like crazy on me. All of the fixes from windows update were security fixes, like 22 of them. For the last 5 years I have refused to buy Windows, and build my PCs from scratch, because I am sick of my money going to this large corporate scam called microsoft windoze!

Re:Linux Redneck Geeks! Look ma! I compiled my OS!

[g_goblin]

Hmm... I didn't know I was a Redneck... maybe I should go buy some tobacca and start spitting in your eye... f'ing coward.

The truth of the matter is both OS's, *Nix and Windows, have their strengths and their weaknesses. You have to be able to identify how they affect your environment and work around them.

I like the article because I like to see what goes on behind the green curtain. I just wish Bill would let us see if it is a giant or a little person doing all the work.

Pa Ting!!!!

No problem

[TheConfusedOne]

Actually, step 3 is vulnerable to a buffer overflow and that gets you to step 4. (And we all now how that gets you to MS's profit. :-D )

Microsoft and the Empire State Building

[esarjeant]

What I don't get is why it takes 10,000+ developers to develop an operating system. Granted, there are a few nifty utilities included, but it seems like a case of an awful lot of cooks.

For comparison, the Empire State Building took a little over a year and had at most 3,400 workers on the project at any one time.

Re:it's tux, troll.

[twitter]

It's not tux.

and that's not laptop, it's a lunch boxe. Who would bring their laptop to a cafeteria anyway?

It's a penguin in a room full of programers, do you really think the mighty penguin in the corner means anything to any of them other than Linux?

WHY dont people want to work with m$

[geeklawyer]

"..They wanted to work with Novell, but Novell weren't interested.."

You have this inverted. It would've been rather more insightful if you'd asked why people dont want to work with Micro$oft. Think stacker patent, DOS, Sendo, utility apps, etc etc etc etc. People who do joint ventures with MS wind up getting f**ked up the arse by them. This is why phone and embedded device manufacturers have the often expressed attitude "we'll work with anyone but M$".

Asking why no-one wants to work with M$ is a bit like Saddam asking "no-one wants to hang with me. Why is that?"

Re:WHY dont people want to work with m$

[sql*kitten]

You have this inverted. It would've been rather more insightful if you'd asked why people dont want to work with Micro$oft. Think stacker patent, DOS, Sendo, utility apps, etc etc etc etc. People who do joint ventures with MS wind up getting f**ked up the arse by them. This is why phone and embedded device manufacturers have the often expressed attitude "we'll work with anyone but M$".

Nowadays, yes, but remember this was all happening a decade or more ago. Novell weren't even really interested in clients. And it doesn't explain Intel's and IBM's failures to get the i860 and PPC ready in time - both these companies could have benefitted enormously from MS, we could be running on PPC (or MIPS) instead of x86 on the average desktop if it had played out a little differently.

Re:WHY dont people want to work with m$

[IntlHarvester]

Novell was very interested in clients -- DOS clients. The low-memory usage, stability, and performance of their DOS client was their #1 advantage.

Now Microsoft comes along with NT. Everyone knows they are targetting Novell directly with File&Print. Like Lotus and WordPerfect Novell is stuck with the 640K mentality and fear 32-bit systems. They also have 80% of the current market. Why should they help Microsoft eat their lunch by providing them a client?

Except it backfires -- MS not only reverse-engineers a NetWare client, they reverse engineer the NetWare Server. Now NT is a drop in replacement. Plus NT runs all those new TCP/IP services NetWare doesn't run. In 3 years it's all over.

As for IBM, the sad thing was that they tried to squash PowerPC when OS/2 failed to ship on it. Not that anyone would have really bought NT/PPC (see Alpha).

Re:NT compile script (OT clarification)

[doubleyewdee]

Hmm, another 'assweasel' consumer? And here I thought that one was mine.

I can still however, lay claim to cuntburger, and jizzwaffle. Ho ho.

line 3

[twitter]

First line:

#!/bin/bash

Line two:

#By compiling this program you agree to the following terms:

#1. Compilation is forbiden.

Well, it's true you know, even for those under the "shared source" program. Look, but don't touch. Who knows if what they share is anything other than a bill?

Re:no the kernel build still works on alpha

[Guy Harris]

the NT kernel is a microkernel much like the mach kernel in MacOS 10.x

Yeah, both of them keep a ton of stuff in kernel-mode code, such as file sysstems, network stacks, etc.. They're not microkernels much like, say, QNX, however.

sick company

[twitter]

So they rebuild Windows from scratch every day? Somebody send them a copy of make, please.

They have to eat their own dog food every day. It's compiled on some M$ encumbered x86 every night from scratch, regardless of changes made to the code. Other evidence of ritual self abuse at M$ include:

• Use of M$ desktops.
• Use of M$ servers
• Talking to Steve Balmer
• Driving to work
• Buying M$ and holding shares for 15 years without dividend payment
• and my favorite, recreational use of VB

Re:sick company

[Richy_T]

It's compiled on some M$ encumbered x86 every night from scratch

And when finally that CPU had come to the end of its working life and was finally retired, it's package was broken open and was found to be filled with some kind of organic matter. DNA analysis found its origins were from three men; Judas, Brutus, and Cassius

Rich

no swearing on saturdays!

[MrPotatoeHead]

"We let people bring their kids in on Saturdays, it's a family day. There's no swearing allowed on Saturdays. But you still have to be there, and we still have to make a build."

I can just see saturday war room meetings...

"IIS is doing *what* with the .hta extensions? Where're the IIS guys? Not here? Fuck 'em. Punt it to longhorn. Shit is this saturday? er.. I mean to heck with them! Sorry little Timmy...!"

That's a PUFFIN [was Re:hmmm...]

[beerman2k]

What are you people blind?? That is not a penguin--it's a puffin.

No wonder!

[twitter]

According to BigJimSlade, the bug meeting attitude is, "if you're not here for the meeting and there's a problem in your feature, your feature is not going to be in the next release". ...their compensation stems partially from getting those features in, that could be quite a blow for the team."

Now we know why M$ can't tell the difference between a bug and a feature.

Re:what "NT" stands for

[Guy Harris]

Actually, it really stands for "nice tits", but that's something they couldn't tell the marketing department.

Why not?

what they admitted.

[twitter]

They weren't quibbling the necessity.

They admitted that 9 months of bug fixing was unusual and not likely to occur again. They don't like bug fixing and will do what they can to avoid it. It's urewarding, phththth-fit, that's one of the reasons they get a pay check, but bad attitude all around. If releasing something that works well is unrewarding to them, we now know why it does not work well. We also know what to make of the month long group hug M$ had a big PR fest about.

If they want personal satisfaction they should work for a company that does not claim to own all their ideas and use their time to write free software. Lots of fun and excitment there and you don't even have to drive to work.

Think about it...

[munch117]

So... in this macho atmosphere, reeking of testosterone... the punishment for not being that the bug meet is that... YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIX YOUR BUGS UNTIL THE NEXT MAJOR RELEASE?????????

It seems the MS developers consider it a punishment to ship a product with a bug in the parts they are responsible for, and you consider it a reward. What does that say about the MS developers, and what does that say about you?

/A

When you eat your own dog food...

[SideshowBob]

... you're eating dog food! :-/

*rimshot*

They use Perl

[Screaming Lunatic]

I'm fairly sure that they use Perl from friends that have worked as coops/interns at MS. And from emails such as these.

Is this for real?

[stephenry]

How can this article be taken seriously when it has statements like:

"in the hour-long War Room sessions, Wanke rules with an iron fist"

Re:"Dying", you blerf!

[tellezj]

Look at this and this you frappen idiot.

When they bought Source Safe...

[gatkinso]

...from One Tree a few years ago it was good for its time. They haven't really touched it too much since then.

Distinguished names?

[acoustix]

"There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. It's an enormous task, the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this."
-Mark Lucovsky
Distinguished Engineer
Windows Server Architect

So would his (typeful distinguished) context be:

.CN=LucovskyM.OU=Engineer.OU=WindowsServer.OU=OS .O=Microsoft.C=US

?????

awwww, poor, poor Microsoft

[g4dget]

After screwing over almost every company they ever worked with people don't want to work with them anymore? Gee, I wonder what the reason might be. And just look at Microsoft's profit margin and stock price--those poor people people at Microsoft--competitors have been so rough on them.

As for IBM, I think it was Microsoft that dropped the ball on PPC support--NT for PPC had no applications to speak of and was essentially useless. And Intel didn't fail with the i860 to screw Microsoft, they just screwed up.

Re:awwww, poor, poor Microsoft

[sql*kitten]

As for IBM, I think it was Microsoft that dropped the ball on PPC support--NT for PPC had no applications to speak of and was essentially useless. And Intel didn't fail with the i860 to screw Microsoft, they just screwed up.

You've hit the nail on the head there. Microsoft have come to realize (or at least, believe) that they can't rely on any third parties. That's why they do operating systems, programming languages, end-user applications, back office servers, etc.

Microsoft simply aren't willing to risk anymore that they will create an OS and find no third party apps for it. Look at NT on Alpha, it was supported for years, but MS gave up when they realized that all the developers were developing for NT on x86. Even tho' for many applications porting would have been very straightforward (in some cases, just a recompile) the ISVs just didn't do it.

Re:awwww, poor, poor Microsoft

[g4dget]

Microsoft simply aren't willing to risk anymore that they will create an OS and find no third party apps for it.

You misunderstood; it was Microsoft that dropped the ball on providing applications for NT/PPC. For example, for Microsoft Office, they just told IBM: "you port it, we can't be bothered". For BackOffice, they told Motorola to port it (as if Motorola had the expertise to do this sort of thing). If Microsoft doesn't lead the way with porting their own applications, why should third party developers?

You've hit the nail on the head there. Microsoft have come to realize (or at least, believe) that they can't rely on any third parties. That's why they do operating systems, programming languages, end-user applications, back office servers, etc.

Of course, that's what they believe. That's because they are brash, insular people with a serious NIH attitude. They'll rather release some poor in-house hack quickly than figure out how to work with other companies or standards bodies. And because they are very, very big, they can get away with it: their broken prereleases may not be popular, but they are sufficient to damage the market for the established standards, and year by year, Microsoft takes over one market after another. Any other company would be bankrupt with such incompetent behavior, but given the Windows monopoly, that kind of incompetence is a successful business strategy for Microsoft.

Re:awwww, poor, poor Microsoft

[g4dget]

Oops--let's try the link again.

Showstopper

[hwestiii]

G. Pascal Zachary of the Wall Street Journal (maybe he isn't anymore, but was at one time) wrote a very good book back in the early to mid '90s called "Showstopper" that covered the very early development of Windows NT, starting with the Dave Cutler/Digital gang and going up to 3.1 or 3.5 if I recall correctly.

Re:Showstopper

[linuxlover]

This is a very neat book. I read it. It goes through the lives of developers, managers who actually did the thing.

This scene stuck with me for a long time.

"NT development is 'done'. This developer goes home for dinner. His wife putting plates on the dinner table just for her and her mother (visiting) is surprised to see the guy. Because he never comes home for dinner. They all worked so hard and very late, they ate what ever is available at Microsoft. so she asks 'you are home early?', the guy answers 'yes honey, it is done' and slumps into the chair. Tears roll down wife's face!"

Very entertaining read.

Availability

[Door-opening Fascist]

Windows Server 2003 hit 99.995 percent availability at the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) stage last summer

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that they must have had something running a year before that? 4.5 9's of availability is what, a day of down-time per year?

Re:Availability

[NineNine]

No, math whiz. That's 26.28 minutes a year. Jesus, you kids should really spend more time studying, and less on Slashdot.

Re:Availability

[Door-opening Fascist]

My apologies to those who have the time to calculate that out. My point still stands, though.

How can they say that, after not even a year of development, a product has 99.995% availablity? IBM puts years of assessment into their MVS, z/OS, OS/360, OS/390, and OS/400 mainframe operating systems to get their 5+ nines of availability.

Re:Availability

[addaon]

Actually, they were able to say it had 100% availability for that first week, they just didn't think marketing would buy it. Then the machine crashed.

Re:Availability

[nathanh]

Windows Server 2003 hit 99.995 percent availability at the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) stage last summer

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that they must have had something running a year before that? 4.5 9's of availability is what, a day of down-time per year?

Well, if you assume it takes 2 minutes to reboot then 4.5 9s just means Windows spontaneously reboots every 3 hours and 20 minutes. Badoom tish.

Re:Availability

[ajv]

On typical IDE based server hardware (most low end servers these days), Win2003 takes about 15-25 seconds to boot from POST, roughly the same as XP does.

On SCSI based servers, most of the reboot time is consumed by resetting the SCSI bus.

Andrew

Re:Availability

[ajv]

The statistic is a form of mean time beween failures (MTBF).

I hate percentage uptime stats as they're useless and as you've just proved, hard to calculate correctly if you're a moron.

If you have a large server population of say 50,000 RC1 boxes all reporting back to MS (and it does), you can easily determine the MTBF of the fleet. But more importantly, the error reporting tells you about the bugs your customers are seeing and how many are seeing the same bug.

Andrew

Re:Availability

[nathanh]

#ERR192#: Malfunction in "HUMOR CHIP" model "YA888-21-X".

The NT Kernel Is the Good ol' OS/2 kernel

[kupci]

Sure it's good - it was based on OS/2...interesting the article glosses over that a little...

SAA/SNA

[IntlHarvester]

Are you malicious or just ignorant? Obviously SAA was part of the picture, But IBM OS/2 also has interoperability with Unix and the Net ...

The question was if IBM malicious or just ignorant.

His facts are correct. IBM tried to bury the i386 because they were worried about their midrange. This torpedoed OS/2 1.x and gave the entire project a "Loser" reputation long before Win 3.1 even shipped.

IBM also heavly marketed OS/2 as part of a Mainframe integration strategy, with it's special "Extended Edition", etc. And you would be hardpressed to find any significant OS/2 deployment that wasn't in a IBM mainframe shop.

This gave customers the impression of lock-in and that their Unix and Novell machines were second-class citizens in IBM's world -- Which they were. Windows NT shipped out-of-box with TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, AppleTalk, DECNet, you name it. IBM OS/2 2.0 shipped out of box with jackshit, and then made you pay for NetBEUI and pay some more (a lot more) for TCP/IP.

Not to mention that IBM themselves FUDded the idea of OS/2 on non-PS/2 hardware ... If you haven't come to the conclusion that OS/2's technical marketing was a clusterfuck from day 1, something's wrong.

Now I suspect at this point you are going to mention something about Warp 4.0 and so on, but trust me, OS/2 was already dead in the grave by then even at IBM.

Re:SAA/SNA

[leandrod]

> IBM tried to bury the i386 because they were worried about their midrange.

References, please?

> IBM also heavly marketed OS/2 as part of a Mainframe integration strategy, with it's special "Extended Edition", etc.

What was quite wise.

> their Unix and Novell machines were second-class citizens in IBM's world -- Which they were.

Not exactly, IBM having their own Unix and even their own, blue-packaged Netware.

> Windows NT shipped out-of-box with TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, AppleTalk, DECNet, you name it. IBM OS/2 2.0 shipped out of box with jackshit, and then made you pay for NetBEUI and pay some more (a lot more) for TCP/IP.

Yes, price & packaging were horrible at first. Now they are better, but with GNU/Linux around, no one is paying attention anymore, and in a way we are better off.

> Not to mention that IBM themselves FUDded the idea of OS/2 on non-PS/2 hardware...

Not exactly FUD, since driver availability and quality being so sketchy -- and that, at least in part, MS responsibility too.

> OS/2's technical marketing was a clusterfuck from day 1

Agreed. But I was arguing not the badness of IBM marketing, which is a given; I was arguing OS/2 technical superiority over MS-Win and MS responsibility on killing it thru betrayal.

Re:SAA/SNA

[IntlHarvester]

But I was arguing not the badness of IBM marketing, which is a given; I was arguing OS/2 technical superiority over MS-Win

Technical marketing and product positioning has everything to do with the goodness of the product's technology, because it determines what's in the box and what it's good for.

IBM was running around telling everyone that OS/2 was THE thing for connecting your PS/2s to your Mainframe, and then they were austounded when more universal purpose products like Windows kicked their ass, despite lacking "superiority" (which wasn't even true for NT).

In other words, by the time you spent the time and money getting OS/2 working properly, you could have bought something better. Like an AS/400 or a RS/6000. Which was probably IBM's evil master plan all along.

a look at windows testing?

[jonathanbearak]

Coming soon: Part Three!

In Part Three of Windows Server 2003: The Road to Gold, available soon, we'll take a look at Windows testing.

So, the author's blind, then?

Doesn't perl have an else statement?

[SonicBurst]

I'm not a perl programmer, but surely it must have an else statement and your code could be written like so: sub do_something { my $rtc = 1; if( $value != $correct_value ) { # clean up stuff } else $rtc = 0; return $rtc; }

12 hours to compile?

[lilbudda]

I guess it's true: What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away...

Re:Not stupid. . .

[NineNine]

I agree. I, like a dog, tried for years to get Linux functional. It was a big relief when I finally did get it to work correctly (and I got online...once). And like any dog, once I got off leash, I was like, "so what? Now I have to work twice as hard to take care of myself and still hope I don't get killed. Fuck that. I'm going home".

Dealing with inspiration

[rillopy]

I've always wondered how they made Windows, and finally reading about it was quite inspirational. Its amazing how 50+ million lines of code are managed and actually improved within a huge company.

Its different for an opensource project due to the remoteness and sporadicness(sp?) of the developers.

Regardless, I'm kind of annoyed by how no one seems to be commented on how much of a cool feat it is, and all they can comment on is how bad the reputation of Windows is. That's not what the article was about, folks. I mean, who among you didn't drool when the 3 "best" developers out of 5000 were picked to fix the last minute bugs. What a head trip!

Admit that it was inspirational and made you wanna code an OS and make a killer kernel.

Rillopy

Smart business people...

[zerofoo]

NEVER bet their businesses on the performance of 3rd parties.

Ask all the little tiny DSL providers that popped up in the late 90's how it feels to lean on someone else to deliver your product....

Oh wait, they're all out of business.

If you've got an idea, you better bring it to market without someone else's help....or you might not bring it to market at all.

-ted

Re:Not stupid. . .

[SN74S181]

A lot of dogs aren't leashed, so they don't have that psychotic behavior when they get loose. Any dog that's just kept in a fenced yard is for some reason more clueful. Maybe an animal psychologist can explain it.

Hope you don't get hit by a truck digging in that trash can for food.

It's been done

[pauljlucas]

There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. It's an enormous task, the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this.

It's not the biggest nor the only project like it. Next time you pick up your phone, think of the 5ESS Switch developed by AT&T Bell Labs (now Lucent) to handle phone calls. The development is done in Naperville, Illinois. In its heyday, they also had roughly 5000 developers and more Amdahl mainframes compiling code than you can shake a stick at.

I just don't understand or maybe I do...

[tqft]

If they had to use it themselves how come they got nowhere near the crashes I get? Maybe because they didn't actually use it to do hard work, use lots of app's from different sources, not enough memory (as I work for a stingy organisation) and they do everything the MS way. When IE (5.5xxx SP2) crashes (am using NT4.0) - it takes out something and leaves my system barely usable - just enough to shutdown and restart - sometimes. I think there testing needs to be a damn sight harder.

WTF?

[lseltzer]

Sorry, I don't know what happened to that link. Here's the one I meant to post.

More evidence

[lseltzer]

This also makes reference.

Big endian on R3000?

[geert]

According to the article, NT was ported to the R3000 in _big_ endian mode. I thought all versions of Windows were always _little_ endian (ia32, Alpha, MIPS, PPC, all CPUs supported by CE)?

Very Enlightening on Microsoft

[gottabeme]

Reading this article illuminated some of the things that IMHO are wrong with Microsoft's methods of developing software and handling their employees.

Heated argument and cursing are a given in War Room, and the penalty for not being on top of your bugs is swift and cruel ridicule from the other team members.

If that's true, that's incredibly unprofessional. Now I know many coders prefer to work in a relaxed, casual atmosphere, but to me that is taking it way too far. It can't be good for morale either. Devs should be expected to do their job to the best of their ability, get help if needed, and keep their bosses appraised of their progress. If they don't do all of that, they aren't doing their job. If they aren't doing their job, why are they working there?

The most virulent treatment, naturally, is saved for those foolish enough to blow off a War Room meeting. On the day I attended, one feature group had four of its bugs punted to Longhorn because they had failed to shown up for War Room. When someone argued that they should be given another day, Wanke simply said, "F#$% 'em. If it was that important, they would have been here. It's in Longhorn. Next bug."

That is a completely wrong attitude. If the rest of Microsoft is like that, that explains many of the problems with Microsoft software. That attitude would be fine if the only people affected by a bug were those responsible for fixing it. But the people that are affected by bugs are the people that buy and use their software: their customers, the people who pay their salaries. It is irresponsible of a person in charge of a project like that to not fix a problem he is aware of just because the subordinates who are supposed to fix it didn't show up for one of their three-times-daily meetings. It's starting to sound like they're only concerned with bug counts and severity ratings, reaching only for the goal of Release To Manufacturing to satisfy their shareholders that Product X is out the door and on sale.

In addition to the main War Team, each of the feature teams have their own War Rooms, so there could be as many as 50 such meetings each day, each going over a specific component of the system. These other War Room meetings occur at 8 a.m., every day. When a bug fix passes the local War Team process, it's introduced at Wanke's meeting. "They can't come into War Room unless they're fix-ready," Wanke said. "They must be fix-ready." Because there isn't a single person making decisions, there is a system of checks and balances through which each bug fix passes before it's introduced into the build.

So, if people don't attend the War Room meeting they get chewed out, but they aren't allowed to attend until they have finished what they're working on? Maybe some details are missing, but if it's that simple, no wonder MS software is such a mess. "Be here or else." "Don't show your face unless you have your fix finished." Do you see a conflict here?

We've sent out calls at 3 a.m. when the build is broken, find the developer that broke it, and get him into work right then and fix it immediately. The developers are on call 24 hours a day.

Again, irresponsibility. A dev should not leave for home until he's finished with his work. Finishing his work should include having tested his work that's been submitted as complete. If a dev submits broken code and leaves, he's not doing his job. Mistakes can happen of course, but a 24-hour on-call policy for programmers?! That can't be good for morale either. They should put in their hours, do their job right, and go home and (try to) forget about work. If they mess things up so badly that they have to get up at 3 AM to fix it, they are not doing their job right.

"I'm responsible for 8000 to 10,000 developers, program managers, and testers..."

Another problem. 8,000 to 10,000 people is like a division of a company, or a whole company in some cases. A person in charge of that many people should be in charge of general operations, not a single product. In other words, that's way, way too many people working on a single product. If you compared the number of people who work on Windows to the combined number of people that work on Linux or other open-source software with equivilant functionality, would the numbers be anything close? I don't know, but I doubt it. But even if the numbers are close, the way the software is made (independant programs that work on their own) avoids the problem of having to coordinate so many people.

On the day that we attended War Room, on January 21, 2003, Windows Server 2003 had hit an "absolute historic low" for bugs, according to Wanke. "We're shutting down the project this week," he said. "It's done. We're going to ship it." On that day, WinServer 2K3 had just a few active bugs, and at least a quarter to one-third of those bugs were simple branding issues. "So let's say there are about 150 outstanding issues to address," Wanke told us. "Of that, we'll fix about 100. All of the bugs are severity rated from 1 to 3, plus they get a priority rating. We have [a few] severity-1 bugs left to fix, and those all have to be fixed for us to ship."

Wanke said that the server team had already fixed all of the known security vulnerabilities.

So, Microsoft will ship software with known, fixable bugs in it (not news but making a point). That again demonstrates their attitude towards the quality of their software and their attitude towards their customers. They should but a sticker on the box that says "This software contains known bugs. A list can be found at www.microsoft.com/bugs." Of course, I guess their attitude is that their huge, legalese EULA discounts any responsibility and disclaims any fitness of purpose or quality. It also doesn't indicate much pride in their product (maybe they do have pride in it, but still...). Yes, all software will have some bugs in it I guess, but to decide to not fix already-known bugs and go ahead and sell their software seems irresponsible to me.

My two bucks. Should be interesting to see other opinions on this.

Some Journalism

[gottabeme]

In the end, all this dedication will result in the most secure and reliable operating system Microsoft has ever created...

That's opinion, not fact. The software has not even been released yet. Not exactly journalism, is it?

Book

[Benno...]

I have a book about the same subject but only up to version 3.1. Can't seem to find a link anywhere :-(
It was called something like "Showstoppers".

Using gotos

[John Bayko]

I think they're primarily useful as an equivalent to try {} finally {} in languages that support exceptions (obviously C doesn't). If a condition fails just goto the end, where the cleanup code is guaranteed to run.

In those cases, gotos can almost always be replaced by returns, kind of like this - original code:

procedure process_file...

open file
if failed, return
...
read something
if failed goto cleanup
...
write something
if failed goto cleanup
...

cleanup:

close file

This becomes:

procedure process_file...

open file
if failed, return
call process_file_data
close file

procedure process_file_data...

...
read something
if failed return
...
write something
if failed return
...

I think it makes for a much cleaner version.

Gotos can also be mostly eliminated using labeled breaks (which C doesn't have), or redesigning things - I find that excessive use of gotos means that you're really trying to design a state machine. You can do that with gotos, or you can use a loop containing a state variable, and a switch() statement listing the states.

So far I've never found a situation where a goto couldn't be avoided while still writing clear, efficient code. Maybe I will, but those three techniques (returns, breaks, and state machines) have held up so far.

brooks leasons forgotten?

[goon]

"There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. It's an enormous task, the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this."
-Mark Lucovsky

for all their chest beating bravado the lessons of Brooks MMM do not appear to be taken seriously.

Want to run a simulated S/370 on your linux box?

Yeah, well. Great.

[wouterke]

quote: "Now there are 5000 member of the Windows team, plus an additional 5000 contributing partners, generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. Getting all those people going in the same direction, cranking out code, is an enormous task. Building the results of their work, compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week. It's the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this." And Microsoft compiles the whole thing--all 50+ million lines of code, almost every single day" -- end quote.

Nice.

Let's compare this to an other operating system, shall we?

Debian GNU/Linux is also built and rebuilt almost constantly. No full rebuilds every day (which is braindead, there's no need to recompile unchanged code), but constant rebuilding of changed components. And unlike Microsoft Windows, of which the latest release is available for the unbelievable amount of two (2) (!) architectures, Debian GNU/Linux is released for 11 different processor types, while there is work in progress to add another one; there's even work in progress to make debian work on other kernels besides Linux.

All released architectures use the 'buildd' system to rebuild changed packages. These don't work 'nearly every day of the week', they work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Unlike the described Windows build system, where you need several engineers to oversee the build process, a Debian GNU/Linux autobuilder is usually managed by a single person, who takes care of everything. This includes ensuring the build environment keeps working, ensuring that the output and, possibly, reasons of failed builds are reported to the person in charge of the package that failed to build, checking the daemon's logs, and often also general maintenance of the machine. This probably isn't even everything, but should be mostly so.

One of the main differences between Windows and Debian GNU/Linux also is that the development version of Debian GNU/Linux is actually used for day-to-day work, even by non-developers. On those eleven architectures (twelve, if you count both the Big Endian and Little Endian versions of MIPS).

One last thing: 50 million LOC is both nothing, and bloat. On 'Counting Potatoes', at http://people.debian.org/~jgb/debian-counting/coun ting-potatoes/ , you can see that in the now outdated Debian 2.2 release, there were no less than 55 million LOC. That's 5 million more. OTOH, while the 50 million LOC in Microsoft Windows include just the operating system, some drivers, a few inferior application programs (they still need a market for Office) and a web browser, Debian GNU/Linux includes a lot more. If Windows requires 50 million LOC to accomplish not even half of what Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 did with 55 million LOC, and what Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 does even better, with admittedly some more LOC as well, then you either have a lot of comments in your code, or a lot of bloat.

Not to mention that there are other operating systems out there, such as the BSD-ish ones, that also do that 24/7 recompilation thing.

I'm everything but impressed, sorry.