Why Vista Had To Be Rebuilt From Scratch

iliketrash writes "The Wall Street Journal has a long front-page article describing how Jim Allchin approached Bill Gates in July, 2004, with the news that then-Longhorn, now-Vista, was 'so complex that its writers would never be able to make it run properly.' Also, the article says, 'Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.' And start over they did. The article is astonishing for its frank comments from the principles, including Allchin and Gates, as well as for its description of Microsoft's cowboy spaghetti code culture."

Comments

I know it's feeding, but...

[bobintetley]

Will you please stop posting this god-damn troll?

I've read this text too many times lately and any points you may have had are extremely out of date.

I personally find it sad that you have nothing better to do than continually post this tripe.

Loser.

Re:That explains a lot

[vcv]

Thank you for the insight Captain Makeshitup.

Re:That explains a lot

[DrSkwid]

I think it was Dave Presotto that said :

"Linux, by amateurs, for amateurs."

Re:That explains a lot

[caspper69]

Which means you don't use your computer to make money (or at least not much of it). Because if you did, you'd be a hypocrite, and a thief. You can't steal raw materials to make a widget, why should you steal the tools to make you a living.

Oh yeah, you're probably making fanboy websites and animated GIFs and avatars for your 3l337 forum.

I need to stop responding to the trolls!

Re:And Microsoft rule

[CrossChris]

4000 coders * 18 months, We could rewrite the program that runs this solar system!

No. Some coders could write an operating system in 18 months - the ones MS employ probably couldn't! The guys at MS have had the creativity (and their innate abilities) knocked out of them by the corporate machiine. The typical productivity of an MS coder is less than one tenth of that on the "outside".

Re:Oh please

[nmb3000]

You are a complete and utter fool. It's a pity that Slashdot harbors so many blind fanboys.

Re:Mac OS X not that modular

[leandrod]

it makes me expect them to back up their performance with something substantive

I am not here to show knowledge. And it doesn’t take deep expertise to know that the difference between a monolithic kernel and a multisserver microkernel goes much beyond dynamic vs static linking.

More to the point, it is not about source code modularisation (avoiding spaghetti code etc) but about extensibility, flexibility... thinks like Hurd translators, multiple personalities etc.

But why am I talking to you? You are a self-important know-everything bully.