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Why Vista Had To Be Rebuilt From Scratch

Posted by Zonk on from the i-like-my-code-with-meatballs dept.

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."

3 of 711 comments (clear)

  1. Longhorn Bug Database by quazee · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Someone has just published all these bugs!

    --
    throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
  2. Re:That explains a lot by NeuralAbyss · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I can't give any solid info, but I can give a personal anecdote.

    We recently had an 8gb VSS database corrupted, with about a quarter of the files unrecoverable. If you do use VSS, remember to do a -FREQUENT- analyse and fix on the database. And keep the database below 3gb - above this, you tend to get corruption issues.

    Split your VSS database into managable chunks.. and (I'll repeat this again) don't allow your database to grow out of control, and not be maintained.

    I'm sure you could find a few articles on Microsoft Support KBs to back this up.. just search for Sourcesafe and Analyse.

  3. Re:That explains a lot by icepick72 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    [and a third, slightly less important.] (3. They use the code themselves and have a ethic working to make the best code they can for themselves, knowing it wont be used as a tool to extort money from people.)

    From a desktop user perspective I've used both Linux and Windows and let me say that the Windows price tag is definitely worth it. I will pay for something more usable on a daily basis. In other words, Microsoft can "extort" me all they want because they deserve it.