Interview With Original NT OS/2 Developers

leddhead writes "Was browsing over at the microsoft site when i ran across this interview with dave cutler of vms/winnt fame. It is interesting to note how he stresses reliabilty over fancy graphics..." It's actually kind of an interesting interview if you ignore its PR-ish feel -- and the MS Word "?" problem if you're reading it in a Linux or Unix browser. The writer says the first NT OS/2 (NT's original name back in 1989) specs will be displayed at the Smithsonian soon. I wonder if this means Linus's first notes will be there someday. One can hope.

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NT Museum Exhibit Less Than Impressive

[cje]

WINDOWS NT MUSEUM EXHIBIT DEBUT LESS THAN IMPRESSIVE
Exhibit "Looks Pretty, But Offers Little Substance"

WASHINGTON, DC (AP) - A new exhibit unveiled this week in the famed Smithsonian paid tribute to the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) operating system originally known as "NT OS/2." Currently known as "Windows 32/64 2005+ SP8R12", the operating system has also been known as "Windows NT", "Windows 2000", "Windows Memphis Moscow Beauregard 2001 Plus", "Windows For E-Commerce And Other Buzzwords", "Windows 16/32/64 PlusPack 312 With FrontPage Extensions", and "Steve". Although expectations were high among Smithsonian officials, the exhibit's debut was not without its problems.

"It was a real mess," said museum curator Steven Fleischmann. "The exhibit had only been open to the public for about twenty minutes when one of the curtains came crashing down, landing on some tourists from Guam. "Oh, it was awful," recounted one of the tourists. "The curtains fell, and after we got out from underneath them, all we could see was the wall that was behind the curtains. The wall was this mesmerizing deep blue color." Also painted on the wall was a series of alphanumeric characters used by the Smithsonian to track exhibits.

Then, one of the legs on the table that was holding the specs broke, and it sent the plastic case sliding on down to the floor." Security guards swarmed onto the scene to repair the table and re-hang the curtain, to minimize the amount of time that the exhibit was unavailable to the general public. "I was having a picnic with my kids," complained security guard Jeff Fenner. "It would have been nice if I could have fixed the problem without actually having to come here, but it's awfully damn hard to repair a table remotely." Fenner spoke on condition of anonymity.

Museum exhibit construction experts are blaming the embarassing incident partly on the exhibit's design. "Look at this," pointed out expert Louise Smith. "They've designed the exhibit so that the curtains are attached to the table. Apparently, the only reason they did this is to increase the visual attractiveness of the exhibit. But this is a dangerous design, as we found out this morning. If the curtains go down, it takes the table with it. I'm not sure that this is a model that should be imitated by future exhibits."

For its part, Microsoft is downplaying the exhibit fiasco. "Look," said an annoyed Ed Muth, "it's not our fault that the Smithsonian was unable to properly configure its table and curtains. If they had set things up correctly, the exhibit never would have gone down. In short, it's their fault, not ours. Our recommendation is to upgrade to a newer table and more durable curtains." Muth, a Microsoft project manager, also added a recommendation that the Smithsonian purchase "a large support contract from Microsoft."

Although Fleischmann remains optimistic about the exhibit's future, he still has some reservations. "Look at it," he said, gesturing. "It's very pretty. I think that people will want to look at it. I just have some very real concerns about the whole foundation of the thing, and I don't want to have to maintain an army of custodial staff to rescue the exhibit every time it collapses."

Nicholas Petreley contributed to this story.

Interview is insubstantial, but has echoes of past

[millia]

(On a totally unrelated note, is anybody else interested in taking up a collection to get the 'Dave' banner taken out of circulation? That guy gives me the creeps.)

As was pointed out earlier, the first thing everybody should do (if they're interested in the subject, of course) is to go find a copy of 'Showstopper,' written about the birth of NT. I found mine remaindered. You do get the anecdotes about Cutler's boorishness, but you also get a balanced look at the development of a modern operating system.

Now, I'm not enough of a kernel guy to argue about design specs, capabilities, etc., but after re-reading the book there are many things that pop to mind about Linux/NT:
0) Cutler's goals are/were initially very unix-like. When you get right down to it, NT in its initial design sounded (again, to unqualified ears) remarkably similar, with its ways of isolating the kernel, etc. I cannot imagine HOW much fun they have had working DirectX into NT, and I can't even begin to imagine how much Cutler hated it (based on his vision as seen in the interview and in showstopper.)
1) Cutler was adamant about getting rid of bugs. The surprising stability of W2k beta3 was frankly shocking to me, until I remembered that he was back in the fold. Yes, we are talking about a prime example of bloatware, but even so. Unfortunately, since the code is only reviewed by a limited number of people, they're always going to be behind the curve. Furthermore, Cutler is (probably) not responsible for the behavior of other programs from Microsoft, such as Exchange, SQL, etc., and I think that is from my experience the primary starting point for failure on NT boxes. Add to this the fact that there was again undoubtedly tremendous pressure on Cutler from Marketing to do those whizzy things that would compromise kernel stability, and I'm glad I don't have his job (or that of a programmer on Exchange.) I honestly don't see how bugs can be eradicated from the enduser experience. NT is much more stable than is posited here IF you can keep the number of Microsoft server apps to a minimum, preferably one. But things like Back Office pretend that you can have Exchange, SQL, and SMS all running on the same box- hell, I can't even get through installing such a combination without a crash. As long as Cutler is left alone and has sufficient authority, that *might* happen, but frankly I doubt it.
2) Portability is gone now for NT. I never did quite understand how Microsoft wouldn't pony up the money to keep NT alive on PPC chips, and I'm even more confused about Compaq shutting down Alpha NT support and development. Isn't having a valid counterweight to Intel more important than, say, 250 million to keep NT alive on those 2 platforms? Does Microsoft trust AMD to survive? In contrast, Linux is ported to gosh-knows how many machines already, and will continue to be. Seems to me keeping it alive on multiple platforms would be an investment for the future.
3) Graphics. The bane of Cutler's existence. I think had his crew been left alone to create a text mode only NT for v1, we would be looking at a totally different situation. Novell did just fine with text only screens, and Linux did too in the beginning. Trying to force NT to run before it was stable enough to walk was a mistake. It would have been better to layer it on later AFTER stability was worked out.

Ultimately, I think NT is doomed to failure against Linux- there are simply too many people using Linux now. But more, I think anything manmade is either made for money or art. And things made for art (or love, if you will) endure. Cutler has the artist in him, but his painting keeps getting smeared by people above him. Gates doesn't have art in him and never will- he may be a nerd, but he's no geek.

Better portability?

[Sxooter]

In the interview, Cutler says:

But the only way to achieve portability is to develop for more than one platform at a time.

Funny. Linux was NOT designed with portability in mind, using a monolithic kernel. Yet by using a fairly bland set of assumptions about uProcessor design, it runs on nearly everything (didn't I just see something about it being on the dreamcast machines now???)

Meanwhile, NT runs on TWO platforms. and 64 bit NT will be a complete rewrite! Dear God man, if you can't even port to a 64 bit CPU, how transportable can your OS be?