Reading the story of how Windows NT came to be was entertaining, as it is a story of the system itself and the dynamics between Dave Cutler, the original designer and lead for NT, and the other people involved in the project. I was shy of being 10 years old when Windows NT launched and I didn’t comprehend what was going on in the operating systems world and why this release was such a big deal. Reading the book made me learn various new things about the development process, the role of Microsoft in that era, and allowed me to settle some questions I’ve had over the years.
This article is a mixture of a book review and a collection of thoughts and reflections that the book evoked. Let’s begin because we have a lot of ground to cover.
Dave Cutler’s impact on the word of computing really can’t be understated. I often wonder how he truly feels about what his and his team’s creation turned into today – does he like what Windows NT has become? Does he consider Windows 11 worthy of carrying on the torch of NT? As Cutler still works at Microsoft, we won’t get an answer any time soon, but I sure do hope he intends to write down his memoirs in a tell-all book about his life and career, because I’d be down for reading that.
Dave Cutler’s first OS: RSX11-D
There’s a great three hour long conversation with Dave Cutler on Dave’s garage on Youtube: https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?si=HiT5fXIyVdb-9SMC
Yes, and I think there’s more than one video featuring Dave Cutler. The other Dave that runs the channel is also a Microsoftie.
Can’t be overstated*
It can most certainly be understated.
With NT, I’ve never understood how it turned into dog crap so quickly after windows 2k, resulting in the mess of pre sp 2 winxp and the cancelation of longhorn. You start with stories like this on the history on how it was such a modular, clean, portable design and then by WinXP its a mess and no one knew how it really worked. I’d love to hear from someone in Microsoft that could point to a period where they should have spent more dev cycles refactoring things or when groups got out of control.
In the Dave’s Garage youtube channel Dave Cutler explained that there were two “branches”: one for the NT server version, and one for XP/Vista, and the code for XP/Vista became really, really ugly, until they had to stop and replace everything with the server code. Check “Windows Longhorn and the Worst Code I’ve Ever Seen: Dave Cutler” in Dave’s Garage (I won’t put the link to avoid being marked as spam).
Thanks will review, especially if its from Dave, that would be reall cool to see his perspective on how it all went down.
Yes, that was the creation of Windows Vista. Since then they still do have a core shared codebase that is used to create both the client and server versions of Windows. It still has turned into a bloated buggy mess, but not surprising from Microsoft.
The following article by Joel Spolsky might shed light
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/
Everyone who says Windows is a bloated mess makes me wonder if they know how Windows really works. Windows is built out of DLL (dynamic linked library) files. These are libraries of code or resources that just sit on this disk until they are needed. When they are needed, only then are they loaded into fast memory and used. DLLs can hold executable code, forms, fonts, bitmaps, data, etc. When they are no longer used the memory is released and that space is freed up. Most of Windows just sits on the disk until it is used. Huge amounts of functionality (bloat) that you don’t have to worry about, sitting on your disk, until needed.
Disk size does matter. Windows has billowed up considerably since Windows XP. Diskspace is cheap these days, but I’d rather not have it being eaten up by the OS with unnecessary stuff.
It’s not where the accusation of bloatedness comes from I think. It’s more the apparent sluggishness of Windows in daily operation. Explorer can be very unwieldy. Operations like updating feel like it’s never ending. If you add in MS’s other success story, MS Office, that is extremely clunky as well when it comes to start up times and saving stuff. It just doesn’t feel zippy.
r_a_trip,
+1
Bloat doesn’t just occupy disk space, it often requires more ram and even software that’s 100% unused increases the time and bandwidth needed by system updates. This coupled with mandatory updates really screwed me over once when I was traveling. An update started when I booted my computer before a trip, and it wouldn’t have mattered if it took a few minutes, but it went on and on and I had to get to the airport giving me no choice but to force shutdown mid operation. Luckily the computer was still working, but it was at once of those screens telling us not to shut down…ugh I absolutely hated the microsoft put in that position unwillingly.
I concur.. it’s a trend that many software developers have fallen in line with. We’ve got magnitudes more disk/ram/cpu/bandwidth these days and developers often take it to mean they no longer have to keep software trim & optimized.
This might be an interesting video to share on the site, 3 hours long interview with Dave Cutler publushed about a month ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi1Lq79mLeE