Debating 7: Randall Kennedy, Thom Holwerda

<div class="cquote">After reviewing your "rebuttal" article, I find that you seem to
agree with the core point of my original piece:
</p>

<p>
"In all seriousness, Microsoft has been very clear that when it
comes to under the hood, there won't be many changes between
Windows Vista and Windows 7. There will be optimisations to improve
performance, but nothing drastic."
</p>

<p>
So, now that we've established that we both agree that Windows 7
is *not* a major upgrade to Windows Vista (at least as far as
"under the hood" is concerned), we can move on to the first major
objection in your "rebuttal" text:</div>
</p>

<p>
We do not differ on your conclusions per se, but on the methods and
data that you based your conclusions on. I don't know if you could
call Windows 7 a major release - I think that a massively reworked
interface and a system-wide multitouch framework that all
applications automatically make us of kind of already justifies the
'major' moniker, but it's obvious that compared to XP > Vista, Vista
> 7 isn't as wide a leap.
</p>

<p>
<div class="cquote">"First of all, the number of threads running within a kernel says
absolutely nothing whatsoever about how many changes have or have
not gone into the kernel..." (note: emphasis on "whatever"
preserved from your article).
</p>

<p>
Wow! That's a bold statement for someone who (I would assume)
does not have access to the Windows 7 source code! The truth is
that, without walking the NT kernel source tree, there is simply no
way to *conclusively* make such a statement one way or the other.
That's why, in my article, I make a point of establishing the
history of this metric and how - over the 16 years I've been
working with the NT code base - it has proven to be a good,
externally-accessible indicator of kernel churn.
</p>

<p>
So my response is: There is no way that *either* of us can state
*conclusively* that the thread count metric does or does not
express change at kernel level. But then again, I never claimed
that it does - only that history shows the value changing
significantly from major version to major version. Combined with
various statements made by Microsoft on the subject, this lack of
change - when viewed in the context of the aforementioned history
for this metric - would seem to support my own conclusion about
Windows 7 being so similar to Vista as to warrant a "point release"
or "R2" moniker. A conclusion, I might add, that you have already
tacitly agreed to (see first quote above).</div>
</p>

<p>
The problem is that the "thread count" metric is flawed - it is
flawed today, and it was flawed ten years ago. I love analogies, and
looking around in my living room, and listening to The Police's
Zenyatta Mondatta on LP, let's take my LP collection as an example. I
don't know the exact count, but I have round and about 200 LPs. It's
a nice collection, mostly old stuff that I inherited from my parents
(since I have an LP player, and they don't).
</p>

<p>
Let's assume I'm going on a buying spree tomorrow. I buy 20 new LPs,
so now I have 220 LPs. However, I also sifted through my collection,
and found 20 LPs that are too scratched to listen to comfortably - so
I throw those out. So, now I'm back to the same old 200 LPs.
</p>

<p>
You run LP-Infoworld.com, and you monitor the various LP collections
in the world. You are standing outside my window, and you counted the
number of LPs yesterday, and you do it again after my buying/removing
spree. You are standing too far away to notice the specifics of each
LP, but your count remains the same: 200. From this, you draw the
conclusion that my LP collection is still the same, and that nothing
has changed - despite me buying 20 new ones, and throwing out 20 old
ones.
</p>

<p>
It doesn't matter if this analogy takes place ten years ago, or
today. Counting the number of threads, or LPs, doesn't tell you
anything whatsoever other than - surprise - the number of threads (or
LPs) in Windows/my LP collection.
</p>

<p>
<div class="cquote">Careful with those "absolutes," Thom. You'll find they have a
habit of painting you into a corner. :-)</div>
</p>

<p>
I never made any absolute claims - contrary to your " Windows 7 =
Vista because the number of threads is similar". I don't contest that
the number of threads is the same, nor that Windows 7 = Vista - I
contest the fact that you arrived at this conclusion based on nothing
but counting threads.
</p>

<p>
Thom

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