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The engineer’s engineer: Computer industry luminaries salute Dave Cutler

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Re: The engineer’s engineer: Computer industry luminaries salute Dave Cutler

#3

Post by moserware »

Dave Cutler is a legend, but he keeps a relatively low profile, so it was nice to watch the rare new video interview with him at the bottom. I especially liked what he said at the end:

"I have this little saying that the successful people in the world are the people that do the things that the unsuccessful ones won't. So I've always been this person that, you know.. I will build the system, I will fix the bugs, I will fix other people's bugs, I will fix build breaks. It's all part of getting the job done."

When I was a kid, I enjoyed reading "Show Stopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" that chronicled his move from DEC to build NT. Jeff Atwood has a quick review of it at http://blog.codinghorror.com/showstopper/

Re: The engineer’s engineer: Computer industry luminaries salute Dave Cutler

#4

Post by kidmenot »

b1gFanOfVMS wrote: post #2

I can only imagine the hate this guys going to get here for NT...but I'm a huge fan. One of mt first jobs was running a VMS cluster...then went on to work with Windows. Enjoyed it all. Dave Cutler is brilliant. Thanks Dave!

He's a great engineer and, together with his equally great team, he designed what turned out to be a great kernel powering countless machines around the world.

There is very little to hate about the actual NT kernel.

Kudos to Dave, instead.

Re: The engineer’s engineer: Computer industry luminaries salute Dave Cutler

#6

Post by hga »

b1gFanOfVMS wrote: post #2

I can only imagine the hate this guys going to get here for NT...but I'm a huge fan. One of mt first jobs was running a VMS cluster...then went on to work with Windows. Enjoyed it all. Dave Cutler is brilliant. Thanks Dave!

Core NT is, or at least was, prior to NT 4 putting graphics in the kernel, very very nice. It's mostly what Microsoft did on top of it, and their general stewardship of it that I have a problem with.

For the latter, I noticed a serious drop in quality starting with 3.51 SP2, which to the best of my ability on Google seems to have come out 9 months before NT 4.

Re: The engineer’s engineer: Computer industry luminaries salute Dave Cutler

#8

Post by mckilljoy »

moserware wrote: post #3

Dave Cutler is a legend, but he keeps a relatively low profile, so it was nice to watch the rare new video interview with him at the bottom. I especially liked what he said at the end: "I have this little saying that the successful people in the world are the people that do the things that the unsuccessful ones won't. So I've always been this person that, you know.. I will build the system, I will fix the bugs, I wil…

I just started reading this book, maybe half way through, it's very interesting!

Some of the technical analogies are a little weak, but all the quotes and anecdotes are great.

Re: The engineer’s engineer: Computer industry luminaries salute Dave Cutler

#9

Post by teh_klev »

moserware wrote: post #3

Dave Cutler is a legend, but he keeps a relatively low profile, so it was nice to watch the rare new video interview with him at the bottom. I especially liked what he said at the end: "I have this little saying that the successful people in the world are the people that do the things that the unsuccessful ones won't. So I've always been this person that, you know.. I will build the system, I will fix the bugs, I wil…

I read Show Stopper that when it first came out, it's a great read. It's up there with Tracy Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine", which I first read when I was a Data General apprentice, and whilst spending free time in college on the campus VAX clone (a Systime 8750).
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