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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

#11

Post by mapgrep »

mckilljoy wrote: post #8
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.

Yes, I agree. It's also a fascinating window into what an achievement Windows NT was, and I say that as someone who does not use Windows anywhere.

By mid 1993 Dave Cutler and his team released a multi-threaded, pre-emptive multi tasking pure 32 bit version of Windows that supported the Windows API and worked across three different hardware architectures (two of which were pure RISC processors). Apple, often lauded for being ahead of the curve, wouldn't release anything remotely matching those capabilities for eight years when OS X came out. When Apple developers were just starting to port over to Cocoa and Carbon, Windows had reached deep maturity and stability with NT and its successors (still labelled as NT versions intenrally) and basically all Windows software ran on it natively and had been doing so for years.

Windows isn't exactly my cup of tea but Microsoft was way, way ahead of the curve with NT. It was a superb achievement and I strongly recommend reading Show Stopper to get a sense of what the team sacrificed, went through, and achieved.

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

#13

Post by lobster_johnson »

mapgrep wrote: post #11
mckilljoy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I agree. It's also a fascinating window into what an achievement Windows NT was, and I say that as someone who does not use Windows anywhere. By mid 1993 Dave Cutler and his team released a multi-threaded, pre-emptive multi tasking pure 32 bit version of Windows that supported the Windows API and worked across three different hardware architectures (two of which were pure RISC processors). Apple, often lauded fo…

Not to detract from the achievement, but the transition to NT wasn't quite as rosy at that.

It took many years for apps written for Windows 3.x/95/98/etc. to catch up and run correctly on NT. In the early years, app and game producers had a distinct bias in favour of Win9x (popular consumer OS) and to the detriment of NT (esoteric, less shiny business/server OS).

The game compatibility situation, in particular, was quite miserable until Windows 2000 ("NT 5.0"). 4.0 had adopted the Win9x UI, but Win2k was arguably the first version that managed to match the consumer-oriented experience of Win9x, in particular with regard to DirectX.

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

#17

Post by Joeri »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #13
mapgrep wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree. It's also a fascinating window into what an achievement Windows NT was, and I say that as someone who does not use Windows anywhere. By mid 1993 Dave Cutler and his team released a multi-threaded, pre-emptive multi tasking pure 32 bit version of Windows that supported the Windows API and worked across three different hardware architectures (two of which were pure RISC processors). Apple, often lauded fo…

Not to detract from the achievement, but the transition to NT wasn't quite as rosy at that. It took many years for apps written for Windows 3.x/95/98/etc. to catch up and run correctly on NT. In the early years, app and game producers had a distinct bias in favour of Win9x (popular consumer OS) and to the detriment of NT (esoteric, less shiny business/server OS). The game compatibility situation, in particular, was q…

I ran an NT4 / 98 dual boot system for years, and in practice the only applications that required rebooting into 98 were games and things that had a hardware component (scanner, digitizer, ...). So in my recollection the transition was actually quite smooth, games left aside.

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

#18

Post by epalmer »

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!

I worked on VAX/VMS mostly with FORTRAN and loved the hardware and the DCL (digital command language). I ending up founding and building a small company around building RDBMS based manufacturing applications using VAX/VMS as the initial computer we supported. Then we moved to UNIX and were glad we did when DEC was starting to tank.

I went to NT as soon as it was available. It helped me with my productivity but it did take a long time for the applications to catch up with the OS.

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

#19

Post by Maarten88 »

mapgrep wrote: post #11
mckilljoy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I agree. It's also a fascinating window into what an achievement Windows NT was, and I say that as someone who does not use Windows anywhere. By mid 1993 Dave Cutler and his team released a multi-threaded, pre-emptive multi tasking pure 32 bit version of Windows that supported the Windows API and worked across three different hardware architectures (two of which were pure RISC processors). Apple, often lauded fo…

I ran the very first beta of Windows NT and it was glorious. I had never before experienced anything like it: you could compile and run your C code in a graphical debugger, and it would catch bad pointer errors by breaking the program right were the bug was. Fix, recompile, rerun.

16 bit Windows computers would crash reboot on errors like that, leaving you with the printf errorlog to find the bug. Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations did not have software like that, and were ten times more expensive. Linux was just an experiment then.

I was never able to use Windows 3.1 and 95 after that, I would search for programs that ran on NT for everything. I still do. Poorly written software crashed, but the Windows NT OS was immensely stable on the right hardware, from the very first beta.

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

#20

Post by hyperliner »

vox_mollis wrote: post #10

Dave Cutler is my personal aspirational model. When I am 70, I want to still be writing production code, rather than languishing in middle management. Engineers who choose to "trade up" to management will always baffle me.

It's a personal decision. No need to hate on it.

There was a recent entry here in HN where a developer discussed his/her regret at not having moved to the managerial path. I am trying to find it but it's taking me some time.

It's a tough decision.

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