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Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

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Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#41
I’ll recommend here the book “Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft”, which someone else recommended a few weeks ago. Link:

I’m still reading it, but it’s really enjoyable. And it makes me wish I had been part of that history. Particularly the whole thing about dogfooding a brand new OS. But it caught me a few years too early.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#42
post #37
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I had to do was update the rules for Adblock Plus free version. I'd been getting the warnings for several days, then yesterday it would only let me watch 3 videos. I then updated AB+ rules and nothing pops up and things just play like "normal."

All I had to do was nothing. Yesterday I said to myself, this is the end, I'll never go back, never again attempt to view a video on it, because 99% of the time they'll ask me to purchase premium, please dear self, find new hobby. Today my muscle memory took me once more to YT and there are no ads and no popups begging me for money. They pulled me back in. I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF.

> I'm using not recently updated uBlock Origin + FF.

uBO automatically updates filter lists by default.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#43

Looking back on all both Daves said, there is an extraordinary amount of attention paid to getting things done and out the door, and almost no mention of planning ahead, and actual security strategy. Its all commercial pressure to get the sausage out of the meat grinder, and keep the failures down to an acceptable level. No wonder things never get better, and never take a turn in the right direction, industry wide. I…

Most execs at most companies really are driven by very short-term planning and thinking, as it benefits their career to do so. They just need enough good quarters/years to justify their promotion from VP to SVP or SVP to CEO. Nobody gets blamed and punished three years after they move on to a new role for the shortsighted choices they made in their previous role.

Having said that, Cutler is not one of those execs, but was certainly subject to pressure from above to get systems out the door and keep the revenue stream coming in. As he mentions early in the interview, he’s really bothered by shipping bugs, really disappointed with the quality of software engineers in the industry, and really bothered by program/project managers treating every bug like a rare corner case. I concur with him on all three. Most of the bugs I file are “corner cases”, and yet I hit those issues every day and my bugs have multiple dups in the database and/or my bug gets duped back to an early report.

Having spent a few decades in this industry, all of it in Big Tech, I have yet to come across a company that doesn’t fold to the same sort of pressure, even if the engineers and first-level managers are pushing to get bugs fixed before shipping, and pushing for more frequent bug fix updates.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#45

Looking back on all both Daves said, there is an extraordinary amount of attention paid to getting things done and out the door, and almost no mention of planning ahead, and actual security strategy. Its all commercial pressure to get the sausage out of the meat grinder, and keep the failures down to an acceptable level. No wonder things never get better, and never take a turn in the right direction, industry wide. I…

I mean a lot of this stuff was built before the internet.

More accurately, before Microsoft cared about the Internet.

Re: Dave Cutler on Windows [video]

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Dave C was a key player in developing Windows NT, which was key to jettisoning the virus-riddled hot mess of Windows prior to that. You're attacking the wrong guy.

I‘ve started as Windows systems engineer with NT 4.0 and it was my day job through around Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. I rarely had problems or blue screens because of the operating system as such.

Never used 95 or 98 at home though, started with 2000 Pro there.

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