Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#21

Post by delta_p_delta_x » Sat, Feb 14, 2026, 10:33 PM UTC

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

I have a hot take. manpages are really bad for noob examples, or if you actually want to learn how to use something. They are great references if you already know 95% of the tool, but for the most common use cases, they completely lack any sort of examples.

In this sense, LLMs (as much as I am sceptical about them) are much more useful.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#22

Post by markus_zhang » Sat, Feb 14, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #21

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

I have a hot take. manpages are really bad for noob examples, or if you actually want to learn how to use something. They are great references if you already know 95% of the tool, but for the most common use cases, they completely lack any sort of examples. In this sense, LLMs (as much as I am sceptical about them) are much more useful.

Yeah I agree, TBF I rarely found man-pages to be useful to me, while so far LLM is pretty good at bash scripting, at least at the level that I need. But of course still wants to learn this stuffs in depth.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#23

Post by RattlesnakeJake » Sat, Feb 14, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #14

This is giving me flashbacks to the times when I had to implement systems based on big, verbose specification documents like this. Horrible. If you really want to understand Windows, skip this and check out Windows 2000 Internals by Solomon and Russinovich (Win2k is a good middle-ground where Windows had matured a bit).

It's giving me flashbacks to a few months ago.

(*cries in X12 270/271*)

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#24

Post by Angostura » Sat, Feb 14, 2026, 11:11 PM UTC

kryptiskt wrote: post #17

kryptiskt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was back when there was "real" UNIX around, as well as a number of clones, including Microsofts own Xenix (maybe they had offloaded that to SCO by then). So UN*X was one way to indicate that it meant UNIX-like OSes.

Turns out SCO bought Xenix in 1987, but Microsoft was just a couple of years removed from being the biggest Unix vendor around at this point.

I guess that's probably Apple now.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#25

Post by bombcar » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 12:05 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #18

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

I think Windows and DOS do have good documents. I actually think they had way better ones than Linux at the time. But I could be wrong. For reference: https://jacobfilipp.com/msj-index/ And also MSDN.

Windows programming guides provided by Microsoft were simply amazing for the time; the documentation available was excellent.

Part of the reason they did so well, companies could easily implement software using the new APIs.

Of course, they also had secret and undocumented APIs that people found and wanted to use ...

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#26

Post by themafia » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 12:25 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #18

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

I think Windows and DOS do have good documents. I actually think they had way better ones than Linux at the time. But I could be wrong. For reference: https://jacobfilipp.com/msj-index/ And also MSDN.

Was MSDN always free? I remember their access prices for the services in the late 90s and early 00s were eyewatering.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#27

Post by ntstatusquo » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 12:38 AM UTC

The section coding.pdf has their code style guidelines, colloquially known as Cutler Normal Form, CNF for short. I'm conflicted on it. Definitely overly verbose, but you can't argue with the results of the NT team. Such a rigid style guide almost feels like the technical version of a dress code. And there's an idea called "enclothed cognition" which is like, if you wear a business suit to work, it exerts a subconscious influence that results in you taking the work more seriously, focusing your attention, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclothed_cognition

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#28

Post by skissane » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 12:48 AM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #24

kryptiskt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out SCO bought Xenix in 1987, but Microsoft was just a couple of years removed from being the biggest Unix vendor around at this point.

I guess that's probably Apple now.

Or IBM?

z/OS is officially a Unix

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#29

Post by asveikau » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #21

themafia wrote: post #8

So.. you had _all_ this.. and for some reason just didn't want turn it into a useful set of "man" pages in your OS? If they had their eye on the actual ball they wouldn't need to write Halloween memos and rant about developers on stage.

I have a hot take. manpages are really bad for noob examples, or if you actually want to learn how to use something. They are great references if you already know 95% of the tool, but for the most common use cases, they completely lack any sort of examples. In this sense, LLMs (as much as I am sceptical about them) are much more useful.

This depends a lot on what manpage you're looking at.

When I learned C more than 20 years ago, I found libc manpages a pretty good way to learn. For many functions in section 3, you can read the manpage and make an intelligent guess on how it's implemented, and write your own implementation. I did this as an exercise back in the day.

Re: Windows NT/OS2 Design Workbook

#30

Post by vikingerik » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 1:35 AM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #5

> The first release of NT is planned as a workstation product that will provide a strong competitor to UN*X based workstations. UN*X spelling for trademark reasons or a joke that UNIX is verboten at Microsoft?

As others are saying, the * is meant as a wildcard, not as censorship. It's meant to also cover the likes of Linux or Xenix etc, although there isn't actually any other name that would strictly fit the pattern of "UN*X".