Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: August 16th, 2021

• G. Pascal Zachary’s “Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft” book
• Tracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine” book
• [@0:46](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=46) “The endless debate of NT vs Unix.” 
  • Bryan: My whole career was kind of defined by going where Windows wasn’t. I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I found was a real time capsule from software development in the 90’s.
• [@2:46](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=166) Jessamyn: There was some familial impact (from developing DG Eclipse) that wasn’t mentioned in the book. 
  • “O, Engineers!” retrospective from wired
• [@6:30](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=390) What was Kidder’s process? “He lived in my house!”
• [@8:32](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=512) Zachary interviewed family members extensively. > People couldn’t leave, they were staying at the office all the time.
• [@14:23](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=863) I do feel this is a time capsule. A time before two mega-trends hit: the Internet and open source.
• [@17:33](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1053) Microsoft was kind of a joke software company in the early 90’s. > Dave Cutler was a force of nature.
• [@19:59](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1199) No one understood why someone was good at coding. It was a mystery to everyone, why there was such a wide stratification of coders. > There were projects that never saw the light of day. 
  • Ashton-Tate, dBase > There was a sense from Cutler and Perazzoli, that leadership of the team, > that these guys at Microsoft really didn’t get how serious the process > of building this battleship was.
  • I think the level of anguish did surprise me.
• [@23:59](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1439)
   In “Soul of the New Machine,” the machine was the star, and people served it. East Coast vs West Coast attitudes. > On the West Coast, the personal computer were supposed to help you > actualize your counter-cultural values. 
  • Ken Olsen of DEC > Computing is equivalent with IBM. There was no software industry > so long as IBM gave all the software away for free.
• [@26:09](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1569) Crashes. > Wozniak dreamed of owning > his own PDP > computer, which cost as much as a house. So he was aware of the robustness > of the minicomputer, and by contrast, the puny power of a personal computer. 
  • Thirtysomething > Dave Cutler was not cuddly. He was menacing, he could lose his temper. > And I tried not to get to close to him physically for that reason. > There were two looming father figures in Cutler and Gates. > And I think it created a lot of anxiety.
• [@29:52](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1792) The stakes for NT at Microsoft were high. 
  • Fred Brooks’ “The Mythical Man-Month” book > It was a watershed moment in the history of computing. > It was more like the last battleship, rather than the next frontier.
  • Bryan: I didn’t realize this, that Gates was arguing against memory protection with Cutler. From our perspective, shipping an operating system without memory protection, in an era when microprocessors supported it, is malpractice.
• [@33:14](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=1994) Cutler’s vendetta against Unix. > Conflict was at the heart of innovation at Microsoft at that time. 
  • Mitch Kapor of Lotus. > These early personal computer innovators were dismissed and sometimes > humiliated by mainstream big iron people of the 60’s and 70’s.
  • Bill Gates’ “The Road Ahead” book doesn’t mention the internet.
  • Zachary’s “Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century” book > Computers on the West Coast were seen as extensions of your creativity, > and a tool for liberation. And for a long time that dominated the horizons.

• In 2005 Gates and Ballmer don’t want to do cloud computing. “Who’s gonna want to put their stuff in the cloud?” We’ve found that computing is a collective experience.

• [@38:28](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2308) Email and personal messaging 
  • Sun Ray thin client computer
  • Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson’s “The UNIX time-sharing system” paper > Unix was an experiment in collaboration.
  • RSX-11 for the PDP-11. And VMS for the VAX. > The attitude of looking down on Unix (as undesigned, academic) is > carried forward by Microsofties today.
  • Tom: You can forgive Cutler’s misgivings, because Unix pretty much stole the thunder out of VMS.
• [@42:24](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2544) Interviews for the book. Family members perspective on workplace behavior. 
  • Betty Shanahan, Society of Women Engineers. Brief Q&A
  • EAGLE (Eclipse Appreciation and Gratitude for Lonely Evenings) award > Betty’s husband got an award for having to do his own laundry…
  • Jessamyn’s “Women in Early Tech” blog entry about Shanahan
• [@48:10](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=2890) Where did these engineers end up? They are broadly no longer engineers. This project burned people out. 
  • Short 1993 article by Zachary: “After two years in ship mode… a lot of people are angry, tired, and burned out.”
  • Johanne Caron, linkedin
  • Pascal: Kidder was like a fly on the wall. I was doing reconstruction as well as observation. I talked to family members to get the whole picture.
• [@53:20](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=3200) Cutler got to run his own show. > Ken Olsen was like the LBJ > of the computer industry: he’s waist deep in the big money. 
  • Corporate culture. Hotshot coders. Renegades, rebels, hero programmers. > It’s the majesty and mystery of code writing, that there’s such a wide > range of performance.
  • Pascal: I wasn’t invited to the 25 year anniversary of the NT team..
• [@1:01:47](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=3707) Journalists and companies. > Soul of a New Machine was very flattering to the company. 
  • Jobs backdated stock options, in violation of clear federal law. Gates repeatedly stole things. > The hobbyists were a small market, Microsoft needed to sell to corporations.
  • Zachary’s “Software, the Invisible Technology” 2016 essay > Where we used to relate to programs, we now relate to services.

• I think there needs to be a greater literature of software: the making of it, its purpose, its vulnerabilities, its values.

  • Tom: It’s because us practitioners are too embarrased about it all..
• [@1:05:49](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=3949) Josh compares and contrasts. > Coders don’t have to test their own stuff. The second stringers do that. 
  • Pascal: I would encourage people to write more about software and how it’s created.
  • Zachary’s “Code Rush” film ~56mins about Netscape.
• [@1:08:58](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4138) The rise of open source. Software as immutable artifact: once it’s written, it’s written. > Amazon, Google, Netflix are not possible without open source.
• [@1:10:50](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4250) Jessamyn on helping people use tech. Accessibility > I’m a service oriented person. I work with > people who are struggling with technology.
• [@1:15:24](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4524) Agency of users. > Bryan: Without memory protection, you would lose hours of work. > One bad application could cause the computer to reboot. 
  • Open source tools, and user accessible scripting/modding.
  • Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” comic “Blah blah blah Ginger”
  • Tweet series about Internet Explorer’s 25 year anniversary
• [@1:22:01](https://youtu.be/hlQuF75L4TE?t=4921) Pascal’s parting thoughts. > The transformation of software from artifact into service, > is both fabulous and also scary. It changes all the time. > When NT was done, it was a fixed unchanging thing. 
  • Bryan: The darker side to services is people need to attend to it whenever it breaks.
  • Adam: It’s the death march with no end. > Pascal: Thanks everyone, I’d love to hear from you individually. > I’m interested in why people continue to turn to Showstopper > and find some value in it.
  • Pascal: I encourage you to think about the literary aspects of software. I think it’s valuable for society and civilization, for our culture, because there really is an artistic, artisanal side to software. Thanks again for including me.