[Info-vax] Dave Cutler, Prism, DEC, Microsoft, etc.

[Neil Rieck]

Not sure if anyone has seen this book.

Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next
Generation at Microsoft by G. Pascal Zachary

http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717

Showstopper! is a vivid account of the creation of Microsoft Windows
NT, perhaps the most complex software project ever undertaken. It is
also a portrait of David Cutler, NT's brilliant and, at times,
brutally aggressive chief architect.

Cutler surely ranks as one of the most impressive software engineers
the field has ever produced. After leading the team that created the
VMS operating system for Digital's VAX computer line--an
accomplishment that most would regard as a lifetime achievement--he
went on to conceive and lead the grueling multi-year project that
ultimately produced Windows NT. Both admired and feared by his team,
Cutler would let nothing stand in the way of realizing his design and
often clashed with his programmers, senior Microsoft management, and
even Gates himself. Yet no matter how involved he became in managing
his 100-programmer team, he continued to immerse himself in every
technical detail of the project and write critical portions of the
code himself.

Showstopper! is also a fascinating look at programmer and managerial
culture behind the Microsoft facade. The portraits of the men and
women who created NT not only reveal the brilliance of their work but
the crushing stress and the dislocating effects that new wealth had on
their lives. For some team members, the NT project ultimately
destroyed their marriages, friendships, and virtually every human
relationship outside of work. Showstopper! also reveals the
uncertainties, false starts, and blind alleys that dogged the project
as Microsoft repositioned NT from an improved OS/2 to something that
would ultimately challenge both OS/2 and Unix for the title of the
world's most powerful operating system.

Neil Rieck
Kitchener / Waterloo / Cambridge,
Ontario, Canada.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/