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

[FredK]

"John Reagan" <johnrreagan at earthlink.net> wrote in message 
news:Usmdna62OrCRx5DWnZ2dnUVZ_sqdnZ2d at earthlink.com...
>
> "FredK" <fred.nospam at dec.com> wrote in message 
> news:hehpmh$okf$1 at usenet01.boi.hp.com...
>> As a human being, people love or hate Dave - and that goes for people who 
>> worked for him or with him.  On the other hand, as an OS architect this 
>> guy was at the core of RSX, VMS and NT.  That isn't to say it was a one 
>> man show.  But the guy has made major contributions as an 
>> engineer/architect to OS's - these are real accomplishments at a level 
>> that only a handful of people can make claims of being even close.
>
> Actually, while Dave as the Alpha-male of the group, I would say that Dick 
> Hustvedt, Rich Grove, and Andy Goldstein had a better longterm influence 
> on the functionality and stability of the OpenVMS systems of today.
>
> John (who only met Dave once but heards LOTS of stories eating lunch with 
> Rich and Andy over the years)

The alpha-male remark pretty much reflects what everybody has to say about 
Dave :-)   I also think you have to break down the system into areas of 
influence in terms of design.  The basic scheduler and IO subsystem were 
classic Cutler.  But that in itself doesn't comprise the entire system, the 
virtual address space management, process structure, calling standards, etc, 
etc, etc.  Nor is the list near complete, for example Nancy Kronenberg, 
Peter Lippman, come to mind offhand.