“Vista has suffered a series of high-profile delays, including most recently the announcement that it would be delayed until 2007. The largest software project in mankind’s history now threatens to also be the longest,” Philip Su blogs. “I managed developer teams in Windows for five years, and have only begun to reflect on the experience now that I have recently switched teams. Through a series of conversations with other leaders that have similarly left The Collective, several root causes have emerged as lasting characterizations of what’s really wrong in The Empire.
“Ask any developer in Windows why Vista is plagued by delays, and they’ll say that the code is way too complicated, and that the pace of coding has been tremendously slowed down by overbearing process,” Su writes. “But that’s not where it ends. There are deeper causes of Windows’ propensity to slippage.”
“Deep in the bowels of Windows, there remains the whiff of a bygone culture of belittlement and aggression. Windows can be a scary place to tell the truth,” Su explains. “Every once in a while, Truth still pipes up in meetings. When this happens, more often than not, Truth is simply bent over an authoritative knee and soundly spanked into silence.”
“There are too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many vice presidents, in reporting structures too narrow. When I was in Windows, I reported to Alec, who reported to Peter, to Bill, Rick, Will, Jim, Steve, and Bill,” Su writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Too many cooks in the kitchen is the overall problem with the entire “Wintel” hegemony. Several outfits make the hardware, more often than not on razor-thin margins, another tries to make the OS, another one makes one peripheral, and so on, and none of it works together smoothly. Big surprise.
Su continues, “We shouldn’t forget despite all this that Windows Vista remains the largest concerted software project in human history. The types of software management issues being dealt with by Windows leaders are hard problems, problems that no other company has solved successfully. The solutions to these challenges are certainly not trivial. An interesting question, however, is whether or not Windows Vista ever had a chance to ship on time to begin with. Is Vista merely uncontrolled? Or is it fundamentally uncontrollable?”
Full article, once removed by Su and now restored (explanation in full article) here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “DreamTheEndless” for the heads up.]
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Related articles:
Computerworld: Microsoft Windows Vista a distant second-best to Apple Mac OS X – June 02, 2006
Mossberg: Apple’s end-to-end model beats Microsoft’s component model in post-PC era – May 10, 2006
Why Windows Vista continually slips
Now if it would just fall and can’t get up.
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And yet, Windows copies Macintosh.
Hmm…
Why Windows slips?
MS almost single handedly defined BLOATWARE.
Vista is their ultimate statement of hugeness.
Millions of lines of legacy code down in the bowels of a massive lumbering beast.
Mmmmmm, sounds great, I want some of that…. NOT!
Why does Vista slip?
It’s all those banana skins Monkey Boy throws around after he’s had a good chow-down…
I’ll go with answer two, Mr. Su, to your question.
I need to read another article:
WHY AAPL STOCK CONTINUALLY SLIPS
There is no reason
Apple solved this problem of old, buggy code by just wiping the slate clean and starting with a new OS base. Why can’t Micro$oft do the same thing?
Music to my ears
Bill doesn’t want to be around for the fall of the empire
Rick,
Here:
Cramer: ‘I have never seen a systematic, multiweek bear raid like I have on Apple Computer’
Lou —
Microsoft already did, once, with Windows NT 3.5. Completely new OS from the ground up. (I know a source working at Digital at the time that says Microsoft simply bought the core of an experimental new version of VMS and put the Windows look and feel on it; whether that’s true or not, the hand of Dave Cutler is apparent in it.)
Then in NT4 they made it look like Windows 95. Windows XP, as you can find if you dig into the right About and Properties panels, is Windows NT version 5.1.
They probably ought to do it again, but from what it sounds like their problems are not really technical but managerial. The sales guys are running the company.
“Deep in the bowels of Windows…”
Thank you, MDN for not putting a picture of Steve Balmer after that line… (Though, it’d be hilarious)
I agree with SU and MDN’s take on this one. It’s simply a beast that’s gotten too big, with too many trying to control it’s destiny, all the while being chained to the Past. Microsoft cannot afford another “Revision” of Windows. Once Vista ships, if it ever does, it simply must copy Apple one more time, and break completely with it’s past in order to move forward. Have a “classic mode” for more recent legacy apps, but for God’s sake Redmond, you have to tell people still running Windows95 to put the past to rest and move forward.
The question is…can they?
i think vista articles have replaced iPod articles on here, as far as slow newz days…
Ollie:
Thanks.
Thats why Warren Buffet make his wealth from.
What a world.
MW: Grat, like in “Mac OS X is great” or as in “Apple is a great company”
Why Windows slips?
Mechanics probably need to replace the clutch or the fly-wheel. I bet that would help. You might also want to check the brake pads – MonkeyBoy loves to ride ’em…
That’s a golden opportunity for Apple. I hope they’ll have the guts to take some risks and steal market from MS. Bootcamp is a step in that direction. Let’s see what’s next.
People get cranky over the fact that they can’t run their ancient Classic games and apps natively on OS X – or at all on a MacIntel. You don’t hear much complaining about a new version of OS X being a year late. Microsoft is saddling itself with the need to run decade-old software on a three-generation-newer OS. There’s a price to be paid for this – particularly when that older software … cheated a bit in how it did things. If Apple coded an “oops” into an OS and someone took advantage of it, rather than coding their app ‘right’, they might find their app broken at the next revision. Not at MS.
This is good for some folks, bad for others. It’s an increasingly deep level of Hell for anyone trying to update/improve the OS while maintaining backwards compatibility. Soon, Microsoft is going to have to start from a clean sheet of coding paper and discard anything not designed this century. And even some of the stuff from THIS century. They may continue to use .dll style code and other ideas that “seemed good at the time”, but many should be re-written if only to enforce the perception that “bad old code is GONE“.
maybe they should have “classic” OS and develop or acquire a new piece of software on which to build/re-build their OS. Kinda like Apple did years ago.
Hmmmm, interesting question raised. But I think that the answer is more simple than Microsoft can allow it self to think.
Old computers (old, old, not just last month
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> ) cannot run the latest software very well. They lack . . . well . . . everything. Processing power, ram, etc.
At somepoint, Microsoft ought to split into two divisions. One supports older code, doing updates to help protect aganist viruses, etc. The other has a NEW operating system for current computers. Simple, clean, fast. you know, like Apple OS.
The problem, I think, is that Bill Gates just cannot bring himself to admit that they took the wrong turn.
I heard one of his recent speeches. He is still thinking of software to do little things, things a programer would like. He misses the fact that it has to be, repeat HAS TO BE seamless and easy cause programers are not in the majority. Vocal yes, just not in the buying majority.
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JMHO
Norm
after reading the blog and many of the comments (assuming most if not all are MS employees) it’s no wonder the company is having an identity crisis. I am truly amazed that they have no concept of reality – they are so wrapped in their world that they cannot conceive how people truly use computers.
it’s sad, truly sad. regardless of how i feel about the evil empire (or anyone else for that matter), MS really had an opportunity to change the world, but they are more concerned about marketshare and making a buck – basic philisophical difference between them and apple.
steve was correct 10 years ago with his “we are in the dark ages of desktop computing” and we still are to a degree. reading that blog truly exemplifies that MS doesn’t get it.
peace out.
As for the “clean slate” for Windows NT. That was, what, 15 years ago? No, they didn’t buy code from DEC, they hired away the guy who wrote the code. Which may be why there are more lines of code in anything derived from the original NT than in nearly any version of VMS or Unix. This is significant when you note that VMS and Unix have always been Enterprise Class operating systems while NT has always been touted as an OS for the Desktop.
By the way … they did their best, back then, to get as much by way of Microsoft apps as possible to run on the new OS. They may have started with a “clean slate”, but they cribbed a lot from existing code.
Vista may take longer to build than the pyramids of Egypt! I wonder if the Vista Software retail box will make good sarcophagus’ for the management teams at Microsoft when Vista flops?
i think the most telling statement in the article is that it takes 24 hours to recompile and link (old-timer words = build for youngsters) windows in a development environment. when you are trying to write and debug code this 24 hr. delay was annoying in the days of punch cards and batch processing and waiting for your printout. today this is just an impossible hurdle to overcome with the increase in software complexity. regardless of the number of levels (50 or so) in vista, taking a day to build a development version of any software would spell disaster and almost certain failure.
SUV code — ever see one of those monsters try to take a highway off-ramp a little too fast? They roll over very easily. The off-road, survivalist stance is a joke. Ever see Windows try to take a turn fast?
Microsoft, 20th century technology for the 21st century. These guy are either incredibly senimental about legacy code or totally incapable of developing something better.
I was grumbling the other day about TValue, a financial modeling program that no longer runs on Mac. It brings the legacy support argument home.
My solution was to unsheath an old XP box, and work up one amortization. After duking it out with XP, I went back to my Macs feeling okay about the trade-off.
Wiping the slate clean every decade feels right!
XP has really grown long in the tooth.
I’ll tell you what’s slipping: The deep, caustic, inflammatory, satirical, ‘we’re on a really tall soapbox’ rhetoric of the MDN ‘takes.’
Windows, the biggest software project in human history.
Wouldn’t a bigger software project be producing a better OS than Windows that has even more functionality, works on the same hardware, requires less horsepower to operate, is a hell of a lot more secure and ships as a finished product at least 2 years sooner?
Mac OS X for Intel, the biggest software project in human history to be completed and work as advertised.
And what about this bit which he didn’t reinstate in his blog: “Su also put the onus for Vista’s slow going on the code’s complexity — 50 million lines of code by his estimate — that sports 50 different interdependent components. And the constant barrage of e-mails and progress reports to answer and generate cut into developers’ time, making Microsoft’s engineers about a sixth as productive — based on the number of lines of code produced in a year — as the U.S. average.”
From here:http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/189401550
If you slowly build the foundation of your new modern day house upon a bed of rock solid diamonds, you get a modern day rock solid impenetratable structure.
If you quickly build the foundation of your new modern day house upon a slippery layer of longhorn bullshit, then you know what happens. Enough said.
“impenetrable” sp
The days of yore when an OS was limited to the 700kb diskette, and code had to be stripped of all extraneousness. This was the world and goal of the early programmers. They took pride in making small and efficient code, knowing that smaller also meant faster and fewer bugs.
Today, these programmers have vanished, their products relegated to science museums. Now, there are the programmers born in an era of unlimited hard drive space and overseen by sales managers.
In the final days of Mac’s initial testing, Woz wanted to add a calculator to the Mac’s initial set of tool applications. Jobs said there wasn’t enough time or space for such an item, the Mac was to begin production on Monday, and this was Thursday. Steve told Woz that if he could make a calculator over the weekend using less than 8k of space, they would add it.
The first Mac had a calculator.
Where are these people? What has happened to the spirit of innovation? Having worked in the vast mazes of gray cubicles for a major telecommunications company, I can tell you that the world of Microsoft’s 9000 programers and their 11 tiers of management, it sucks any life and hope from the individuals with imagination and creativity; being the very first gems ripped from the new employee’s soul.
I am quite sure that Apple is similar in that respect, but there are differences in the sense of caring. “Ya, we know you’re in a cubicle, but here are tools and a system to make your life easier [Apple’s Xcode]” as well as seeing the beauty of the final product. With MS, after years and years of tweaking and refining, the programmers see a huge mass of code that is buggy, finicky and virus prone. The only thing the MS middle management can say with any sort of pseudo-pride is how popular their OS is. But quantity is NOT a suitable substitution for quality, the genesis of true pride. As such, they have created an army of soul-whithered programmers, and no amount of beatings and praises, threats and rewards, will bring forth the quality OS Microsoft will need for any future growth.
Apple’s staff still has real pride in their products, and no amount of Gate’s money can buy that and infuse it into his weary minions. The huge MS dinosaur will not die out because it can no longer survive their environment, it will die from the gangrenous rot of growing apathy within.
Anyone know how approximately much line of code is in OS X? Just curious.
I think vista is slipping just cos Steve Ballmer thinks he still can sell some more XPs! It’s a disaster when a salesman is the CEO. Hey they have to wait for the next if they like it or not so lets make some more bucks of the old one.
Vista has 50 million. How many lines of code does OSX have?
RICK: I need to read another article:
WHY AAPL STOCK CONTINUALLY SLIPS
There is no reason
The entire market is down, not just Apple! Precious metals have taken a huge hit, so look around and not just at Apple.
“The types of software management issues being dealt with by Windows leaders are hard problems, problems that no other company has solved successfully.”
What? What are these “hard problems”? And are we assuming no other company has been successful just because MS hasn’t been?
Here’s my final question: Everybody says that no company can last forever, or at least be on top forever – So when is MS, or at least Windows, going to go away – hopefully forever?
An example of “SPIN” :
What they say …” …..the code is way too complicated, and that the pace of coding has been tremendously slowed down by overbearing process…..”
What that really means : …. “…. It’s getting harder and harder to pile code atop an ancient DOS foundation
and expect it to work … the DOS system keeps crumbling under the weight !…..”
It kinda reminds me of the Rupert Murdock approach to NEWS !!
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Umm…is it because the programmers keep having to dodge chairs and pools of sweat?
More like the Ted Turner/old guard approach to news you mean. Murdoch’s outfits are making money and getting good ratings. You haven’t been able to say that about their competition for several years now. Of course, now that the 50 year monopoly of the news and airwaves is over, Turner and his kind really have no idea of what to do now that they have competition. Just like Gates now that his monopoly is beginning to crumble too.
Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! I know what it is:
Devleopments, developments, developments, developments! Developments, developments, developments, developments!!!
Rick –
AAPL is down along with the entire market. Today specifically, AAPL is down due to rumors considered reliable that the Xbox team is about to deploy an “iPod killer” (drum roll please) that will be tightly integrated to URGE and Amazon in some way or another.
I believe Adobe is now in the same boat as M$FT, up shits creek without a paddle®.
It’s really too bad, isn’t it?
MDN Magic Word: “bill”. How does MDN know?
Windows slips because it sucks. It’s hard to fix something that sucks THAT badly.
Therein lies the reason.
“Deep in the bowels of Windows, there remains the whiff of a bygone culture of belittlement and aggression. Windows can be a scary place to tell the truth”
If this is true, MS is dead. We’ve only seen the start of the Vista delays.
It’s a classic crashing empire. The rulers won’t listen to the generals, who won’t listen to the troops, who do the actual fighting & know what’s what. The hard facts on the street never make it up to the decision makers.
MS is deaf, blind, and literally wearing itself out chasing the Vista dream.
Apple, the future is yours for the taking. Do you want it or not?
From what I read there in deep do-do! To many VP’s and project managers going every which way and way to much code to even think about. Vista is not happening from the way it sounds with this story. To many bosses and no real clear direction for the programmers to go in. Sounds like there not even working as a team. None of them no what the other is doing. What a mess. Thank god for OSX!
If vista has 50 million lines of code, how much does OSX Tiger have? What do they forcast Leopard to have?
“Deep in the bowels of Windows”
. . . are malignant polyps pretending to be managers.
I can’t believe no one (including MDN jumped on this line.
“The types of software management issues being dealt with by Windows leaders are hard problems, problems that no other company has solved successfully.”
What do you call Apple?!?!?
Less code means less features and less functionality. It is elegance, not sparseness that defines well-written code.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s clinging to 20th century legacy code and promotion of badly written legacy code has lead to the debacle known affectionately as Vista.
When I was in college I took FORTRAN, and I wrote a program to calculate a table of values for water vapor saturation in air at a range of pressures. It took about 50 lines of code and it worked well. I was very pleased with myself until another student got the exact same results in a program of only 15 lines. I’m not a programmer these days.
Creating tight, efficient code takes talent and an independant way of approaching the problem. I don’t believe Microsoft can inspire it’s programmers as well as Apple can. People call Mac users fanatics, but the fact is some of those people who feel so passionately about the Mac are the same ones who come up with fantastically efficient code. You don’t see the same kind of obsessive interest among PC users/programmers. I’m happy to see Apple succeed in the face of Microsoft’s failure because it ultimately benefits all of us.
Code complexity has never been a real problem since the early days of Basic. The complexity and connectivity are easily tracked by breaking the code into called functions. The real problem, which cannot be easily fixed is the top heavy buracracy. There probably will be a Visa release of some sort. However, from an economy of size point of view, the writing is on the wall.
hrossman – do you actually understand anything about what you are commenting on?
If you have read any articles on Vista, then you would understand that Microsoft decided it would take too much effort to start from scratch (an early premise) and have left in a lot of legacy code. Software reuse can be a good thing, here however it’s not…