From: gordonl@microsoft.com (Gordon Letwin)
Subject: Re: Can IBM write code?
Date: 21 Jul 92 23:10:22 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Jul14.213905.2857@desire.wright.edu> jstewart@desire.wright.edu writes:
>In article <2148@unet.UUCP>, jrs@zippy.unet.com (John Switzer Frame 3.0) writes:
>> For a previous job, I disassembled numerous bits and pieces of DOS because we
>> needed to know the internals. In particular, I spent some time on DRIVER.SYS,
>> which in DOS 3.3 was about 1.8K in size. In DOS 4.0, though, it was over 
>> 5K, but when I took a look at it I found that the basic core of the program
>> was virtually unchanged - only one bug about 1.44MB formatting was changed.
>
>	Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PC-DOS 99.9% MS-DOS.  This brain
>deadedness was almost certainly fromn MS.

You're wrong.  He states that he's comparing DOS 4 to DOS 3.3.  DOS 4.00
was entirely an IBM product.  (MS produced 4.01, a bug fix release, but
didn't substantially change anything).

I worked on DOS 5 and in the process studied DOS 4 very closely; that
ridiculous code plus a lot of other sh*t was indeed put in there by
the brilliant boys in boca.  As you may recall, DOS 4 ballooned in size
vs. DOS 3.3 yet added little functionality.  It didn't sell well for that
reason, as well as the bugs that IBM installed.  MS wrote DOS 5 which is
much smaller and faster (even without HMA).  I remember seeing a project
planning memo re: DOS 5 which started out, essentially, 

	"First we rip out all that IBM code"

I can say from personal experience that it's a great pleasure to wield
one's DELETE key like a mad slasher, in circumstances like this.

In sum, it's fair to say that DOS 3.3 and DOS 5.0, successful and
popular products, are "Microsoft writing DOS".  DOS 4.00, bugs and
obesity and all, are a good example of "IBM writing DOS".  IMHO, the problem
is based in IBM's inability - or unwillingness - to distinguish between
their good programmers and their poor ones.  I think that they feel that
just as it would be discriminatory to give the important jobs only to
men, or whites, it's also discriminatory to give key jobs only
to the good engineers.  Jobs are assigned by seniority and an unblotted
copybook, rather than skill or ability.

So you get folks who can have enough skill to stick N instructions together,
but not enough experience or judgement to decide if it makes sense, or if
it's stupid, to put a 4K hunk of code into the resident kernel.
For example, DOS 4.00 had "optimizations" added to it whose net effect was
to slow things down.  The decision was made by someone who knew what
an optimization was, but didn't have the experience to to evaluate such
things - both on paper before and by stopwatch afterwards - to see if they
make sense.

Some IBM guys have been offended because they feel that I'm denegrating 
all IBM programmers.  By no means.  I worked with some  sharp guys there.
But I also worked with at least as many utter bozos.  And more often then
not, the sharp guys (who were considered untrustworthy "mavericks" because
they said what was true vs. what management wanted to hear) were doing the 
scut work and the utter bozos were running things.

	gordon letwin
	not a spokesperson for anyone


Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy