Talk:Dave Cutler

message: If you're looking for a bio, there's a mini-auto-bio quoted from his book here. --Rebroad 21:31, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biography 

message: Someone should move the quotes to WikiQuotes.
I'm not too familiar with said WikiMedia project, so I'd appreciate it if someone else did it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seec77 (talk • contribs) 16:46, June 10, 2005
The "fork queue" reference is pretty obscure. I assume it's completely meaningless for non technical people, and I admit that the meaning is not obvious to me either, even as a computer scientist. Can anyone explain this or clarify the reference? Timbatron 03:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fork queue is pronounced "fuck you". The fork list is a list of processes waiting to have access to the CPU, which is more or less the most important thing an OS does. Ortolan88 17:45, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I worked for DEC for many years and never heard anyone pronounce it that way. btw, it has nothing to do with processes. Even though the things that were run that way were called "fork processes", they were really just procedure calls and no process context switches (or, in modern versions, thread context switches) are involved. NT calls the same concept a "deferred procedure call", which is much more evocative. Jeh 09:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

text: 4Q2 is how I first learned this gag, in reference to some obscure command-control or telephony system. Orcmid 21:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotes 

message: It seems strange that only one sentence is devoted to the development of the original NT project, then three to its development on 64bit platforms.  
On http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winserver2k3_gold1.asp it mentions the early versions of NT were built on the i860 and then the MIPS R3000 chip, and NT 3.51 was built around the PowerPC. From reading Showstopper a while back, I remember that his team's original build targets were not the x86. Cutler did this in order to ensure portability of the code, so then they would port to the x86 afterward for the commercial release. I thought perhaps NT4? was originally developed on the 64bit Alpha chip.
So why did Cutler back away from lead development on 32bit to concentrate on 64bit platforms? How did his role at Microsoft change from the origin of Windows NT to his later development projects?  Tumacama (talk) 17:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Why so little on original dev and so much on 64bit?

message: "In addition to his engineering skills, Cutler is known for his sardonic humor. Sometimes even his error messages turn out to have a double meaning." - can we have a few examples or citation ?82.39.157.193 (talk) 21:41, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: IE.NFW -69 Path lost to partner  "NFW" is an initialism for "no fucking way".  65.96.202.28 (talk) 21:14, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Sardonic Humour

message: I removed the "as well as Vista" sentence as this is not true.
Windows Vista has been a major catastroph in Microsoft life precisely because Cutler retired shortly after the end of XP. Some rumors pretend that Microsoft hired him back as a consultant to give guidelines for Windows Seven... We can all see the difference today. --Casablanca1950 (talk) 11:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Citation needed for the "retired shortly after" claim, for the "Vista was a catostrophe" claim, and for the "because" claim. Comments about living persons, even on talk pages, must comply with WP:BLP. Jeh (talk) 20:39, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Vista 

message: I found this address in a DECUS catalog PDF online, dated June, 1968:
N. David Culver, President
AGRIPPA-ORD Corporation
Monument Square
Carlisle, Massachusetts 01741
Note: There is no "Monument Square" in Carlisle, but there is a "Monument Square" in Concord. The "N" is given as a first name instead of second, and "Culver" is probably a misspelling.
Also, I found this patent reference online:
"Apparatus and method for synchronization of arithmetic exceptions in parallel pipelined execution units"
Singapore Patent 95904991
Inventor: N. DAVID CUTLER, BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON (and 4 others)
Applicant/Proprietor: DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION
Putting these together hints strongly at what I stated years ago in this article, that David Cutler founded Agrippa-Ord, in Concord, MA. I can't actually find an independent reference showing this, though. Maybe we'll never know for sure until Cutler himself visits Wikipedia, or someone asks him. David Spector (talk) 04:15, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agrippa-Ord Corporation 

message: There should be more coverage of Cutler's key role in developing the RSX-11M opsys for the PDP-11.  Not to be confused with more ungainly RSX-11D, the short-lived IAS opsys, nor the RSX-11S opsys, which was a stripped-down run-time-only version of RSX11-M.  Cutler was a major factor in the "upstart" RSX-11M's ascendancy to supplant all the other versions (save -S), including IAS (which was supposed to be the flagship PDP-11 opsys) with the enhanced RSX-11M+.  When Cutler quietly bowed out of RSX-11M development, rumors leaked out that he was heavily involved in what eventually became VAX/VMS.
Cutler can claim to to be a principal architect of the dominant 16-bit (RSX-11M), 32-bit (VAX/VMS), and Intel (Windows NT/2000/XP) commercial operating systems of their respective eras. To the extent that information can be found, his earliest major opsys accomplishment, RSX-11M, should be better documented, especially the concepts and techniques that influenced the development of later projects, both under Cutler and elsewhere. Reify-tech (talk) 23:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: While at duPont in the late 60's, Cutler first got heavily into operating systems studying Univac 1108 code on the midnight shift.  He authored an operating system for the PDP10 which was used for data collection and analysis from a huge array of Instrons, and then an RSX-11A (it did support disk resident tasks) pre-cursor to RSX-11M. I was one of the very early users in the early 70's and wrote a number of device drivers for it and applied it in a variety of PDP-11 based process control systems before RSX-11M. It was a great day when he delivered a version supporting the PDP11 memory management module, so we could use the remaining 4K of the 32K physical memory and tasks could actually run protected from each other! The fork queue in RSX11A was the mechanism Cutler employed to achieve guaranteed interrupt response time, which was almost a religion with him. Non-interruptible processing was performed, the remaining processing placed on the fork queue to be continued as a co-routine of the interruptible operating system thread, and the interrupt dismissed. For us, RSX11A turned the PDP11 from a toy into a usable and inexpensive platform for manufacturing support in all sorts of applications until RSX-11M in '74.  Cutler was indeed a prodigious producer of code. I spent numerous early mornings pouring thorough his books of listings which were like the Library of Congress. He was the first person I know to generate metrics on LOC/day. He went to our boss and demanded pay proportional to LOC/day. Not exactly the duPont culture of the day. At one point the DEC RSX-11D team visited us to share their plans, and Cutler, in his inimitible style, really took them to task about what real time computing was all about. Shortly after that he left for Digital armed with RSX-11A and his incredible talents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Love2code (talk • contribs) 09:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you Love2code, for your very relevant comments.  If you can find verifiable third-party documentation, these insights could be promoted to the main article.  By the way, it is customary to append ~~~~ to comments on Talk pages, to "sign" one's remarks; otherwise the SineBot process will have to clean up for you.  And welcome to Wikipedia editing! Reify-tech (talk) 15:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Coverage of Cutler's key role in developing RSX-11M is still badly needed. As the article stood yesterday, nothing was mentioned about his role at Digital from his appearance in 1971 until he worked on VMS in 1974. This is very misleading, since his key role in RSX-11M is the very reason he was tapped to lead the VMS effort. Much of the internal structure, concepts, terminology, and APIs developed for RSX-11M were migrated directly into VMS, and later into Windows NT. I don't have access to the old RSX-11M documentation anymore, but somebody out there must have followed the successive development of the three operating systems and documented the continuity of their development. Reify-tech (talk) 17:04, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need more coverage of RSX-11M/M+ 

message: I added a section regarding Cutler's current work on the Xbox team.  Re-reading the article, it seems like both Windows Azure and Xbox should be combined in to a single section, as they are both rather short blurbs.  Perhaps a title of 'Post-NT projects', 'Post-NT work' or 'Later work within Microsoft'?  A new section seemed as bit much, without first asking for feedback.  However, if no one raises any issues in the next few days/weeks, I will likely merge the two. agentlame (talk) 08:05, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge sections