Comment by egorfine
3 days ago
> Cutler’s intent was to produce a system with the same level of quality, unshakable reliability, and attention to detail he was famous for in his work on VMS and NT.
I'm not sure whether this is serious or irony.
3 days ago
> Cutler’s intent was to produce a system with the same level of quality, unshakable reliability, and attention to detail he was famous for in his work on VMS and NT.
I'm not sure whether this is serious or irony.
Search VMS stability, I think the consensus is clear.
Then Google VMS longest uptime, and the record is 28 years. VMS often achieved five nines over 10 years (99.999%) so no irony.
He took a bunch of folks with him from DEC to Microsoft to make NT, and of course his principles.
Nowadays NT is bomb-proof believe it or not.
Most of the crashes are in device drivers and some rare times in the UI code (Win32k) that should not be there, but the kernel itself is solid.
(Yes I am a big fan)
I remember reading "Showstoppers" and David was quoted to say "If you break the build I'm the lawn mower and your ass is grass". Do you think such attitude is mandatory for good kernel level code?
(I actually think it does and argued with people on HN, although I never wrote any professional kernel code myself)
Aside: If you liked "Showstopper" you should give a listen to the Computer History Museum's oral history interview with David Cutler: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271716...
1 reply →
VMS, yes. No doubts.
NT, no. Again, no doubts.