7/19/2001

So, I have a lot to say about the book I just finished reading, but I'm saving it up for when I feel like I'll be able to do it justice. (Don't you wish I did that more often?) Instead, I'm going to offer a quick rant about Show-stopper!, by G. Paschal Zachary, which tells the story of the creation of Windows NT in such miserable prose that I can hardly decide which is more offensive: David Cutler, or the way his story is being told. Never mind the abundance of glossing over excellent opportunities to tell the truth, or the way that the author seems to know little of computing, or the way that he seems to misstate the simplest of technical terminology using the most idiotic metaphors, or the way that those metaphors seem to stand in the way of communicating even the simplest of facts (e.g., he mischaracterizes the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit over the GUI as though Apple sued MS for stealing source code, he compares APIs to "secret handshakes", etc.) The only real joy to be had from reading the book is getting to see what complete assholes Cutler and his crew were, and to get still more corroborating evidence for how Microsoft screwed everyone they ever worked with (IBM being the primary example in this book; the decision to lie to IBM and develop NT internally while pretending to devote resources to OS/2 is described as a "bold stroke", as opposed to a stab in the back to the company that basically launched MS into stock market heaven) No, I take that back. The only joy to be found in the book is when you get to hear about how Cutler basically thought DOS sucked along with everything else MS had produced up to the day they hired him. Not recommended. Why they compared this book to Soul of a New Machine, I'll never know. It's awful.
posted 12:13 PM