I’m reading Stephen Sinofsky’s new book as he writes it, he’s blogging the chapters, and it up to just a few years earlier, about 1993. These are the operating

I’m reading Stephen Sinofsky’s new book as he writes it, he’s blogging the chapters, and it up to just a few years earlier, about 1993. These are the operating systems they were developing at that time. DOS, OS/2, Windows, Windows NT and Cairo. Each was a different code base, different strategic vision and different technical requirements. That’s unbelievably stupid. They soon ditched OS/2, DOS and the failed Cairo project, but then added Windows CE. They never valued and core technology. Each product or market segment was addressed separately, from scratch by a new product team. The compiler team barely talked to the tools team, who developed separate tech from the applications teams who used their own frameworks different from those provided by the OS team. Most of the narrative is about teams talking past each other in meetings and struggling to get them to work together. It’s nuts.