G. Pascal Zachary > Quotes

“Highly creative people don't necessarily excel in raw brainpower. They are misfits on some level. They tend to question accepted views and to consider contradictory ones.”
― G. Pascal Zachary

“NT is alarmingly complex. Consisting of six million lines of code, the program is among humanity’s most intricate handiworks. “No one mind can comprehend it all,” Cutler says. A”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“The great advantage of digital media is that it can be stored, retrieved and massaged by a computer—at lightning speed and with unerring accuracy.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“No matter how good a jockey, he can’t turn a plow horse into a thoroughbred. It was the same with chips and software. Indeed, an operating system depended on a reliable chip.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Fans of mainframe computers boasted of the benefits of handling many jobs in large batches. But the mainframe was as efficient as mass transit—wonderful as long as everyone wanted to travel to the same place at the same time. The PC was like an automobile; it would go anywhere its driver wanted. Instead of organizing work around the mainframe’s schedule, a person with a PC could do computing anytime. The”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn’t work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjustment to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.” The”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Code writers, like engineers generally, tend to get sidetracked by interesting but irrelevant conundrums.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Code writers and engineers often maintain the fiction that their own psychology has little bearing on their work. Reason rules.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“There are invariably many ways to achieve roughly the same technical ends. Technical choices are often highly personal. While shaped by commercial considerations, technical decisions also reflect human values and psychology. Cutler”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“It was now the age of visualization, when abstract concepts as well as basic needs and wants were increasingly expressed in visual terms. From its origins as a number cruncher, the computer had gone Hollywood; it was now an image maker of vast power. Thus, graphics in many ways defined the look and feel of computing. Cutler”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“But Unix had a serious shortcoming: No common version existed. Over the years different versions of Unix had proliferated like weeds, so that an application written for one would not run unmodified on another. While DOS presented a single target to consumers, applications writers and computer makers, Unix did not.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“The harbinger of a revolution, the Altair was the first mass-marketed personal computer. For the first time a computer was dedicated not just to a single task but to one person. The old guard of computing entirely missed the significance of this.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“If you don’t measure the performance, you’re just guessing, and if you’re guessing, you’re not very likely to write top-notch code.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Better to release the first version sooner with less. His was a less-now, more-later ethic. Robert”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Having grown rapidly, many PC software companies were stretched to the limit simply building their programs. With customers clamoring for new products, testing inevitably had to take a backseat. In addition, though it was eroding, there remained a pejorative attitude toward testing: “Let the customer test the program.” That saved the builder money and time, but it frustrated buyers, who came to view the first release of a program as a gamble. Microsoft”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“They often felt flooded by possibilities, leaving Perazzoli thinking that the project ran “right on the edge of chaos.” More control wasn’t the answer, however. “It seems like a little dose of management is needed,” he said. “Yet you can never give a little management. You always give too much. Its a very precarious position, undermanaging. Yet you have to be there to succeed.” Cutler”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“leader should not “walk around on eggshells, saying, ‘Geez, how are you today? Isn’t it nice you could make it to work today? It’s so great that you can come.’ Hey, we’re getting paid for this, right? So I expect everybody to do their best all the time. I expect them to do their job: If they do their job, and they do their best all the time, they don’t have any problem with me at all. But if they don’t do their best, then they do have a problem with me.” Technical”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“If they [program managers] had to go through this grueling experience of trying to ship this thing,” Cutler said, “I think they’d have a little different outlook on how much work we can do, how much we can take on. As it stands they have this endless list of shit. The list is always twice as long as what we can do.” In”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“The best testers were masters at deducing the chain of events leading to a failure. They provided code writers with a virtual road map to fix their bug. The worst testers offered little more than a description of the hangup and a half-baked hypothesis of the cause. Manheim”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“The computer itself exerted a strong hold on people, presenting a palatable alternative to human companionship. Many code writers agreed that their enthusiasm for computing bordered on obsession. More than a few spent vacations writing code or weekends doodling away at a half-baked program. This was sometimes merely a way for code writers to teach themselves about new tools or techniques. But often, a person could not resist programming. “It’s an addiction. What else can I say?” said one team member. The”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Poor performance was a common failing of most new programs. The annals of software amply showed this; nearly every landmark system, from IBM’s 360 to the various flavors of Unix to Microsoft’s Windows, was released in an immature state and evolved over time to win broader acceptance. Indeed, people expected the first commercial release of a new program to contain flaws of all sorts.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“With software, you know what you have to do,” he said, “but it’s always a big surprise how long it will take.” Miller”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“We aren’t going to sell a copy. Nope, if we don’t add this feature, the whole product is fucked. Absolutely fucked.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“One team member, who had formerly worked at AT&T’s Bell Labs, recalled only writing specifications for prototype products during his entire time with the company. Invariably after finishing the specs, the project was cancelled. Coming away empty handed so often made him feel sad. After”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Jobs had tried to hire Rashid, then a computer science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, but Rashid turned him down. He was reluctant to join the hurly-burly life of a corporation. His Mach research had been almost wholly funded by government grants; an agency of the Pentagon, his principal backer, saw Mach as crucial to unleashing the vast power of multiprocessor computers, inherently cheap machines that would someday replace pricey supercomputers as the backbone of the nation’s military and intelligence-gathering networks. Besides, Rashid was an academic purist. He seemed sincerely devoted to pursuing knowledge about software for its own sake. This was rare, even among academics, because software was such a remunerative field that the brightest researchers found themselves inexorably pulled into commerce: The money was too good. After”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Before the computer, the animals, mortal though not sentient, seemed our nearest neighbors in the known universe. Computers, with their interactivity, their psychology, with whatever fragments of intelligence they have, now bid for this place.” While”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“His short attention span was both endearing and aggravating. His mind would wander so much that those who really needed to speak with him tried to isolate him from distractions. “To talk to Gordon you had to take him in the car, drive and not let him turn on the radio,” one said.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“Even seasoned code writers could not dismiss the possibility of being trapped in something akin to an infinite loop, wherein fixes spawned their own bugs. It had happened to others. The history of software was littered with projects, large and small, that had been abandoned in disgust, destroying careers.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“After a time, Fogelin shifted into writing and editing manuals. Often lampooned, these texts, if studied with a fanaticism ordinarily reserved for the Bible, revealed a multitude of secrets.”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft

“In programming terms the piece of the operating system that sustained activity when all else failed was the kernel. It protected itself by imposing certain restrictions on applications, the most important being that only it, and never the applications, directed the hardware. The”
― G. Pascal Zachary, Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft