
“I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other OS” (2013) - doener
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74
======
vezycash
>These junior developers also have a tendency to make improvements to the
system by implementing brand-new features instead of improving old ones. Look
at recent Microsoft releases: we don't fix old features, but accrete new ones.
New features help much more at review time than improvements to old ones.

This is true. Windows 7 had an easy way to create adhoc wifi but win 8 removed
it. So now I must either use command prompt or install connectify.

WP has too many examples:

Music app has been rewritten multiple times and rebranded almost as many
times.

Email has also been rewritten and renamed - new version is slightly better.

The excellent lumia camera has been replaced by a meh windows camera app.

Internet explorer's been replaced by the featureless edge IMO.

Instead of fixing the Skype app (missed notifications, memory consumption
issues, performance issues, calls ringing even if the target is OFFLINE,
inaccurate notification count...) a bland messaging and Skype video apps were
introduced. So we've got three apps for Skype on Windows 10 and windows
mobile.

...and many more

~~~
existencebox
This statement is broadly true across bigCo industry from what I've found, but
I'd assign an "obvious explanation" to why: New features are recognized for
promos far more than existing improvements. I wouldn't say it's a new vs old
dev thing other than that old devs need "broader impact" to justify promos and
thus can't really take low hanging fruit, (although I've certainly seen senior
devs ramp up significant projects just so they get "novel visibility" even if
it's reinventing the wheel these tend to be slower by their very nature and
often not as visible as the more top level feature bloat) it seems more to do
with the culture of how career progress is measured throughout industry. (A
culture that I personally think is extremely broken, but see very little to
fixing outside of starting my own company)

~~~
Apocryphon
"New features are recognized for promos far more than existing improvements."

Seems like the solution is neither in engineering nor product, but marketing-
companies need to get better at explaining when a low-new-features iteration
is intended for stability and streamlining of existing features.

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mchahn
I don't know about performance but the windows ecosystem sure is buggy inside,
or at least stdout says so. One time I needed to work on a driver and I
enabled kernel debugging. My console immediately started spitting out a steady
stream of warnings and errors which continued forever. This is before I
touched anything.

~~~
dvt
This also happens on *NIX and Android.

~~~
mchahn
It is strange to work in a field where everything produced is lower quality
than desired. My wife is continually amazed that I continue to beat my head
against the metaphorical keyboard. I have said that I have always hated
computers even though I have done nothing but work on them my whole life.

~~~
tamana
Try metaphorically beating your head against the literal keyboard.

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static_noise
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BjycjCw...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BjycjCwTRFwJ:blog.zorinaq.com/%3Fe%3D74+&c=1)

~~~
cududa
thanks!

------
still_hoping
That was really interesting. Subjectively, two of my friends graduating
(Bachelor's) this year were rejected from Google SWE and have since received
(and accepted) offers from Microsoft for SDE.

------
JoeAltmaier
Sounds like any large company - no longer a fast-moving innovation engine.
Instead a customer-preserving value-calculating incremental development shop.
Just what you'd expect.

~~~
dsp1234
Having web apps that break my workflow every 2 months, and back end servers
that change their API every 3 months, I'm very happy with a company where I
can run software (that I still enjoy) 10-20 years later.

~~~
sbierwagen
20 year old Linux applications work just fine too, and it's still faster than
NT.

~~~
cbd1984
> (You'd guess that 40 year old Unix applications could work too without
> recompilation, though I've never tried it)

40 years takes you to 1976, at which point there's no longer any ISA-level
compatibility between the hardware we have now and the hardware Unix ran on
then. Basically, nothing we have looks like a PDP-11 to software, and Unix
didn't run on much else in the mid-1970s.

(Tidbit: 1976 is when the Lions book came out. Full source code, with apposite
and useful comments, for Sixth Edition Unix, passed around as _samizdat_ long
afterwords due to Bell Labs enforcing copyright on the Unix source code not
long after.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code)

~~~
tkinom
With DOS, win98, linux all running in asm.js inside browser, it should be long
before PDP11 code or to run in here too?

BTW, I love to use original Lotus 123 with DOS inside asm.js if someone can
use their supper power to make that materialized.

I still remember those "/FS" keystrokes after so many years.

~~~
david-given
Your wish is my command; preloaded with V6 Unix.

[http://pdp11.aiju.de/](http://pdp11.aiju.de/)

------
chinpokomon
As is noted, this was from 2013. I've worked at MS on and off over the years.
I only have my perspective, but it is a little different than the posting.
While there are certainly things I wish were better, I'm actively doing my
part to try and improve things. Microsoft seems no worse than other places
I've worked, and in many ways it is significantly better. I came back to
Microsoft after several successful startups because it is a company of doers.

~~~
jrockway
Was the SHA sum of revision 102 of pagefault.c correct?

------
i336_
> _I 'm a developer in Windows and contribute to the NT kernel. (Proof: the
> SHA1 hash of revision #102 of [Edit: filename redacted] is [Edit: hash
> redacted].) I'm posting through Tor for obvious reasons._

My Google-fu isn't turning up any non-redacted versions of this line; all I
see are the countless copies of this redacted version made over the last 3
years.

It would be nice to be able to note the file and hash references in question
in the case the opportunity ever arises to verify this. That would be pretty
cool :)

IMO releasing one filename is not really a security issue, and a hash is
categorically useless garbage.

~~~
to3m
[https://archive.is/BaZlv](https://archive.is/BaZlv) \- "the SHA-1 hash of
revision #102 of pagfault.c is 0cb82a9525a2158e2a87f5eb53d41e5936cee5a2"

(this link came from the Reddit thread in which this article was discussed the
other day -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4amfp2/i_contr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4amfp2/i_contribute_to_the_windows_kernel_we_are_slower/))

~~~
jrockway
Nice. Saying "XXX [redacted]" is an even better way to draw attention to
something than just writing it out.

------
sbierwagen
(2013)

------
draw_down
Sometimes people take it too serious when you're just blowing off a little
steam. It sucks.

