Hardcore Software

A fount of knowledge about Microsoft's productivity application group history is Steve Sinofsky's blog, https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/

For p-code references, the relevant blog post is https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/003-klunder-college.

There was a proprietary programming language called CSL, also named after CharlesS. This language, based on C, had a virtual machine, which made it easier to run on other operating systems (in theory) and also had a good debugger—attributes that were lacking in the relatively immature C product from Microsoft. CharlesS is Charles Simonyi, ex-Xerox PARC employee, hired away by Microsoft and worked on MS Word as well as creating the Hungarian naming system (the Apps version is the definitive version, not the bastard watered-down Systems version used in the Windows header files) - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation.

The blog post included excerpts from internal MS docs for apps developers. An OCR version of one such page in the blog post follows:

==== One of the most important decisions made in the development of Multiplan was the decision to use C compiled to pseudo-code (Pcode). This decision was largely forced by technological constraints. In early 1981, the microcomputer world was mainly composed of Apple II's and CP/M-80 machines; they had 8-bit processors, and 64K of memory was a lot; 128K was about the maximum. In addition, each of the CP/M-80 machines was a little…

> When Jobs acquired Apple, his vision of computing appliances was restarted - iPod, iPhone, et al. They have a lot more functionality, but the iOS walled garden keeps enough of the users happy - at least in the Silicon Valley/USA.

This sentence is backwards. About the only users not happy with the iPad as computing appliance are the ones in Silicon Valley USA or drinking its "car makers should design for garage mechanics not for driving" koolaid. (Commenters here, for instance.)

If you accept the premise the best tech disappears behind "the job to be done" for users, if you acknowledge driving is not about tinkering under the hood, to run an errand a driver shouldn't need to even know how it works under the hood, and most drivers are better off picking up groceries or kids or traveling, not ever opening the hood, then you will have a better time making cars for the drivers who buy Apple because it's an appliance farther along the novel engineering utility curve, where tinkerability is for engineers, utility is for users, and most users are not mechanics.

See also this, on Apple's "brand promise" and the EU's DMA:

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/215-building-under-regulation

> as long as computers have existed you have always been able to install an application from your preferred source

The company that creates a platform gets to decide if their platform is open or closed.

For instance, Microsoft created Windows as an open platform while they created XBox as a closed platform.

Apple created Macintosh as an open platform and created iOS as a closed platform.

Microsoft attempted to close Windows after the fact with Windows RT and Surface RT but consumers rejected that change. The free market decides what consumers find acceptable.

iOS is a platform that favors ease of use and safety over openness.

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/215-building-under-regulation

Consumers have a choice. Quite a lot of them choose Android.

On this topic I’m finding Steve Sinofsky’s “Hardcore Software” blog/newsletter very interesting lately:

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/

He’s a Microsoft careerist engineer who rose through the ranks to be in charge of Office through the ambitious “Ribbon UI” redesign, then was appointed to salvage the Windows and Services segment as the Longhorn/Vista debacle was close to shipping. His latest entries describe the sorry state of the Windows org as he came in, and the initial actions and goals he set to rectify the ship.

In hindsight we know that Windows 7 was a success under his leadership and 8 wasn’t, so even though his style is a bit rambling, it makes for good reading to try to understand the decisions that put Windows on its course.

Everything Is Buggy is the 4th instalment of Steven Sinofsky's [1] serialized book Hardcore Software: Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution [2]:

> Hardcore Software is a first-person account of what I saw at the PC revolution from the perspective of joining Microsoft as a newly hired software design engineer fresh from graduate school working on developer tools, through my time as a program manager and ultimately leading Office, and then moving to Windows, and everything in between (like working as technical assistant to Bill Gates.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Sinofsky

[2] https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/

I was surprised to learn that the most direct lineage of the “folder” metaphor in Windows 95 (the first Windows which featured it in its modern form) was likely via NeXTStep.

This is derived from Steve Sinofsky’s excellent Substack[1], which walks carefully through the history of Windows 4.0/Chicago/95 and unambiguously describes Gates’ competitive target as NeXT & Jobs.

Once I read this, it was hard to un-see how obviously Win95 was inspired by NeXTStep in both design and aesthetics.

[1] https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/