By Andy McCue, 26 September 2005 13:10
NEWS Microsoft was forced to scrap the first incarnation of Longhorn – now called Windows Vista – after a senior executive warned chairman Bill Gates that it was too complex to work properly.
Jim Allchin, group VP in charge of Windows, told the Wall Street Journal he dropped the bombshell last summer, simply telling Gates "It's not going to work". Longhorn was so complex that Microsoft's developers would never be able to make it run properly, Allchin told Gates.
The root of the problem was Microsoft's historical approach to developing software – the so-called 'spaghetti code culture' – where the company's thousands of programmers would each develop their own piece of code and it would then all be stitched together at the end.
According to the WSJ interview, Allchin faced opposition to his call for a completely new approach to how Microsoft develops Windows – firstly from Gates himself and then the company's engineers.
The new approach was to develop a clean solid core code base for Windows which new features could more easily be added to over time and Allchin introduced new tools that would automatically reject buggy code.
As a result of this Microsoft received thousands fewer bug reports than usual when it released the beta version of Windows Vista this summer. Allchin's culture change also appears to be spreading through the rest of Microsoft. Gates said the new tools are now being used by the Office group. "I wish we'd done it earlier," he told the paper.
Comments
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1. Joel Philip
Maybe they should have made it more modular and it would run properly. NOT!
remember its Windows, its not supposed to run properly.
2. Nick Cole
And we've been telling him so for years! Finally it sinks in. The consequences of his 'random' methodologies have come home to roost.
If only there is to be some joined up thinking in the design specification stage followed up by proper evaluation and validation then we may all breathe a bit better. And of course given the additional complexity then more time should be given to make sure it all hangs together properly despite the marketing departments drive to get product to market.
3. anonymous
If Mr Allchin had "done this earlier" then Linux would be nowhere. Does this also mean Windows Vista will fit on a floppy disc and run on a 386 chip?
4. Roger Huffadine
Wow - so will I be able to use more than 64k of Table pointers in Word once they bring their Office products out of the 8 bit era?
5. Simon
Shock horror !
Microsoft discovers that the rest of the software developing world has actually been right for the last 3 decades !
6. Ram Todatry
If this is certainly true, then it looks as if Microsoft finally found the software development religion - software engineering. Did these guys really get a degree in Computer Science or what?
The goal should always be how to deliver a product with the fewest bugs possible. It is no secret that a product takes about 10 years to get mature and almost bug-free.
7. anonymous
Or is this more M$ FUD ?????
8. James
So now we know why Jim is leaving :-)