Showstopper

Surprisingly, despite the absence of an F1 race, the previous weekend seemed to go past without a trace of boredom. The key to that is undoubtedly "Showstopper" by Pascal Zachary - a book detailing the personalities behind and the evolution of Windows NT. An absolutely awesome read...

URL:
http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717

I think I came across this book first in one of Jeff Atwood's blogs and then found it in Joel's recommended reading list as well. After reading a preview in Amazon, I was absolutely hooked onto it. Owing to no shipments to India, I couldn't get to lay my hands on this for a while.

The library in our Israel office seems that much better thanks to the possession of this book alone. One of the statements in the book seemed to stick to my head:

"No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office."

It echoes the same philosophy that my first project manager advocated. He didn't want any of us to spend too much time @ office. But he ensured that the team was focussed with work and always had work during the office time. I think I did learn quite a bit in my first company. Listening to stories of bench time of friends working in the service companies, I had told myself: "Stick to a product company always!!!". Frankly, I don't think I have ever been as productive as I was there.

The book talks quite in depth about David Cuter, the chief architect for the project. I remember him being designated as "Senior Distinguished Engineer" in one of the Microsoft books. (Microsoft designations are a bit funny though. Mark Russinovich (sysinternal's guy) is designated as "Technical Fellow" :-)). He is potrayed as an incredibly brilliant but arrogant guy. Likewise, I recently happened to watch one of Linus Torvalds talks on "git" -- a source control software tool that was written by him and used for linux kernel maintenance. He was practically bull shitting every other tool in the market.

People do make comments that knowledgeable folks are humble but I think that's something that doesn't always hold good. My observation is that winners and people at the top are mostly arrogant & supremely confident. And I think they need to be... in order not to give up easily on something hard.

(and I think this reasonably justifies me acting a touch arrogant while playing TT... :-) I play pretty good for an amateur... :-D )