We asked a Retired Microsoft Windows Engineer 100 Questions! Why oh Why? Find out!

You picked the questions, Dave provided the answers in "Dave's Garage Livestream 2"!
Retired operating systems engineer "Davepl" brings us the second installment of the Dave's Garage Livestream series where he answers questions from the audience on Microsoft, products, security, languages, design, and more!
Check the channel for the NEXT livestream so you can join in and get your Microsoft questions answered!
0:00 - Tukwila and NT 3.99
3:16 - Did Microsoft ever try custom silicon?
4:52 - Active Directory Integration
6:23 - Do you prefer Windows or Linux?
9:42 - Why did Win95 not have Activation or Protection?
10:49 - Preparing for Y2K
11:54 - Porting the shell code
14:36 - OS/2 Cancellation
15:38 - Major Feature vs Incremental
16:51 - What languages is Windows written in?
18:37 - What are Dave’s favorite games?
20:51 - What PC did you use at Microsoft?
23:12 - Task Manager Flicker
23:41 - When was Build Lab introduced?
24:07 - Why is Dave not in the Windows 95 Easter egg?
26:09 - How did .NET come to Microsoft?
26:32 - Why does the Unix Epoch start in 1970 and not 1900
27:16 - What did NT use for GFX before DirectX and OpenGL?
28:17 - Did you ever work on Flight Simulator?
28:23 - How did you feel about the removal of the Start Menu in Windows 8?
28:45 - Why is the lock desktop a different resolution than the main desktop?
29:29 - Would you port Pinball to mobile if given the chance?
29:39 - Who invented the Registry?
30:39 - Did you ever code in 8080?
30:58 - Is Windows intrinsically less secure than Linux?
34:34 - Bitmap sector editor via the Explorer Bar?
34:59 - Build Lab Clarification
35:10 - Windows 10 S Mode
35:30 - What did you work on in OLE/COM?
36:52 - What is about Programming that you like?
38:59 - How much ASM is still in Windows?
40:34 - Have you tried iOS development?
40:59 - Could you do a Livestream on other topics?
41:18 - What’s your favorite computer language?
42:01 - NT Screensavers
42:37 - The ZIPFolders Corvette
45:15 - Are you a Racing fan?
47:07 - What is your favorite car?
48:40 - How do you feel about Javascript?
49:33 - Should you play with leaked beta builds?
49:52 - What was your most bug-free code?
50:04 - How did you start to learn to program?
51:42 - Do you have any experience with Automotive software, CANBUS, etc?
53:24 - LouP and JimK
53:37 - Is the Windows source code well written or messy?
54:42 - Do you every use anything other than Windows?
56:56 - Is MAX_PATH a good idea?
57:58 - What would you do different if you had your own company?
59:02 - Any facepalm features in Windows?
59:10 - How did you get the code out of the car computer to look at it?
59:36 - What would hand-picking features look like?
59:54 - Is there any code by BillG in Windows?
1:00:27 - What are you currently learning?
1:00:43 - 0xDEADBEEF AND 0XBAADF00D
1:01:07 - What is the most nostalgic feature?
1:01:15 - Overview of the Microsoft development process
1:06:23 - Hidden desktop windows - what for and why?
1:07:26 - Checked or Free builds?
1:08:09 - Difference between CAB and ZIP files
1:08:45 - Windows desktop vs Linux desktops
1:09:32 - Why can’t you name a file CON?
1:10:09 - The Kernel Dev Rant
1:10:36 - Why is Notepad such a lame editor?
1:11:09 - Mini Microsoft
1:11:28 - Privacy, Telemetry, and Data Harvesting in Windows
1:12:39 - Do employees get free software?
1:13:20 - Why was the Alpha AXP version of Windows cancelled?
1:13:51 - Most Controversial Microsoft moment
1:14:05 - Is the shell inside or on top of the Kernel?
1:14:26 - Thoughts on Telemetry in Windows 10
1:15:45 - Elon Musk
1:16:05 - Embedded Programming
1:16:35 - How to boot Windows in verbose mode
1:17:39 - How do you know what you can say or not?
1:17:59 - What kind of music do you listen to?
1:18:45 - Will Windows ever move to a Linux kernel?
1:20:14 - The “I Love it” Easter Egg in MS-DOS
1:20:26 - The XP Source Code leak
1:21:48 - Autism
1:22:44 - Where is the Quad Episode Part 2
1:23:36 - Do you comment your code?
1:24:16- Why was Calc removed from Windows?
1:24:59 - Volume licensing and piracy
1:26:36 - The best code I’ve ever seen
1:27:16 - Interacting with other teams
1:28:24 - Plans to sell merchandise
1:28:39 - Variable naming conventions
1:31:06 - How do you know what’s under NDA or not?
1:31:49 - SQL servers - what do you use?
1:32:02 - Certifications
1:32:28 - Why does bug X still exist in Windows?
1:33:09 - How to get started in Kernel coding?
1:33:29 - Any interest in ASM episodes?
1:34:29 - Culture shock: Win95 vs WinNT
1:35:41 - RUST and React
1:36:51 - 10GB Networking Topic ideas
1:37:28 - Closing
Remember, Dave is a former employee who is now retired, but who is not now and never was an "official" spokesperson. All opinions are his only.

[@usernamegoeshere5720]

Thank you for tagging the sections in the video so thoroughly.

[@KrzysiuNet]

Yeah, that must have taken a lot of work, but it helps A LOT. Thanks, herr Dave!

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

Im so offended omg. The complexity of all the names behind it you see and dont makes it a personal injury very obviously. Obviously there is an element of deliberately poor work. I shouldnt be avoiding logical processors when I dont need to use them period. Its not very logical. That said im not even mad about Zen 3 refresh getting canned. Maybe we will see just XT binned models at best instead of nothing of importance at worst. Maybe a better binned IO die so 4000 kits are less gambly.

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

Send advanct Morpheus optimizations so we can make Retro Great Again. Im a man of simple taste. The elongated R33 was one of my faves. The radiated lizard is a hollywood videogame staple, but it checks out. Haters will point to its 5 speed, but its too sexy for its own good.

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@Gig-th3er Lies. And damned ones. It looks like the signal from mars has confirmed the existence of bacon.

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

@@Gig-th3er DREAM THEATER - Fall Into The Light (OFFICIAL ANIMATION VIDEO) 2,895,678 views Jan 11, 2019 Signal to noise ratio is mathematically undeterminifiable.

[@t803586]

I have been a Windows admin for years, this is the best channel I have found in years its so nice to hear the background of how the tools I've used for years work.

[@deefdragon]

Low level (retro) programming is one of the best ways to get a fundamental understanding of a higher level tool, as you learn what the higher level tool is hiding away. I would LOVE to see you make some of these tutorials.

[@zombieregime]

The worst is when the high level tool docs dont clearly state how its doing a low level action, if at all. Or worse, using a low level command name in a completely different way so in the high level code you cant figure out why it fails so hard, or so silently, or hangs at 100% cpu and pegged disk access.....

[@pleaswaite]

Red Hatter here - Fedora is the community upstream of RHEL. It's steered by a committee of community members (some nominated by Red Hat). It came after we turned RHL into RHEL, about 2-3 years afterwards Fedora Linux was created. It does it's own thing and then Red Hat takes a version of Fedora, pins it to a release, tweaks it to fit the needs of the corporate world, and that becomes RHEL. Great videos! Love hearing about the good ol' days.

[@Obscurai]

Win95 launched with online registration onto MSN rather than online activation. I was part of the MSN team and was in the data center when the first registrations started coming in.

[@LaskyLabs]

I'll bet that was exciting. What was that like?

[@Obscurai]

@@LaskyLabs A little nerve wracking as there were a lot of moving parts that formed the data center for this to work. We knew the Win95 launch was large and had hopefully sized the number of modem lines to the number of servers and databases, but you can never be too sure. Thankfully everything worked out fine as the first registrations came in from around the world as the product was released in each time zone. The registration servers were also just a small part of the MSN data centers (there were initially 3 locations for geo-redundancy).

[@transmitterguy4784]

So you're the guy?

[@TremereTT]

IN Germany no one had Internet 1995...so there was no need for an online registration! All Windows 95 and 98 versions run without Activation or registration. You couldn't even do phone registration as Computers was a thing for children and companies. To protect the parents from 10000DM bills from erotik phonecall services, most private household had every servicenumber locked. Also all games(Doom, Apache vs Werewolf, Hexen, &c.) were connected via IPX/SPX....stack! it was great.

[@itmkoeln]

​@@TremereTT No one is a bold claim but my parents were among the first to subscribe to DSL (with Telekom) that was in 1999, coming from Dialup. Whicht their business used for almost 10 years at that point...

[@craigmcinnes1212]

really appreciate you talking so much time to share so much info, all gold as always

[@seanfletcher7541]

would be intrested in seeing your response to ReactOS

[@deonh100]

What a joy to listen to someone who's been there, done that and has more than the t-shirt.

[@stogdan]

Your channel is full of quality content Dave, such a great teacher as well. Were you involved in the Microsoft Cluster Server back in your NT days as well? It would be interesting to see a video of its origins and how it evolved in later versions.

[@WalnutSpice]

Can't believe I slept through this one, even set an alarm but thank you for keeping the archived stream up. Something I'd be curious to hear more of though, Is the transition from the ol' faithful Program Manager and 3.1 "desktop" that had already been in use since 89. Was it similar today transitioning from a desktop to a hybrid metro UI? The push backs, the conversation against and for. It was a huge change for Windows and the desktop environment in general, so this is very interesting to hear how it came around from the horses mouth.

[@jackfetter]

So much good stuff! I was an engineer, implementing the stuff you co-authored in the mid-90's through today (well, me still working, not so much you coding anymore!), so many great memories, it was like the wild west back then! I'll never forget my first corporate gig when the all-OS2 IT group hired me to lead the implementation of Windows 95 to a 10k seat utility company. They didn't know Windows, didn't care to learn and offloaded to me, a corporate newb that was thrilled at the opportunity. It was trial by fire but some of the best years of my IT career (so far). Great channel, keep it up!

[@andresotondo1045]

Dave is a real life guru.

[@Timbucktu]

1:37:58 1:37:58

[@morzee94]

Thank you so much for the huge amount of effort you clearly put into making this video. I found it really interesting.

[@_slier]

That timeline tagging though.. what a dedication

[@fn0rd-f5o]

Curious why Microsoft didn't include the SysInternals suite as a part of the distribution. A lot of very powerful tools that I enjoy

[@Thumper68]

Windows 2000 Professional is my favorite. Wish I could run it now days

[@FlyboyHelosim]

Run it in a virtual machine.

[@rossimarti]

Adding IE 4 to Win95 was sort of magical because it was a UI “upgrade” in a sense. Win 98 carried some of that forward.

[@notsure7404]

I'm not a programmer, but the rhythm of your idiosyncracies is soothing. Yes, to my ASD.

[@PXAbstraction]

Very awesome listen as background while I was working today, thanks Dave. :) I would be very interested in videos about being on the spectrum and on retro programming. I have ADHD and am not officially on the spectrum but meet all but one of the prerequisites to be. It's been both a benefit in my IT career and also a frustration in a great many other ways. I'm curious to hear other perspectives on it, especially from people like yourself who clearly made a successful career with it. Cheers!

[@stoorps]

Hi Dave, I found your channel a few days ago and I've already binged a quite a few videos! To answer a question you put to us, I am very interested in hearing more about your experience on the spectrum. I can tell my mind works quite similarly to yours in certain regards, and I was recently encouraged by a therapist to get a diagnosis if I want to go down that path. It'd be really cool to get your perspective and experience, and maybe some tips/hacks if you have any, as I do struggle with a couple of things myself. Keep up the great work! As a (mainly) C# dev I have been thoroughly enjoying your content, and you have persuaded me to have a play with assembly a bit more :)

[@VraccasVII]

It's a shame that it's 1:40 in the morning here so I'll have to watch this tomorrow, but I can already say that I appreciate the effort you took in chaptering this stream

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks! Hope folks can make use of it, it took a while to do :-)

[@alec1575]

@@DavesGarage it was for sure useful to me

[@jamies4024]

Thanks for answering my question, it's been great watching your channel grow.

[@zzKirus]

I'd like to see the retro programming, also if you were interested in doing the same thing but with C# I'd watch that too

[@DonaldChapman]

386DX2-40 One of my old time favorite systems!

[@jacobhavinga9402]

That was my very first PC ... 🙂

[@Adam_Lyskawa]

I remember those keygens working for both Office and Windows ;) I also remember cracking an old version of Windows myself with just messing with some files. I don't quite remember which version it was, but I was surprised how easy it was to crack (i managed to somehow bypass serial number check during the installation). I wasn't really a cracker, it was just for learning and fun. But the most funny thing I did to old Windows was to hack its installation bug - the thing refused to install when there was no floppy drive in the system. There was a check for it and the installer just waited indefinitely for non-existing floppy drive. So when it happened, I fetched an old floppy drive from my basement, hot plugged the data cable for just about 1 second and the installer continued immediately. I disconnected the cable the next second and everything worked.

[@jonathansturm4163]

I remember when the first bundling of Word and Excel on CD came out as an upgrade. The installer looked for an existing winword.exe file on the HDD so during a clean install I just created a text file of that name rather than hunting for the floppy disk with the legitimate file on it.

[@NicolasCatalani]

Hey Dave, just found out about your channel and I'm thoroughly enjoying It. Would love the ASM episodes. Cheers!

[@DavesGarage]

Awesome, thank you! Will start soon!

[@ninjaz5736]

Wow, what a video! I'd love to see some of the low level assembly/basic windows calls type stuff, I've thought about playing around on one of my Pi's (I've theoretically got a spare one if I migrate my print server over to my new one), so would LOVE something on that, but honestly to see how it's done from the start on any system / architecture would be brilliant. Who knows, it may even inspire me to write my own emulator for the architecture or something...

[@y1ink]

The assembly app would be an interesting vid would like to see that. Great q&a enjoyed watching it.

[@richardrowley7800]

I loved using NT 3.51 with the 95 shell. Thanks for your work.

[@JeffRyman69]

Having OS source code is useful. In the summer of 1968 I was an AEC summer student at Argonne National Lab in Idaho where I worked on a project to add routines for a Calcomp flat bed plotter to the assembler (SPS - Symbolic Programming System) on an IBM 1620. Calcomp supplied the routines but SPS could not call external subprograms. I was given a copy of the source code that showed all functions were embedded in a particular memory area of the assembler. I traced a call through the assembler by hand to locate where the routines were located, then added the Calcomp routines to the back of that memory area so they could be called. After getting the modified assembler running with the plotting routines, I turned in my report. About a month later, the IBM 1620 was replaced with an IBM 360.

[@robbyandrews223]

Dave I don't know why it is but I love your demeanor and attitude. Keep up the streaming and channel.

[@Laszlo34]

"That feeling never goes away. That's why I code." I've been doing the soffwarez since about 1985 and it's totally true, you NEVER lose those emotional responses, both the positive and the negative. My poor monitor can't decide whether I'm madly in love with it or hate it with a passion because of the way I talk to it throughout any given day. And yes, all of these are why I code too! Now if we could just get rid of all these corporate meetings and petty administrative tasks that bog everything down...then we would REALLY have something!

[@20chocsaday]

Absolutely. From the little that I have done, well I was starting to jump up in my chair with laughter, so I put my coffee down fast.

[@FloydMaxwell]

Thank you for sharing so much of your work and life. For people who have dedicated their life to computing, you are a treat to listen to.

[@WhileTrueCode]

i remember reading an article that talked about kernel ALLOWING some memory access violations for backwards compatibility; if it detected the application was a certain major title (SimCity is the one the article mentioned). this is awesome and hilarious and id love to hear if you had any knowledge or involvement

[@mymanyadventures9639]

Hey Dave. I'm really enjoying your videos so far. It's extremely fascinating to hear about your perspective. question

[@coopz6752]

50min in... the cuts, edits give us a hint, but the deep sighs... A man with regrets but keeping his promise to 100 Questions ;) Thanks Dave, I Really enjoyed this video as one can tell by the comments every 15min! Late, but worth it!

[@RY-TIOUSRY]

all spontaneuos, no filter. love it. that dave is a good guy, cant hide stuff answering a machine gun barrage of questions. great stuff

[@supralapsarian]

Dave, I’m pretty sure I watched this video when it was released, but somehow I missed the like button. Anyway, it’s as much fun today as it was when it was first published. Thanks! I appreciate you sharing your nuggets!

[@sausix]

I also started programming in my youth by finding a CPC or similar manual which contained Basic instructions.

[@igorthelight]

PureBASIC is a interesting beast - check it out :-)

[@augustopinheiro]

I truly don't know if the pun was intended or not...

[@stewartdahamman]

@handwerkerGCN I always wondered how you got started.

[@sausix]

@@stewartdahamman I'm so happy you have time for commenting on that.

[@stewartdahamman]

@@sausix Always like to note a meaningful contribution.

[@DerekWitt]

10:49 - Ah Y2K... I worked tech support for Compaq on Jan 1, 2000. I remember the media hype leading up to that. It was so dead that we were allowed to go home. We had to support Windows 95, 98, and forsaken ME. And God forbid we had to help with Windows 2000.

[@sanfords]

Man this info is so valuable - the behind the scenes stuff we all dealt with. Bob Day was a good friend of mine (and of everybody) back then. So you were across the hall.... interesting. I had to have met you.

[@fanatic26]

The way you describe your love for your Corvette is EXACTLY how I feel about mine. Its a manual C7 with a supercharger kit on it. A baby Z06 and im completely in love with it.

[@dexteroreilly]

Hey @Dave! I’d love to see a video about old school programming like you mentioned. I think it could be extremely interesting to learn how things were done before Windows Forms and such were a thing….

[@nobytes2]

It isn't old school per say, C and C++ are still very relevant today.

[@dexteroreilly]

@@nobytes2 but to program using straight C/C++ and not relying on the frameworks within VS is a different animal. A modern Windows developer uses VS and the WIndows Forms framework. Old school developers wrote that stuff themselves.

[@nobytes2]

@@dexteroreilly Is all relatively the same. Even MS probably had their own internal libraries in the old days. The question you should ask yourself do you want to write libraries or use readily available libraries and write your application. Don't reinvent the wheel. In those days devs wrote something themselves simply because there wasn't anything built already. Are you riding a horse today, or driving a car?

[@Mavendow]

@@dexteroreilly I've regularly written in VS without Windows Forms. Once you start typing out the visual code manually you realize how little time that actually saves. For example, putting data on a dropdown or selection box is not thread safe so you end up needing to code thread safety yourself. At that point you might as well code your own control. Plus, many classes are sealed or otherwise not easily extensible. I imagine a lot of devs code without using Windows Forms.

[@mike-barber]

Thanks for this Dave; great fun and really interesting! I think you might find Rust surprising and interesting, given your experience. Unfortunately missed the livestream, but I'm definitely going to try to make the next one :)

[@MarcinKralka]

Have you taken a look on Serenity OS? It is an operating system written from scratch that has Unix-like kernel with Windows-like 90's user interface.

[@SpinStar1956]

Dave, personally, I enjoy all the ASM content. I did so much of the older 6800, 6502 (Load-Store,Load-Store, Load-Store to ad-nauseum!) , 8080 [Z-80 and 68K were my absolute favorites mainly because on the programming side, I love CISC]. So, maybe like 68000 on the Amiga to display processor-elegance and/or x86 because you can use it on present-day hardware which is both eclectic and fun!

[@MikkoRantalainen]

Hungarian notation is pretty interesting. I prefer the style where it's used to keep track if data is trusted vs untrusted. In many cases you handle strings that originate from program internal sources vs user input (any files or streams). Many security vulnerabilities are caused by handling untrusted strings (or other data) as trusted. Another good example is keeping track the current encoding you have: for example, you may need to handle the same data as UTF-8 and encoded for HTML in ISO-8859-1 encoding. Prefixing all strings e.g. "u" for UTF-8 and i for ISO-8859-1 string will make things harder to accidentally mix. However, prefixing with "us" to tell it's "UTF-8 string" is not valuable because the IDE or compiler already can tell that the variable is a string.

[@cherryfrost5249]

I would be interested in retro coding videos! I find all of your content extremely informative and entertaining. Thank you.

[@blain20_]

Q: Why was Edie Brickell's music video included on the Win95 CD? 😁👍🥰

[@LilRofl]

++ retro code instruction videos. Your content is incredibly easy to watch; thanks for taking the time to produce it.

[@MartinRepairs]

Would like to hear more about the car modification, the second gear fault. The part of dissecting ROM file and finding/triggering the fault...

[@RandomInsano2]

I’m definitely interested in MS-DOS 6. My favourite DOS was the last (retail) DOS.

[@markpaterson2260]

Sometimes the YT algorithm does you a solid. This was mega interesting ty.

[@tiberiusbrain]

Its like im getting my childhood explained to me since i found this channel. Thank you dave for doing this! If you just didnt have an NDA, you would have been inspirational to 8 year old me trying the win95 beta en from then forward. I was online already, but cant remember if or how i did the tcp-ip. I do remember the ipx/spx repeating nightmare tho, 2 pc's, always connected, some days it just wouldnt lan haha. Oh man, its great to hear from the other side of it all. Seriously this channel is great, inspirational.

[@pantallahueso]

35:10 Windows 10 S Mode is simply a mode that OEMs can use that restricts user's ability to install apps to exclusively the Microsoft Store, restricts the default browser to Edge, and restricts the default search engine to Bing. It's extremely easy to exit, however. There is a button in the Microsoft store that permanently exits S Mode, and this is completely free. Seems pointless to me, since most people would just realize they can't install Chrome, and exit this mode.

[@Mavendow]

For Windows 10 Microsoft built UWP, S Mode, and rebuilt the DWM/Kernel to remove GUI/driver access to some parts of kernel memory, and Secure Boot. Now with Windows 11, the TPM requirement, and the locked down GUI. It's pretty obvious where they're going; locked bootloader like cell phones. The OS is free so they want you to rent your hardware.

[@BobHannent]

Something like 20 years ago I wrote something horrific for real estate agents. It needed to run on almost anything and because of the way it was written I wanted a debug dump of the spec and capabilities of the machine it was running on. I made the application write a text file and then spawn notepad, then the customer would be instructed to print that text file and send it in (it was 20 years ago, asking them to do email would be optimistic). The simplicity of Notepad was assured, I knew it was going to be there and printing was going to work.

[@psyclobe]

A refreshingly honest channel. I love hearing about the insides of the NT OS, one that I had to interact with a ton in my time in the data storage and recovery space.

[@RouteBGP]

Would love to hear your insights into the NT port for DEC Alpha...

[@DaleRossNET]

I just wanted to pop in. you may or may not remember who I am. while I was a Microsoft MVP for Windows NT, and heavy beta tester we interfaced some. when I attended Redmond for an MVP Summitt you took some time to meet with me and show me a few things. I've always appreciated that. I decide to pop in when you answered te question about OS/2 and not being there during the IBM break up. boy do I have stories about that time. I think I need to do a video on those days.

[@johnwettroth4060]

Before SSD's were popular, I made use of big ram disks (for the time) to speed compilation and builds. Not only was it quicker but it was silent and I thought might be easier on the hardware- not thrashing through a hard drive. Most of this was embedded work on microcontroller- the compiler, assembler and linker could all fit in a reasonable ram disk. Is this a technique that was used on big system development?

[@Loki2154]

Great stories Dave - so much nostalgia! I was a SDET for OS/2 through NT3.51 timeframe.

[@soundspark]

At the 16 minute mark are you talking about nested virtualization? You can enable it in Hyper-V VMs with a PowerShell command.

[@tfrascaroli]

I also love C#, I feel like they've done a great job keeping it up-to-date. And when you pair it with .NET Standard/Core well, now you're talking. Nowadays I'm programing in Java + Spring, and I'm misserable. And no, it's not because of Spring, that one is awesome.

[@n8style]

C# is what Java should've been, it's hilarious that the (very few) crappy bits still in C# are directly due to being able to support JVM byte code back in the day

[@puppergump4117]

@@n8style If Java sucks then why do people still keep using it?

[@n8style]

@@puppergump4117 If evolution is true then why are there still monkeys? If electric vehicles are better then why are there still fossil fuel vehicles?

[@puppergump4117]

@@n8style Because we haven't tried killing the monkeys yet. Also, electric vehicles are expensive, unreliable, and are years from being practical. Switching away from Java does lose you some support and compatibility, but if you can develop at a faster rate then you can just make it compatible without java.

[@arcfide]

You mentioned a preference for incremental development. You've been around long enough to have seen a wide variety of incremental development methods, such as Cleanroom Software Engineering, RAD, and Agile methods. What do you think about the various approaches to creating incremental development and do you have a preference for one or the other or any thoughts on which tends to produce the highest quality software at the right time?

[@bitmanagent67]

I am a former MSFTie. I did kernel mode and user mode debugging in the late 90s. I taught Windows 2000 to developers. I also have Wni32 and MFC programming experience. I yearn for building Windows clients apps using Win32 SDK. I would welcome watching you building these types of apps.

[@henryyoung7184]

Please talk more about Asperger & "spectrum" issues. I'm a life long software developer, although I got diverted into 15 years of CEO of a software business and have managed many developers way more "on the spectrum" than myself. It took me until maybe 50 years old to fully understand and give a context to my own condition, thereby resolving a life time of cringe worthy social ineptitude on my own part. These days I feel a weird kind of pride in my worst memories :) Also it is utterly fascinating following your channel because I followed a parallel path on the other side of the fence developing against all the systems you worked on. I started out professionally on RSX-11 / VMS and have at times been a huge Dave Cutler fan. Oh boy that anticipation for NT ... that frustration at my high priest status as an MFC developer swept aside by GDI ...

[@DavesGarage]

Between you and me, I'm working on a book on the subject so when I get closer, I will start doing episodes that tie in more!

[@domminney]

Subtle Tom Scott mention ;) Love it! Great video.

[@henryh.448]

What happened to the previous live-stream? "The secret life of windows developers". It was over 2 hours long. Why was it taken down?

[@zeddie4153]

M$ happened.

[@henryh.448]

@@zeddie4153 What you mean microsoft sent a DMCA or cease and desist notice...for that one video? If they did that, they'd do it for his entire channel, not just one video.

[@zeddie4153]

@@henryh.448 tbh i was kinda drunk when i wrote that.. had a day of lol.. cant stand for my previous rage at all. I am sorry internet.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@zeddie4153 It's cool. :-) - The Internet.

[@rfvtgbzhn]

17:42 still there was a lot of complaint of Windows 95 using too much memory when it was released. Probably because Microsoft advertised it with a requirement of 4 MB while it needed at least 8 MB to be useful.

[@robertw1871]

Would love to hear more on assembly and lower level coding, I learned on the HC11 in ASM and love C, C# but abhor ridiculously high level languages and APIs or any architecture that abstracts away the actual connection to hardware entirely… I’m old and work mostly in the hardware domain so that probably explains it….

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

How do you feel about moving Northbridge into CPU package? Could this be the shape of things-to-come, where CPU upgrading also upgrade motherboard chipset?

[@stargazer7644]

1:00:00 The TRS-80 Model 100 was hardly a "portable calculator". It was a laptop before we had laptops.

[@lollo4711]

Very cool! Answers were a lot, tnx. Don´t like to bother you… but like to ask: - Did you also have to invent some architecture like HAL, layers, tiers, abstractions… on your own - or could you use known/ existing patterns? - Why have File-Systems never succeeded in using a database like index?

[@coopz6752]

Acually love and agree fully with your "bite,chew,spit - smaller" analogy! For on the fly, it's pretty much right on point!

[@MewK_]

I'm looking forward to the interview you've mentioned. Especially 3.11 and IE3 are so nostalgic.

[@timruffer7730]

Dave, I love your conversations! Do you have notes to go by as you go through this? I hardly remember all the old DOS stuff but you help me reminisce days long ago. Makes me feel old!

[@OpenGL4ever]

@Dave's Garage Could you tell us why Windows Updates usually takes so long compared to updates on other systems?

[@nickwallette6201]

I would like to know this too. It seems like a very inefficient process, and I'm curious what it could possibly be doing for so long behind that progress bar.

[@Flimzes]

Without being intimately involved with it, most Windows updates prepares system restore points for rollback, all target files are backed up, then all the operations are simulated, before finally being commited - and stored in a special registry if files needs to be updated on next boot. All of this safety takes time

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@Flimzes Thank you for your answer. But when all this gets simulated, why are Update errors still possible? The sytem should be consistent from the first to the n update, but sometimes in brakres in the middle and at step n if fails completly. My last update on Win7 was so serious, that i couldn't update anymore. The last rollback didn't help. In the end, i formated the drive and installed Win 10.

[@Yukinebi]

I am glad we are on the same page Dave.. C# for the win!

[@brentsummers7377]

Fabulous video & the precise time stamps are excellent.

[@nunosantos2589]

Hello Dave, i would love to see more assembly coding in your videos. I think it's a language that can help one to understand the underlying processes on how a computer works. Theres vvery little content of it in youtube, and, over time, i think it will be forgotten.I have never programmed much on assembly, but i'm learning about it, and enjoying it alot, if you know any good resources to read or get, that would be appreciated. Thanks for you time

[@mauk2861]

Brings back my career in 1980s and 90s in the UK..... I got into IT through video games and Prime Mainframes, Amiga and others... I used the PDP11, C64 and C-Pets...worked for Microsoft (Thames Valley Park) in the 90s, did some Unix and Linux.... my genius mentor used to write machine code and assembly additions to early windows! I even worked at Ungermann-Bass who had a lot of Interaction with Microsoft for ancient networking.

[@randyriegel8553]

You was talking about VMS. I company I worked for had VMS servers (Digital Alphas). Unless there was a hardware problem (tape drive or something) they NEVER went down. We had 3 servers... Calvin, Hobbs, and Spare. Spare just sat there and waited for one of others to go down. If Calvin went down within 10 seconds or so Spare would take over Calvin with it's configuration and everything. If Hobbs went down it would be the same with Hobbs config the Spare would act as it. So a extra server ready to imitate one of the servers if they went down. This was around 2005ish and I was at the company for 6 years. Only time one of those got taken down was because of the replacing a tape drive backup. VMS doesn't crash. Uptime on them were years without rebooting.

[@cmarshall52]

Loved the SUR! We had discovered that even though things ran slower on NT than they did on Win95, we could program all day without having to reboot every so often when we crashed the OS. Then SUR came along and we had the new interface as well! Just add RAM and be a little more patient.

[@retabera]

Hey Dave, have you fiddled with ReactOS?

[@zzco]

Probably not, as it's too close to what he would have worked on, besides it's waaaaay too buggy.

[@LaskyLabs]

@@zzco also if he did he couldn't contribute without getting both him and the project killed. But I'ld love to hear his thoughts on it.

[@zzco]

@@LaskyLabs Because NDA's and all of that. He already (kind of) touched on why he can't- the last thing MS wants is for their former engineers to go and work on competing things, even if they're open-source, yaknow? And yeah, I imagine though he wouldn't have given it a second thought seeing as he knows enough to not draw the ire of his former employer of so many years- lmao.

[@zzco]

@@kreuner11 Doesn't matter. That NDA survives until for the rest of his life. I would have a hard time getting him to work on my project, even if he wanted to. He still needs the NT team's blessing, because of what he knows first-hand.

[@timcash6372]

Dave I’ve watched a lot of your videos you are awesome you are easy to relate to and learn from I hope you and your family are enjoying the fruits of all your labor you definitely have a fan for life here you made me want to learn code I’m going to start with json I’m a home automation freak will you do some vids on home assistant

@6:40 Didn't recent Windows XP leak shown that large portion of Window's TCP/IP stack is basically copied form some unix-like OS? I am quite sure I saw some files with Vim modelines in there... but perhaps kernel developers at Microsoft also use VIM :)

[@adamsfusion]

1:01:18 Memories. I used to work on software that would power entire... we'll say flying toasters. It was the exact same way. You have this giant geographic source control (we were fancy even for the 00's) and you would "reserve" that portion. As long as you didn't need to touch another subsystem, you were fine, you could relink everything on the fly in minutes. However, if you talk to another team and decided an interface needed to change, buckle up, because it you were going to build at least the other subsystem and maybe more if anything else touched it. There was a source replica and a binary replica, the binary giving you all the nice unlinked objects. Saved days of compiling.

[@switchblade6226]

Id be pretty interested in ASM episodes

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks! Please let me know if anyone else is as well! Does it matter if it's X86 (PC) or 6502 (C64, Pet, Atari, etc)?

[@jasonevans498]

An episode on assembler would be something I'd really enjoy. I remember using masm32 to write a DLL that I imported into a VB6 app. When calling the DLL, a message box appeared with the string that was passed from the VB code. It felt amazing lol.

[@Blackrose-or7fy]

@@DavesGarage x86 would be good

[@lanatrzczka]

I would love a 6502 hello world

[@switchblade6226]

@@DavesGarage Id love to see x86 or Arm if possible, as i already know 65xx, but id be happy with any assembly. IMO there's not enough assembly on youtube))

[@richardcini6562]

I also hung-out in Radio Shack when the Model I was introduced and got to know the manager. After that, I basically setup and played with every machine they ever got in the store, and helped them setup the SOS (store-use) machines. I even had a side-business installing hard drives and things for people who bought the Tandy 1000. My all-time favorite machines: The Model 100 portable and the Tandy 2000, both of which I still have in the shop.

[@andrewjohnston6841]

Interesting about notepad. I use it to download SAP screens that I can then import to excel with the simple tasks of control a to select all then control c to copy and then paste to excel. Very good editor. Reminds me a lot of the ISPF editor of xOS IBM mainframe. Love your videos

[@johnkeates9434]

Low-level coding would be nice!

[@Thumper68]

I used to own a father son water well business in eastern Washington and we drilled a well and did the the entire pump system for the number 2 or 3 at Microsoft was what my father told me. I know he had a nice log home custom built by a contractor friend of ours and it was like a million dollars and he had more money in atv, dirt bikes and other toys in his garage then I had in my entire life lol. I will say for someone so “smart” he made what we considered one of the biggest errors people would make. Buy land then build a very expensive home before you drilled a well and knew you had water or any water at all. We were very good at finding water but it’s never guaranteed and you never know how much you will get when your drilling in the mountains. He had a camera to watch me do pump work way away from the home remotely don’t think he thought I’d see the camera in trees but I’m not normal person thankfully so I didn’t take a piss with him staring at my junk lol. Also had a separate double wide trailer at bottom of his driveway a family lived in to keep any eye on he place kinda like guard shack.

[@slavko5666]

Thoughts on people using open source OS's like GNU+Linux and *BSD because of security concerns and freedom ?

[@CompletelyLawless]

Have you ever terminated multi mode fiber yourself? I’m going to run some in my house and looks reasonably doable with a kit and cleaver. Would love to see that if you or a friend has experience. But please do the 10Gbe tuning/troubleshooting video. YES!

[@MikkoRantalainen]

1:36:00 The most interesting part about Rust is that it allows writing multithreaded code without data races. That's the part that no other language nicely provides. However, the requirements Rust as a language requires the programmer to do, some algorithms are harder to write in Rust. I'm in no way yet fluent in Rust but my take is that writing algorithms in Rust should be considered some kind of balance between C and Haskell with more weight on the C side. Understanding at least basics of pure functional programming will help wrap your mind around the concepts that you need to use in Rust.

[@angrybirds2472]

i used to work for an ISP when the in house switched from 98 to NT4 at its inception, and windows 95 you had to intall tcp/ip it, it came on the cab files, but was not installed by default. also Dial up Networking 1.2 and 1.3 respectively for those early windows machines.... we also handed all the teachers in massachusetts free internet and had to source string settings for outdated equipment in order to get these teachers online for the first time, but only after teaching most of them how to double click with a mouse./... i learned so much back then, and thats why today im back in the big wide world school of technology in order to actually get back into the field, and certified in networking .

[@notenoughmonkeys]

Really enjoyed watching this. Glad to hear Ada getting some love, I still have to use it from time to time ('83 on VMS, and '95 on Solaris), and whilst it's strict types might seem like a pain at first, having most silly errors moved into compilation or explicitly trapped via exceptions is a thing of beauty, plus the language has native support for fixed point maths, not something you see that often. Also for everyone else dunking on CON, whilst the whole CON thing might seem odd/archaic, the reserved filenames still have uses to this day, for example, COM1 .. COM9 are also reserved (well COMX if you use the \\.\ prefix), and this lets a humble batch file write to (but not configure) the serial port, i.e. echo HELLO TOM SCOTT > COM1

[@PiddeBas]

1:16:48 You can pick the "No GUI Boot" in msconfig

[@sundhaug92]

26:40 Unofficially it was set at 1970 because it'd hold the entire life of one of the devs. Seconds since 1970 isn't the original Unix timestamp though, they changed it to that trading accuracy for space

[@LanceMcCarthy]

[10GB Question] Talk about SPF+ and which transceivers / fiber are worth the value (single mode/multimode? etc). I'm currently rocking UDM PRo and it has SPF+ but DAC to the switch seems very finicky

[@nickwallette6201]

Use SMF for any run over 100M in length. It doesn't matter whether you can get a 10G optic that will do longer runs, because some day you will want to do 40G or 100G, and those will have similar limitations. (Trust me -- been there done that.) For short runs, MMF is fine, and the optics are way cheaper. Get OM4-rated fiber -- the stuff that's aqua rather than orange. It's a higher quality medium, and so fewer errors, higher speeds, longer runs, etc. If you're asking about which brand of optics or fiber, bear in mind there aren't that many manufacturers out there making optics. There are tons of rebadges. If you buy an enterprise-grade switch, you should buy their optics. Some vendors require this and enforce it with code. Some vendors are much more lenient, but will usually refuse to support an issue that can conceivably be blamed on a 3rd-party optic. If you're using cheap switches (consumer-plus, or pro-sumer, or SMB markets), use whatever. My preferred thing to do is go on eBay and buy Juniper or Cisco optics. You'll have people with surpluses or lightly used stuff giving it away for practically the cost of shipping. I'd rather have that than OpticsForCheap.com's $10 special.

[@LanceMcCarthy]

@@nickwallette6201 wish I could give you reddit gold for this reply😁 thanks!