Cool kinetic sculpture

That is cool stuff. And now for something completely different:

Hey -- I just posted a plea to Microsoft relating to WinFx and the Vista delay on my blog (linked from above).

Care to comment?

Cheers -- Robert

Robert, I am wondering if you have any specific information about why Vista was delayed.

Over at mini-microsoft, a lot of Microsoft employees have been saying for months that the development process for many (but not all) products is badly broken, and that this is particularly true for Windows. Some of the main points they make are:

1. Unrealistic goals set by top management

2. A lack of planning, and regularly changing directions.

3. Featuritis.

4. Incompetent managers who make poor technical decisions and spend most of their time in political battles.

5. So much time spent in meetings and following various required procedures that little time is left for coding.

6. A poor employee evaluation process.

7. All of the above plus stagnant salaries and a lack of opportunities for promotion has lead to poor morale and many good developers leaving.

Do you have any information as to whether the above is true or false, and whether it might have helped cause the Vista delay?

Eduardo: all of those are true, at least in part. And they are all false, at least in part. There are thousands of people working on Windows. Ever manage that many people building software? The fact that you're asking these questions suggests you haven't.

Robert, from what I hear IE 7 isn't tied to Vista, so might ship earlier. I'll try to get the IE team to comment on that. The WinFX stuff, I hear, is probably going to be released at the same time as Vista (so MSDN Universal members should have it in November).

Thanks, Robert -- bummer about WinFx (I was hoping sooner though for no good reason) -- IE7 info would be helpful too.

Robert, you are right, you find those things everywhere. However, in some software projects things are mostly going right, in some mostly going wrong, and in others somewhere in between. So I am asking you where Windows sits in comparison.


(Also, I left out one claim, namely Windows being hard to program to because it is a monolithic hairball.)