Talk:Dave Cutler (software engineer)

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See Talk:RSX-11 for my memories of Cutler. Note the puns. Cutler definitely intended WNT as a riff on VMS. Ortolan88

In Bruce Ellis's book "A Hitchhikers Guide to VMS", the evil-boss character is named David Cutlery.

I sold him my debugging and disassembling program for the LINC computer at his pre-DEC company for a cut of the profits (he offered me $200, which I stupidly refused). I believe not one copy was ever sold. My first demonstration of my ineptness at business. David 21:44 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)

There's a biography of Cutler at http://213.169.196.120/HTML/publications/Bulletin/DHBUL%2067%20Nov-1995.pdf but it's in Dutch and I couldn't get anything but the birth date out of it. Ortolan88

I didn't have much luck looking for his bio on the Web, other than brief overviews starting in the 1990's. David 20:24 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

As far as I know, he left DEC and has been at Microsoft ever since. Was the NT on Alpha a joint project with MS that Compaq cancelled as part of the decades-long bemusement about what to do with Alpha? Ortolan88

Yes, pretty much. Jeh 04:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

However great Cutler's wit, the Windows NT name was derived from 'NT OS/2', the previous name for the project. http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evaluation/news/fromms/kanoarchitect.asp

1) I think the "worked on RSX-11" is a little misleading, as I believe he only worked on the "M" version 2) Having spent years working on 11M, I remember his O/S code comments to be both funny and profane.

Contents

[edit] Wrong content?

I removed the background info on porting to Alpha because it was either wrong or very confusing. Sine Emerald and Prism are not VMS nor x86 projects, they cannot be about porting VMS to IA32 (x86).

[edit] Biography

If you're looking for a bio, there's a mini-auto-bio quoted from his book here. --Rebroad 21:31, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes

Someone should move the quotes to WikiQuotes. I'm not too familiar with said WikiMedia project, so I'd appreciate it if someone else did it.

The "fork queue" reference is pretty obscure. I assume it's completely meaningless for non technical people, and I admit that the meaning is not obvious to me either, even as a computer scientist. Can anyone explain this or clarify the reference? Timbatron 03:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Fork queue is pronounced "fuck you". The fork list is a list of processes waiting to have access to the CPU, which is more or less the most important thing an OS does. Ortolan88 17:45, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I worked for DEC for many years and never heard anyone pronounce it that way. btw, it has nothing to do with processes. Even though the things that were run that way were called "fork processes", they were really just procedure calls and no process context switches (or, in modern versions, thread context switches) are involved. NT calls the same concept a "deferred procedure call", which is much more evocative. Jeh 09:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
4Q2 is how I first learned this gag, in reference to some obscure command-control or telephony system. Orcmid 21:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows Live

The article mentions he moved to Windows Live in 2006, this is contradicted by http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/techfellow/Cutler/default.mspx which states he is "Currently responsible for the design of the 64-bit release of the Windows Operating System". I suggest we remove the live comment. RobChafer (talk) 09:59, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I have personal information that supports the "moved to Windows Live" claim. Nothing I can provide as a reference atm, though. Jeh (talk) 10:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough ... I just doubt it :) RobChafer (talk) 10:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Showstopper!(reference)

For those of you needing extra sources, a great book with lots of information is Showstopper! by G. Pascal Zachary. If I have time, I will begin using it to add info to the article. Emprovision (talk) 19:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)