The Minds Behind Windows: Raymond Chen
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- Windows Pinball, IBM, debugging, the confidential coffee maker, losing your car keys, and more: Dave interviews Raymond Chen, a 30-year developer on Windows at Microsoft. For my book on Asperger's/ASD, please check out: amzn.to/3GcdeUM
This is the "Directors Cut" :-). I removed the intro, re-rendered in 4K60, and re-uploaded.
For Raymond's book The Old New Thing: amzn.to/40Qhvad
3D Pinball animation by Jack Bertram: / @jackbertram
My other channel, join now so you're there for episode 01 of my AudioBook!
/ @davepl
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For the curious, this is a re-upload of the original, but I removed the intro section and re-rendered in 4K60, so decided to re-upload it!
Thanks for the better quality, great interview!
only thing missing is the timestamps
So good I'm watching it again
You rock man!
It seems to be 1080p60 max on UA-cam.
My all time favorite Raymond Chen story was back from Windows 2000, late in the product cycle. On NTDEV alias, a tester raised an issue that the calendar failed if you set it to December 31st, 2999 11:59pm and let it roll over. Raymond jumped in and tried to politely explain that if there was computer that was still functional and capable of running Windows 2000, and they chose to actually run Windows 2000, they could open a service request.
The tester would not let it go after a few more replies, so Raymond wrote a custom implementation of calendar.exe, sent it to the tester and effectively told him to go away.
Man, someone better try this in 2999
Ah shit, I was planning on using my Windows 2000 box in 3000.
Well, you never know. Assuming there is constant continuous progress, computers will be so much more advanced in a millennium from now in 2999 than they are in 2024, let alone 2004 or 1999, that Chen is right in not needing to patch the calender flaw. But at the same time, our great grand descendants would find our ancient PC's & software & probably want to effectively like to try out Windows 2000 & find out that the calendar app doesnt work in their time. But if it did work, then they will praise us for a brief moment just for this tiny detail. Of course this assumes we are still using the Gregorian time system by then in AD 2999. And also assumes other things, like we haven't blown ourselves up yet, or the 2nd Coming, or extraterrestrial threat, or our own AI has annihilated mankind, heh.
I was working at a Lucent Technologies manufacturing plant when the Y2K issue was coming around. All of our engineering staff and maintenance technicians were called in to work that night for when the clocks hit 12:00 on new years eve because we thought everything was just going to stop working and all the computers were going to crash. When the clock hit 12:00 it turned out that the Y2K scare turned out to be a big nothing burger, we hung around for about an hour then we all went home.
Ask Unix devs if they ever thought something like this would be a problem and what will happen at 03:14:07 UTC on the 19th January 2038
Wow Mr. Chen is a wonderful storyteller - seems like he was a fun person to work with back in the day - thank you for the interview Dave! Would love to see another one with him.
I really enjoyed this conversation with Raymond. Thanks Dave! What a great history lesson. It was a treat to walk through those old days of Windows, apps, and programing. I started with DOS and Windows 1.01.
I worked with a guy years ago who actually tried doing his federal income tax return in hex one year. Needless to say, the IRS was not amused and rejected it.
I guess he was lucky they didn't audit him.
Love these "inside baseball" stories and Raymond Chen is a very engaging storyteller.
I would love to see more of these.
You may also enjoy some of the "Channel9" videos with Chen, such as the One Dev Question and the Defrag tools episode 200 (with fellow old-timers Larry Osterman and KC Lemson (who made the ninja-cat))
I bet he joked with them using EBCDIC encoding next year and got arrested ;-)
I could listen to Raymond for hours. Seems truly passionate in what he's done, great book as well.
Mr. Chen is one of those people whose humor, passion, and intelligence make me crave being his friend.
BTW, there's a brief 2-second audio drop-out at 1:46 or so. That seems to happen every hour or two on my Atomos Ninja V reccorder. If anyone knows why, please let me know!
Maybe upgrading the firmware will help 😊
Have you tried turning off, and back on? 🙂
Did you check the KB? 😉
Ask Raymond in Redmond.
Customer service rule #1: When in doubt, reboot
I worked for IBM for 19 years (til 2016). I occasionally left anonymous fake security violations on peoples desks, citing security failures like leaving porn that wasn't IBM-sanctioned on the desk overnight. I wonder if they still do those violation chits? If they still do them, I hope other people have taken up the mission of ridiculing them.
It's criminal if this interview doesn't blow up in views.
👮
This is so good, I could watch you both all day. I find it sad that Raymond never met Bill G considering the important role he played.
That's probably the most interesting tid bit from this. I worked for Microsoft in Texas and I met Bill Gates multiple times in Las Vegas at Comdex.
It's very disappointing that Bill hasn't taken the time to introduce himself and I think BillG should watch this and fix it, he needs to walk in and introduce himself ASAP.
It was sensible of the boss to sit on the crib sheets. He's not there for a made up demo and he doesn't need one.
The boss came to see what I was doing on his rounds so I switched off and started telling him the security of getting back in. He ought to have known that so it took half a minute, but instead of doing the procedure I went straight to the results (I had a couple of graphs behind something for effect) and walked back a bit.
He got all that would be useful to him in 90 seconds. I got back to work.
It proves MS is a really professionally managed company. He should have chance to have dinner or coffee with him, that is bad.
You know a new entity asked developers to print (yes, to paper) interesting routines. Don't mention his name if you know it.
Just finished this podcast and watched Dave Cutlers podcast yesterday and love the passion you guys have all these years later
These interviews are awesome, keep them coming!
Haha "I thought the racing stripes would make it go faster." That's probably what devs were hoping for, too!
Best two hours on UA-cam. Fantastic interview. I love Microsoft history. Thank you Dave and Raymond. Keep them coming!
Terrific interview. Thank you. Yes, more computer history please. Doesn't have to be just Microsoft.
Someone from FOSS universe. Linus comes to mind. It can be both the kernel or UI.
For example,Linus spent a lot of time convincing developers/users to stop verbose messages on boot screen by default and only show when something bad happens. It was driving general users to needless confusion.
I’ve watched some of the parts of this but this is the first time watching the entire thing. What great stories and he’s a great story teller. I was at the W95 launch in the tent. Just an awesome experience. I just wish I had more direct interaction with the devs.
I've diligently read Raymond's blog daily for decades now. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview, it's like Raymond's blog in podcast format. Keep up the great work, both of you!
This was a fantastic treat, Dave! If your other guests are even half as interesting as Raymond, I'm very much looking forward to their interviews.
His other guests are quite informative as well. Raymond Chen is definitely a treat though as he's hell lot of fun..
Thank you. These interviews are really enjoyable. Please keep them coming. Looking forward to whatever you have planned next!
Thanks Dave for the interview, and thanks Raymond for TweakUI! I was disappointed that I couldn’t use it anymore when I upgraded to Windows 2000.
Raymond is an awesome storyteller with a great sense of humor. I really enjoyed listening to him. Thanks Dave!
I was a beta tester for Windows 95 and was part of a group that were invited to the launch party along with a party the night before being held for beta testers. It was an amazing experience that I'll never forget. At the party before launch day we got to meet a few MS execs, including (I believe) Brad Silverberg. I still have my sealed copy of the Windows 95 special edition and Windows 95 tote bag that they gave out to all that attended the launch. Later went on to test the Windows 95 Direct X version, Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows XP. All of those beta programs were before the current (mostly) open beta program.
Great video that brought back a lot of memories :)
Thank you both Dave and Raymond Chen for a great interview. Loved every bit of it!
So many great stories in this interview. Also in the Dave Cutler interview. Hope this turns into a series.
Love the Old New Thing blog. Great interview about fascinating topics! :)
Hopefully the re-upload haven't removed anything. It's a great interview.
Good to hear some educated and entertaining questions worthy of the guest and subject matter.
I've been reading Raymonds blog for years.
This was one of the more interesting interviews I've seen. Raymond seems like someone fun to work with.
I could have listened to that interview for a week and still be as fascinated with every new story as I was the start. Amazing
We used to play doom during the lunch break in the dev department.
The testing department got wind of this and starting joining in.
Over the years doom migrated through to descent and at that point we had all departments clambering for one of the 8 available multiplayer slots.
The best programming years of my life.
I loved Descent when I was a kid, I have it downloaded from steam and it runs off of dosbox.
I couldn't stop laughing when Raymond spoke about IBM and coffeemaker saga and the part where he said Microsoft employees wearing pants? and his response of "Good Job" had me in tears :)
thx for a great interview and some good anecdotes! loved the stories!
Great interview. More please. Chen is such a pleasure to listen to.
The spotlight on the pointer took me by surprise when I had to installed power toys. Really good feature
He is awesome, thanks for the interview
Thanks Dave and Raymond! Dave, I love your channel and I am really enjoying these interviews -- I hope we get to see more!
Wonderful interview. Shutout to the geniuses who built Windows 95. I still remember how amazed I was the first time I got to try this new operating system.
Crazy how I have the original video playing on one monitor, I browse with my other one, and now I have both versions up at the same time haha
That was a treat! Both Daves and Raymonds books are well worth reading.
Thanks for making this interview with the old developer.
Hope you can get more people in the future.
Great video!! It certainly opened my eyes about how computers work. Thanks to both of y'all for sharing!!
Loving these interviews. How about some more guests eg Arun Kishan, Larry Osterman, Mark Russinovich.
He is the first developer I've ever seen waiting a suit and tie 😅 I remember reading The Old New Thing way back in the day and if memory serves he had the suit and tie on at that time too....
Ahh yes the knowledgeable guy behind the huge amount of Windows blog post. Always interesting to read why thing function the way they do in WIndows :)
A few years ago I found pinball on an old harddrive, copied the files to my windows 10 and ran it. It worked flawlessly
Incredible interview. Some great stories here, especially the IBM/Coffee Machine story 😂😂
"nobody gets any pixels" has such good energy
This is the first interview I've seen from Dave! Are there more? I look after this. :)
I've probably used linux more then windows over my lifetime, but love these interviews with microsoft employees! Great to hear the backstories on things, and understanding more of the 'battle' they were in back in the 90s. Makes me more positive towards the windows platform, which has really cool features. Thanks!
Similar to the story on the time zone picker, there was an issue with Visio when Microsoft acquired it. Visio had a maps solution that contained shapes for countries of the world. They would snap together so that you could create a drawing of a region for whatever countries you wanted.
Unfortunately it included some shapes showing borders that were in dispute, and China would not allow importing the product. But most of the sales were volume sales that included Office, which now included Visio. As a result, the sales pipeline to China was effectively shutdown until Visio produced a satisfactory SKU. The simple answer was just to kill the maps solution.
Oh I had no idea, Tweak UI is a favorite Power Toy of mine, and has been for as long as I can remember!!! Awesome!!
Amazingly informative and inspiring! Thank you.
Didn't you post this just the other day? Edit: it didn't even fix the muted section at 1:46:00, it's just 40 seconds earlier
I can't find a muted section around that time. You might be referring to them talking to a guy of camera, who doesn't have a microphone. He is barely audible, and I don't see a good way to recreate that audio, but subtitles would be nice.
Yeah, 1:46:09 it’s muted, I guess there was something they didn’t want us to hear…
I know it isn't Microsoft, but you should interview Drew Major, the "Father of Networking". He's a good story-teller too. He could give the Novell perspective of the NOS wars.
He’s the true vision and way extraordinary of what we praised for Windows 95…
I've been reading his blog for years and he looks and behaves exactly like I was picturing him.
Raymond has always been a pretty funny guy there. I'm pleased to see it carries over in person as well
Another awesome interview, Thank You!
Why wouldn't they still have some kind of immediate indicator of compression or encryption _along with_ a color then, since that should still be better than having it buried in the properties box only?
Great interview ... 2 guys talking about tech history 👏👏👏👏, thank you
1:30:55 @DavesGarage yes, it is possible to have two separate physical Window Stations on the same PC, it is called Windows MultiPoint Server (formerly its own SKU, now a role in Windows Server)
a role in Windows Server 2016, but removed afterthat
That's the Windows NT line, not Windows 9x line!
Raymond Chenis such a boss 😎
Chapters would be cool. Also, why reupload?
Another good question:
1:30:58 If you have a PC and you've got two video cards and you've got two mice and two keyboards is there any way to split it into two workstations other than setting up VMs and passing through video cards to each VM which you could do. Any way to have two windows stations on a single PC?
There was 3rd party software that did this in the 1990s.
Haha, I love the idea of the "Microsoft-confidential" coffee maker hider (even though I don't drink coffee)!
Thank you so much for sharing.
The Itanic. 70lb devboxes that sounded like jets taking off, emitted temperatures nearing the surface of the Sun and had an instruction set designed by committee and a compiler that was slower than the UEFI controlling the system.
Great interview, good questions and very fun answers.
Dave you brought me back to college… Man I remember when windows 95 hit and it was all the rage….
This is really impressive. His knowledge is astonishing!
I love the story of dealing with loading the misaligned addresses. What a pain! Neat story!
Compression is indicated by adding two tiny plus-signs/squares to the icon
I like how Dave dressed up by putting on a sports coat over his Tshirt. Nothing but love for you Dave.
That was so cool to watch. I'm wondering who is next guest? :)
Sadly the current batch of Power Toys lacks some of the most convenient Win95 tools. 🥺 Looking at you "Open Command Window here" context menu.
Does explorer still share the current path to user programs?
Holy cow, he recorded a podcast!
This was reupload? I saw the original. It was great episode!
We are lucky to have such intelligent people (dead and alive) who have given us all the technology that we have in the World.
Could you also make an interview about a developer who take part at the development of Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1?
Ah, so i've got to the PowerToys part, i'm looking forward to the SysInternals section :).
Mr. Chen didn't make those....
I remember the mayhem around the release of Win 95. The news was showing old grannies in awe of this new product curious over this new thing the world was buzzing about…like they had any idea what it was. Seeing “Special Edition”, I would be surprised if some random what impulse purchase as if it meant something.
these interviews are reaching cult status at the speed of light
Do you know you have this video posted twice on your channel?
You spoil us with quality content, Dave.
Why is the sound at 1:46 got muted? Did he say something confidential in nature?
I still read his c++ blog. Crazy thing is that some of his oldest blogs dates back to 2002 (the year I was born)
1:02:20 thank you!!!!! 🙏🙏🙏you’re my hero!
Did this get re-uploaded?
Yes
LOL re: the few or several things that developers do as jokes or teases to each other that make it out to public, like "hive" and "cells" in the registry; that they're not all just for technical association reasons! 😂I wonder if "kernel," from way back whenever, came about in a similar way.
Entertaining and informative. More war stories with other developers 😊
Great interview!!!
I admire everyone who goes publicly on record saying that he was somehow responsible for Microsoft Windows. Such bravery.
You say that like you're smarter than Raymond. Trust me bro, you are not.
@@DavesGarage
I am not smarter. But this is showing the human face of Windows.
Both of you are showing that there are people behind that impersonal software that some people would prefer not to have to use.
Although I may be biased since one of the first programs that I used was on DOS 3.3.
And then it was easy for me to work out why it did not always give good answers.
While you guys were working on it, I was installing it.😂😅😂😅
love this guy!
18:20 "Names in my rolodex" Boi howdy!
Anyone know who the guy off-camera is?
01:31:00 Wait, isn't that implemented in the MultiPoint Server (and later MultiPoint Services included in standard Windows Server)?
They were talking about the Win9x series, not Windows NT line.
Raymond knows Verschlimmbesserung!!!!!
Is there a way to get old windows ISO so I can run old OS on a VM ( with no malware I wish ) ?
Holy-cow big rental car bill! How did Mr. B. forget about a rental car?!
These are awesome!