This cast of unpleasant, hypercompetitive, aggressive, unfeeling sociopaths working at BigCorp goes a long way to explaining why Windows NT (later XP) is the way it is.

The contrast with the idealistic soi disant "revolutionaries" at Apple (best told in Folklore) is huge. ( )

As a folkloristic book, it does a poor job of telling the aspects of the story that would actually be interesting. It digresses into irrelevant biographies all over the place, which convey little more than rap sheet facts. It doesn't have a conception of what is interesting about technology. The writer is clearly very thin on the subject, presenting analogies about the functions of software in strangely distant and awkward terms. He thinks he's throwing in a little secret sauce by posting occasional snippets of source code or shell commands that don't mean anything to anyone, cargo cult style.

Written by a programmer intent to expose some of the key technical points about Windows NT, this could actually have been an interesting book from a historical perspective. In its present form it succeeds at stating little more than that the development of NT was an immense chaos and saw many clashes between individuals. It conveys some of the atmosphere in which the process took place. And despite the constant blustering about how monumental NT supposedly is for its time, it offers precious little technical information to explain this.

This edition of the book also suffers from very poor production, with various misprints and errors around the place as if no one had proofread it. ( )

The struggle to birth NT.

This book has all the classic refrains of software development: It's difficult, complex, drudgery.

Cutler (the chief designer) didn't seem like someone I'd like to work for. ( )

Zachary, G. Pascal. Showstopper!. Macmillan, 1994. I liked this because so many people I know through work are profiled in it---LouP, RobS, DaveC, etc. Is it good for the technology side of things? No bloody way.