1000 idiots does not equal 1 genius, nor is throwing money at problems a solution, but microsoft refuses to believe

vinnyr

that means 1000 people to miscommunicate!

vinnyr

Easy people, I'm sure they have 'group leaders' or some other type of organization that allows for good communication between the groups. There is probably a great deal of coordination with a thousand people on hand. So don't get your pants in a bunch!

drywaller79

UGH! This isn't good news for Windows 7. It's looking like another mess. I hope they have a lot more internal communication between developers this time around and have plenty of testers with clout that are looking specially at usability and aesthetics.

Leonard Nimrod

I just hope it has a cool name...........no I don't. I just want to upgrade and notice it. That would be nice. Like if I had the same PC I have now and then upgraded and my parts actually ran faster with the new OS. That would be swell. Vista didn't run slow, but it wasn't notable enough for me not to switch back to my comfy XP Pro. My CPU is a Quadcore with 2gb ram. Lets try to keep things around there windows, and not push me to upgrade my PC for visual enhancements or something. I have games and art programs to do that for me.

MJDeviant

Developers, developers, developers!

AJ_Syrinx

yeah, seems like making things better integrated (and making things work) would be best done by first integrating the team creating it...

jakebathman

Too many cooks in the kitchen.

Dancing Milkcarton

@Digitallysick: They already announced MinWin is not the foundation for this version. Vista's kernel is being reused. And I'm still going to be using Ubuntu with some virtualisation for XP. LIGHTWEIGHT, Microsoft, LIGHTWEIGHT! For fuck's sake! I love when people say you always need new hardware to run new software-- they're right, but I don't want their definition of "software" to include the thing I use to make software work.

wild homes loves you but chooses darkness!

Lets hope its not based on vista, and has a new kernel and just emulates the legacy exe files. Then we need to un tie IE from the rest of windows, ahhh great feels better already

Digitallysick

@drywaller79: i agree.

Microsoft is a resilient (read: endless pockets) company. As I type this on my macbook pro, I imagine my next computer will be the first decent PC running Windows 7. Apple has reached a diminishing return; their vertically integrated network can't compete in the long run with MS. My MBP is absolutely great. But I have faith that Microsoft will knock this out of the park.

im just rambling bullshit tho....probabbly because i just moved to Seattle...

ronnsprocket

Well, if we count the numbers of groups and people working on all the core features of and packages that come preinstalled on some other OSes, say Ubuntu, they would be at least as large as these numbers. No?

sw2

i want to see DirecTV and Media Center play nice. YOU HEAR ME YOU FUTT BUCKERS??? MAKE IT WORK ALREADY.

Paradise

Wait, I'm not done. A lot of people will worry that with a whole new OS and a whole new architecture where will the software and drivers come from. I think, like the iPhone and Mac, if you make a compelling platform that's a joy to write for that will happen practically over night. Look how long it took for good drivers for Vista, which can't be very different from XP and 2K drivers? A year. A freaking year. Why not just start again if your supporters are so bored with you that you can't get them to make stable drivers for an incremental product for a year. There, now I'm done.

Mark 2000

I am picturing 995 people on display acting busy while the other five are behind a closed door copying Mac- OSX.

almukadi

I really wish they would just start over. For goodness sake, if some idiot somewhere is still basing there business on some windows 3.1 software fuck them. Its the 21st century. If you've made it this far you can pay for an upgrade. Windows needs to be lean and it needs to do away with dlls and the registry. Otherwise MS is just releasing another bloated dinosaur.

Mark 2000

Isn't this the development strategy that caused Vista to be such a flop?

Claystil

Get rid of the Registry and don't put wallpaper files in the Windows folder were kids might decide to explore and delete things.

pschroeter

I'd have to guess that this will fail but I believe Microsoft might pull their game together for what will be Windows 8.

imTheKing

If they work hard and long enough at it, something good's gotta come out of it. *Hopes for best*

cowpop

Couldn't they just get 25 people who actually knew what they were doing? Seriously 1000 people! Linux was created by one guy over the summer. What do 1000 people do?

jakster4u

"1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters"

So...Windows 7 is actually a Shakespeare generator?

Griffehpoo

@Mark 2000: I just want to point out that Vista actually has an entirely different driver architecture to XP

the_sidewinder

@wild homes loves you but chooses darkness!:
Yes, because the history of their OS's hasn't ALWAYS included needing new hardware for the new version of their OS's.

Vista actually runs extremely well, assuming you have a half decent machine. It's about on par, if not faster, then my XP partition, which I deleted after not using it anymore.

While I recommend a dual-core processor, along with 2gb's of ram and a somewhat decent video card (IE: not Intel integrated), I've seen it run smoothly with 1GB of ram, and some mid-range single core CPU's. The thing to remember is to stop staring at the resources being used because Vista preloads commonly used programs into memory for faster loading, and then unloads that stuff if the ram space is needed by something else. Also, turn off indexing, unless you seriously need to use windows search on a constant basis.

Darkest Daze

@jakster4u:

Linus did original write the Linux kernel by himself, but Windows is much more than just a kernel. If you throw in X-Windows and Gnome/KDE then the number of developers grows quite a bit. Now days it's very unreasonable to assume a single person could code something like Windows. Sure it worked for the Amiga but things are completely different now days.

@superbad:

Vista was a major rewrite of code by Microsoft. That is part of what took so long for it to come out. The current Kernel for Windows is actually very good and many business are moving to Server 2008 which is running the same Kernel revision as Vista SP1. The main thing keeping Vista off of business machines is that it doesn't bring anything new to the table that a business needs over XP.

SScorpio

Windows is just a fucking mess of shitty code piled on top of old code. Too complex. They really need to give up and start over, but they can't, because they have too many outside "partners" who will cry. It's kind of an intractable problem, made even worse by the fact that they seem to think what they really need to take it to the next level is to add shiny bits to the UI, and more useless features.

superbad

picture never fails to amuse!

trailingedge

Because none of us are as dumb as all of us.

Con Seannery

Sure, 1000 people working on something simultaneously seems like a lot, and would definitely be difficult to manage... but this post (and its comments) doesn't offer any real evidence that other OSes would require any less number of people.

Apple might have 2000 people working on OS development for all we know, but whether they do or not, what matters in the end isn't how many are working on it, it's how well it works.

As somebody else said, let's cross our fingers and hope for the best. I've got faith in the soft, despite my current Mac usage :P

Keebler

My perception is that Vista didn't go nearly far enough in terms of throwing out the old crap, but I don't use it, so I can't really say. Like most business users, I have no reason to leave XP.

superbad

Now only if they put a couple of those people on updating Paint!

poorGeek

Guys.....GUYS! its OKAY! they use Microsoft office groove to coordinate. its all good, Microsoft organization has their back! wait a minute....

MrBlahBlah

Meybe we dont actualy know reference numbers, shure 1000 people seems like alot, but maybe 1000 is actually conservative for a ground-up OS.
The only reference i can think of is movies, ive worked in some big productions as outsource and i know for shure at least 30 - 40 studios working at the same time with 15 to 30 persons each from all arround the world. So big teams are not bad, just dificult to implement, but, will see.

lolec

Microsoft must figure that since it works for Linux, it must work for them. I always assumed that the Leviathan in the book of revelations was a big dragon, now I see the were referring to Windows 7, the monster has seven heads, scary.

jkr's bold comment

I think Microsoft should take the light weight approach for sure.

Give people the option like Linux does to remove some of the bloatware. You don't have to make it technically hard to do. Just a have a few select modes

Fully loaded, Average, Minimal, Customized.

List it out in a nice pretty installer screen that shows them what they are getting, with a possible description.

I personally would like to remove 1/4 of Vista's bloat and keep it minimal to increase performance overall similar to my XP machine.

Vista has been pretty solid for me after SP1 but I'm still wondering how well this new setup will work in Windows 7 with Vista @ the heart of it all.

addiktion

@poorGeek: Paint.NET > you

japroach

I thought the count was 2001, including the live Donkey they use for usability testing.

Ken_Darrow

I won't knock there Next O.S until i Try it my self.
Just maybe, Maybe...
it will be better then XP and Vista Combined?

DJJS

1000 thousand or 10,000 whats the difference if its like

public class Windows7Core extends WindowsVistaCore {
msgbox ("Windows 7 crashed","Send","Dont send");
//msgbox ("Windows Vista crashed","Send","Dont send");
//msgbox ("Windows XP crashed","Send","Dont send");
}

and from previous history with M$ we already know its like

public class WindowsVistaCore extends WindowsXPCore {

}

you can continue until reaching DOS, if those 1000 guys does not start something from scratch, i really have high doubts it would be any better, maybe they will steal some fancy things from Leopard, but whats the benefit if u dont have Core Animation!!! or maybe they will try to organize the system more, but what about dll hell, and registry.

hey 1000 guys, plz can any of you just go to his boss and say lets start this thing from the bottom up, lets just write the core from beginning

medopal

Attn: Steve Ballmer

Subj: The Mythical Man-Month

Read it.

PeterSimpson

Just make it work right.

I don't care how many angels you have dancing on pinheads, pinhead, JUST GET IT RIGHT!!!

strider_mt2k

@Digitallysick: Sorry to disappoint. They already announced that Windows 7 will be based on Vista.

Wrendell

please microsoft, make windows 7 use less resources then crysis on high settings! All these programmers have to do is modify the shell32.dll so it says windows 7 instead of vista all over it and then they will release it.

vinnyr

I think there are too many people singing the praises of Apple OS. Yes it's a nice OS, actually the best Linux release ever!! But it's not like they started from scratch. They built up an already stable core. Linux to me has always lacked one thing, it's never been user friendly.

Now Microsoft on the other hand is trying new things and seeing what comes out. I don't know if you have ever noticed but there are usually 2 out of 10 coders that are good. The rest are sloppy, and don't know what they are doing. by my calculations there are 800 bad coders in this group. Luckily they are also lazy so the 200 coders do most of the work.

The number of coders or programmers is really not the key here. The key is the vision, and the architecture. If the Architect designs good modules then it doesn't matter if bad coders built it, as long as it meets the design criteria. I blame the architect if the program fails.

rurena

Typical M$. Quantity over quality.

bms

@SScorpio: Seriously! Offers nothing new for business applications? OK...exept .net framework 3.0 that defines multiple application porgramming Interfaces.

Oh, and trainable Speech recognition.

and Bitlocker Drive Encryption
and Network Location Awareness Service
and IPv6
and enhanced firewall
not to mention the new Windows Driver Foundation is far superior to the older Windows Driver Model.

There are many more features that makes the Vista foundation a solid platform moving forward for the computing industry. Its biggest problem is people using it on old hardware. If you want to keep your old hardware, thats great, keep your old software too and stop whining. Still don't like Vista?....Have you tried this new operating system Windows has called Mojave?

weshirecat

@wild homes loves you but chooses darkness!: MinWin is not a new kernel. It is simply a stripped version of the NT kernel which Vista already uses. This does not preclude Windows 7 from using a Vista based, leaner, more lightweight kernel.

Bluesk1d

I did a short stint inside Microsoft.
I can guarantee you that some of those teams have blurry borders between them and they'll end up duplicating work, then management will Chinese menu the end product to disasterous results.

sansovino

Jason,

"for example having their Mail application be tied into Calendars for meeting schedules and Contacts"

It already exists... It's called Outlook. When you use it with MS Exchange server over a local network or remotely from the internet using a gateway, it does all that and much more.

It has worked like that for... I don't know... the last 15 ~ 20 years....

aec007

Microsoft needs to give me Windows 7 for free as an apology for the lack of Vista Ultimate extras that I was stupid enough to pay for..... just sayin'...

axiomatic

er Vista

What an ass

Duc

ooo ooo I get it, alot of people in 25 teams is supposed to make me think that "the suck" will have been removed from Visa.

Duc

@bms: Just leave, please.

drywaller79

Oh, and PS. How did they calculate Windows 7?
3 = 3.1
4 = 95
5 = 98
6 = ME
7 = NT
8 = 2000
9 = XP
10 = Vista
11 ?= 7
Ok, so maybe they want us to forget about ME. And maybe 98. And they could argue that NT was the Server codestream.

But that still leaves... 8. Or are they trying to forget Vista, too?

ideaman2020

Speaking as a developer [getting into Lean methodology], I can say that an average team size of 40 sounds like potential for loads of badness! Even if you're including doc and QA people, a team over 15 should really be broken down into smaller teamlets. [Of course, it's probably too much to presume MS might be using Lean methodology, as that would lead to products more on time and on budget...]

And they had better have SUPER GOOD communication between teams!!!

ideaman2020

Vista's kernel is no more. Since SP1 the Windows Server kernel was placed into vista which is very stable. Windows 7 is based off of the Windows Server kernel.

zfighter66

WOW no time to rest!!!!... where all of these engineers also working on Windows Mojave ? :-P

Sam43054

30 developers do not accomplish in one day what one developer would accomplish in 30 days.

What about quality assurance personnel and business analysts and project managers and leads and people like that?
If there are 1000 people writing code, theoretically they should have something like 500 people testing the end result..?

med

@med - MS does not test internally, that is what their beta is for and the point 0 releases.

BTW, they had 6 years to get Vista out and they pulled MOST of the new features before launch. What makes anyone think they can do even half of what they want to do for Windows 7.

Windows 7 will be nothing more than Vista SP 2.

Roger Huston

@rurena: First, Mac OS X is built on Unix, and Linux is built on Unix too, not OS X built on Linux!!
Talking about user friendly!! have u ever used OS X?? if u are a Vista user, and switched to OS X, believe me you will have new definition to what user friendly means.

Again, i insist, start from scratch, if you already know the DOS was very vulnerable in the core, then stop extending it, and build ur self a new core.

At least something that benefits from the "Multi-core" processors we have, instead of killing them.

medopal