Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!uunet!microsoft!steveha
From: steveha@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Hastings)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.0 WHEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Message-ID: <57655@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 24 Sep 90 00:17:46 GMT
References: <992@digi.lonestar.org>
Reply-To: steveha@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Hastings)
Organization: Microsoft International Products Group
Lines: 33

In article <992@digi.lonestar.org> cfoughty@digi.lonestar.org (Cy Foughty) writes:
>I don't know what is taking so long. In the time that you have worked on 
>OS/2, our company has written an extremely complicated multiprocessing
>Real-Time OS and the telecom equipment that it runs on. I've written
>a lot of the OS myself. We are talking well over a million lines of code
>for the whole project. I don't understand why it is taking soooooo long.


Well, I am not associated with the OS/2 development efforts, but I can think
of three reasons OS/2 should take longer than your project:

* OS/2 has to run on many different system configurations, with all manner
of hard disk controllers, video controllers, printers, keyboards, etc.  It
is indeed a luxury to be able to design the target hardware as your company
has.

* OS/2 has to have not just a US version, but also French, German, and many
other language versions.  I suspect that your project does complicated
things, but OS/2 does complicated things *and* has a complicated user
interface.

* OS/2 has to have backward-compatible DOS boxes, which is a tremendous
pain because so many DOS apps are so ill-behaved.


Also, while I have never seen the source code to OS/2, I suspect that it
may be much bigger than your million lines of code in view of the above
three points.  Especially if you count printer drivers, device drivers,
networking code, and so on, all of which have to be provided and have to
work together.
-- 
Steve "I don't speak for Microsoft" Hastings    ===^=== :::::
uunet!microsoft!steveha  steveha@microsoft.uucp    ` \\==|