Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!gordonl
From: gordonl@microsoft.UUCP (Gordon LETWIN)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Death of OS/2? (was Re: Microsoft OS/2?)
Summary: arrogance redux
Keywords: OS/2, Presentation Manager, Microsoft
Message-ID: <70447@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 4 Feb 91 19:19:54 GMT
References: <2467@beguine.UUCP> <29814@usc>
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 42

In article <29814@usc>, ajayshah@alhena.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
> 
> In my understanding,
> the quality of people at Microsoft is not good enough to do a
> good OS -- starting from scratch in C -- within a few years.
> They're good at writing word processors, Bill Gates knows how to
> write a Basic Interpreter.  Writing an OS is a different kettle
> of fish!

And folks like to complain that Microsoft people are arrogant!
Say, Ajay, if you're so smart.... how come you're not working
at Microsoft?  

Also, Ajay, who is the single biggest provider of Unix software?
A silly little toy-software company called "Microsoft".  

I've encountered hostility from "the real world" since day one, when
I started the Microsoft OS group.  Our first product, even though we're
such pathetic excuses for programmers, was an operating system.  It was
called "UNIX".    I don't pay much attention to UNIX these days, but I
seem to recall a few years ago that "the best minds" at AT&T bought some
UNIX technology from an outside vendor - a company by the name of "Microsoft".

Because we have some products which self described "computer hot shots"
like to sneer at, hostile types like to pretend that we're just a bunch
of duffers who "got lucky".  Most of our products - even those beneath
the dignity of a guru - require a lot of skill and effort.  The quality
of our talent is at least as good - and often better - than any other
place you might be able to name.  Come interview us and find out.

And by the way, if UNIX is the result of the smartest OS minds in the
field, how come it bites the big one?  It has no standard GUI, and
it's disk performance is at least 5 times worse then even pathetic old
DOS...  And HPFS runs rings around the BSD improved file system.

	Gordon Letwin
	Microsoft

p.s.: re bill gates: - a few years ago, as a publicity stunt, Bill Gates
challenged a buncha other big name industry types - all programmers - to
a public programming contest.  He won.  Perhaps you should meet the man,
Ajay, before you sneer so publicly.