Dave Plummer details 1990s Microsoft software development culture, emphasizing private offices and direct access to Windows source code

Yeah, but you still are a programmer, right? You make awesome Tempest dashboards and stuff that might fry circuits! 🔥I could use a deep dive dissection of memory to the most intense detail: stack, heap, and more⚡️. The same is going to happen when I approach libraries. Its going to be a how are they made quick-sand in a good way.

@davepl1968 You had me at $1 [frozen] pizza, heavy monitors, wandering down the hall to the office of the person who actually wrote the thing, and “hair.”

OS/2 1.x though, not Windows.

Long compiles, no ducks in Burbank — at least not nearby.

Circa 1989.

I wish I were a computer programmer in the 1990s, working in a 10x10 office, indirectly lit by a halogen pole lamp, helping write Windows XP, listening to Soundgarden and STP.

And when you got stuck on something, you could just look at the Windows source code to find out why.

And if you didn't understand it, you could wander down the hallway to the office of the person who actually wrote it and ask them.

And pizza should be a dollar, and there should be a little lake with ducks where I can go smoke during long compiles. And my hair should be awesome, and my monitors heavy.

@davepl1968 hi millennial here - why did y’all have multiple workstations for dev? for testing and leaving your dev machine running? real time debugging?

@davepl1968 Windows XP was Microsoft's finest operating system; since then, it's been a nonstop downhill slide.

@davepl1968 At times I do miss the double Sony 21” CRT setup I had in those days. Don’t miss the whole “if these fall on me I’ll die” part but still

@davepl1968 Nobody bothered you. They didn’t understand any of it. But they needed it and they needed you. So they fucked off for once.

@davepl1968 and I wish I was a computer programmer in 2026 working from the comfort of my own home, with nothing but a MacBook, writing C++ that's so performant it can handle 50,000,000,000 requests per month of DB queries :)

@davepl1968 Those were the days! Music was the best. I worked was doing novell netware, windows nt and cisco and wellfleet and cabletron and synoptics networking. Listening to all the great music.

@davepl1968 Mmm.. heavy monitors. Not only the code was monolithic back then. Going to a LAN party was a workout in and of itself.

@davepl1968 Back in the day we'd rip all the bullshit out of XP (we thought it was bloated spyware back then lol) to make a 90mb image that gave realtime priority to audio for music production. I can't promise you windows ameliorated isn't a honeypot but check it out. https://amelabs.net/

@davepl1968 Yep and when that code didn’t work this guy was there to troubleshoot it, file a bug and write a KB article for the issue. 🤘💪

@davepl1968 Back then, programming and UI was an exact science. You decided how you wanted to interact with your users and you implemented it. "Programmers" today just implement HTML suggestions that work different for every user, device and browser. (I miss it too.) #SaveStargate

@davepl1968 You had to read physical manuals by other engineers to find solutions to bizarre problems, open source mindedness wasnt really a thing in the business world yet

@davepl1968 Dave, we're told people like yourself never existed and it was the sweat/tears of super brilliant India, that created all the hardcore systems code at M$

For benefit of future generations of American engineers care to set the record straight?

@davepl1968 Those were the days. What is the appeal of being a programmer today?

@davepl1968 What a sell out. Id rather be Linus Torvalds! Windows is dead outside the corporate world!

@davepl1968 I think I listened to my audioslave album 500 times while studying in college. 👍

@davepl1968 Am I to conclude from this post that you worked home office in the 90s then? 🤣