[Am-info] Fortune: Joy After Sun

[Mitch Stone]

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,490598- 
1,00.html

Is it really fair to blame Microsoft for so many of the Net's woes?
The problem with Windows isn't so much that it's insecure, but that it  
is stale. The company has flailed away, making changes mainly to  
protect its monopoly. So lately, instead of getting better with each  
new release, Windows is just getting different.

Also, Windows isn't well architected. There's a simple way to find out  
if an operating system has been well designed. When you get an error  
message, go to the help system and look up the exact words in that  
message to see if there was enough of a concept of an architecture that  
they have a consistent vocabulary to talk about what's broken.

All you have to do is try it on a Mac and on a PC to see the  
difference. Apple took the time to come up with a concise vocabulary,  
but in Windows the designers of the help system used different  
terminology from the programmers. That reflects a lack of design  
discipline, which means that as the system grows, so does the ambiguity  
of the software itself. The result is a system encrusted with multiple  
layers of things that weren't really designed in so much as bolted on.  
Plus there are inessential artifacts of DOS from 20 years ago that  
still peek through and make trouble.

Now Microsoft's working on a new version of Windows called Longhorn.  
But there are so many people working on it that it can't be  
conceptually simple. Bill Gates is a very smart person and is very  
dedicated, but you can't change the fact that it is human nature for  
people to carve up a problem and try to own things, for the complexity  
to accrete in corners, and for the vocabulary of the project not to  
make it all the way across.