From: Sean Furlong
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 1999 4:14 AM
To: editor@ercb.com
Subject: Reviewer is unduly imperious
I read one of your books in the late 80's (Pascal programming) and learned a lot from it. I am eternally grateful to all authors whose books I have benefitted from.
Anyway, I just read your ECRB review of Marlin Eller's biographical "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" and I can't resist dropping you a note to say: I enjoyed it. The book. I did not enjoy the review.
A die-hard down-in-the-code programmer presents himself in print, vivid and unscrubbed, and tells a series of funny anecdotes. That's a rarity, is it not? And I for one found it well written. Not a model software engineer, but funny.
You give a misleading quote from the book to support your false allegation that Eller does not understand Microsoft's history. On page 19 Eller says: "Microsoft had... a bone-crushing hold on the ultimate core asset -- total control of the operating system business. ... Gates would be able to leverage that asset". Then in the last chapter, where you quote him, he repeats it this way: "Microsoft has always had one asset which no other company could touch -- Windows, which Microsoft could leverage with unrivalled effectiveness." You say that the real asset was DOS: thus Eller is clueless. But Eller says it was DOS too, earlier in the book. But by this point, the last chapter, which covers the mid-90's, the operating system can simply be called Windows. You also insinuate here that Eller would not agree that Windows 1 and 2 were severely mentally retarded, whereas Eller recounts the major defects.
With regard to your quibble with "piss ant", it's totally clear in context that it means insignificant small fry. I expect the term is used by Microsoft employees, and I don't see any reason to find it execrable.
I remember you once advising DJJ readers to move to Arizona (or wherever) and get a real life -- "live". This book is about Eller's quest for that, which was totally tied up with Microsoft, but it was Eller's life not Microsoft's. You missed that.
Sean Furlong (sean@struct.net)
Thanks for your comments. However, I knew many of the people involved with DOS and Windows development in the 1980's and I cheerfully stand on my statements in the review. Martin Eller was a typical Microsoft mid-level hacker-programmer of that era, totally focused on his own projects and clueless about the larger issues such as software engineering, market forces, social impact, and the proper use of English. Not that things have improved much in Redmond since then!
As for the book on Pascal programming and the advice about moving to Arizona, I believe you are thinking of Jeff Duntemann.
-- RD