The Insider Secrets to Task Manager, Pinball, and More

Retired operating systems engineer Dave Plummer participates in a Microsoft "Ask Me Anything" session about his time in MS-DOS and Windows, such as Task Manager, Pinball, Zip files, the Start Menu, and more.

Remember, any requests to contact me on Telegram are a scam...

0:00: 💻 Retired Microsoft engineer discusses project selection and early career impact.
4:01: 💻 Importance of understanding the entire stack from kernel to user code for debugging and development.
8:16: 💡 Lessons learned from legacy code and impromptu decisions leading to long-term consequences.
12:09: ⚙️ Task Manager optimization for efficient foreground activation.
16:23: ⚙️ AI development shifting focus from training GPUs to local CPU inferencing.
20:17: ⚙️ Development of a display at 30 FPS using 6502 assembly with a purpose to educate on topics like 6502 assembly and FFTs.
24:26: ⚙️ Challenges of porting code between Windows 95 and NT, learning through the process.
28:23: 💼 Challenges of balancing work and family led to leaving dream job at Microsoft to focus on own business.
32:30: ⏰ Balancing work and family life while working remotely and running a business.

[pigsnack]

I’ve worked in IT forever and it used to be that HR would approach a team to say that a new member is autistic and offer some education. It’s kinda humorous because half of the IT staff is already autistic and the other half won’t even notice.

[RobertM]

Hey Dave, thnak you so much for taking the time to recreate this excellent Q&A session when the original recording failed. It was great. Also the "I rolled my own security and encryption" has to be the best line ever! Love it!

[pawer_themaw]

You never fail to make me watch the whole thing

[GeorgeSmiley]

Well I missed it, oh well. Here's a Q anyway: Win7 dropped a critical feature from WinXP. In XP's Windows Explorer.exe you can sort on file date to select files within a range of dates, then re-sort on filename to find (eg.) a letter you wrote to Susan last July. But in Win7, changing the sort order DEselects all previously selected files, making that incredibly useful function impossible. *Q:* *_W-H-Y_* would Microsoft commit such an obvious act of wanton Vandalism?

[Richardincancale]

19:15 “Every byte is sacred, every byte is blessed. Every byte that’s wasted, Dave gets quite obsessed!”

[longwelsh]

Mr 32gb. Absolute legend! Never knew you worked on Amiga. Intuition was a brilliant system. Dave Haynie was a legend.

[floatx]

I really enjoy the whole aesthetic of your videos. From your calm voice to the beautiful setup and of course the fascinating topics you talk about! Wish you all the best!

[WagnerGimenes]

You are a good man, Dave. Thanks for your content.

[BadgersBlue]

The advice on the work / life balance when your kids are growing up is absolutley spot on. I could not agree more. If you are fortunate enough to be able to ease back on the work here and there to do things with your family then grab those oportunities with both hands.

Also, your comments about how Chat GPT helped by looking at the output screenshot just blew my mind, I had no idea it had come that far!

[thebasset]

A man of my own heart... or as we say in the UK (One off the wrist). i started with machine code on an Amstrad CPC with 128k of RAM. i loved those days.. no internet and i learned from books at the library. Your vids are excellent and i love every topic. Thanks Dave. Keep it up mate

[boblabelle]

I first installed windows 95 as an upgrade from somewhere between 12 to 14 3.5 inch floppies. Fortunately drivers were provisioned for the old media vision sound card and scsi it had so when all installed my cd rom and sound worked out of the box ! Thank you for all your hard work . I'd give almost anything to have that old 486 sx33 system back!

[garynagle]

Wow. Loved the variety in this video. Thank you

[adamburgess]

So great to hear these things from the horse's mouth. Amazing that that "you didn't check in more code" but, what you did  changed so many people's work day - like millions!

[tlhIngan]

People still use line editors today. "vi" was spawned off "ed". For those who don't know, "ed" is a a line editor, while "vi" is a "visual" front end to ed to make line-editing easier by letting you position a cursor to select, edit and compose new lines. And yes, to this day, people still use vi and its derivatives to do their text editing. So don't knock it - even in VS Code or Windows on a 4K screen, I have dozens of Vim windows open in my workflow. (VS Code has a really nice Vi plugin)

[dpyles]

I thoroughly enjoy almost all of your videos. The ones i don't are simply well outside my less diverse scope of interest. Thanks Dave!

[bubbavonbraun]

Dave a great rebuild of your Q&A, your IPO comment reminded me of an event I was at with Microsoft in 1986 in Sydney.. Fun party as folks celebrated the IPO and as you say a few friends instant millionaires. Needless to say the flight home the following afternoon was very quiet as we nursed sizeable hangovers. Thanks again for these great walks back through your journey.

[ink.drops]

Just found your channel. I was told I'm Autistic w' ADHD 5 years ago at the age of 48. So of course I bought your book too. Can't wait to read it today. Thanks for talking about these things.

[jeffreybassett]

Dave, thanks for re-creating - my son is a devlopment manager in MS - and told me he would record your event for me - then indicated that it did not work correctly.
Just so you know, I have learned some tips from you with respect to how Task mangager works - by watching your channel. Thanks - I enjoy your videos -J-

[steveschein]

I learned C on an Amiga 1000 back in 1985. I started programming for a company on PC's using Turbo Pascal about a year later and it didn't take long to realize how spoiled I was using the Intuition interface on the Amiga. Of course being a Florida Gator the orange and blue interface didn't have anything to do with it :). I enjoy watching your videos. Keep up the good work.

[colinmaharaj]

I actually wrote my own regular expression parser in C so that I can learn the syntax. It was not meant to be a full parser of regular expressions