Software with ZERO bugs: Dave Cutler Interview

Dave Cutler discusses shipping VMS with zero known bugs, versus the practice of closing thousands of known bugs.

[JohnnyN-I]

Dave, we want more of these interviews. As an aspiring software engineer, hearing some of the great minds that made the software I use on a daily basis is pretty inspiring. I hope I get to hear Miguel de Icaza or Scott Hanselman as guests.

[Syscrush]

I love this grumpy old bastard. No filter, just an intense dedication to doing stuff right.

[JonathanMcCormack]

I was a VMS System Administrator from 1991 to around 2005. It was a great OS, one VaxCluster I looked after had 4 years of uptime and we only shut it down to replace the UPS.

[perfectionbox]

In a job interview with MS back around 2000, the interview asked me what do if a program had bugs. After a minute discussing ideas he said "you ship it anyway." Man, my respect for him was like an anvil falling off a tall building and I wondered, how could such a mindset happen?

[doubleHLabs]

Can't wait for the full interview!

[JohnHess-edsg]

Thank you for providing these snippets of the interview. I really enjoy listening to them.

[kRyStLGaMeR]

I love Dave Cutler's opinion of PMs - "doesn't meet the bar", just to be thrown under the bus when customers complain about said bugs.

[JeffRyman]

When I worked for a group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that group bought a MicroVAX. It came without VMS installed. The OS was on cartridge tapes and it had installation instructions. I successfully installed VMS and the compilers (FORTRAN and C) following the instructions, got the accounts set up, and was editing and compiling a test program the next day. I was a research engineer who had lots of experience using and programming on IBM mainframes, a DECSystem 10, and MS-DOS but who had 1) never used VMS before and 2) never been a system administrator before! In those days, anything made by DEC rocked!

[GSTU]

A true great, I feel privileged just watching these clips, keep 'em coming Dave.

[dilzaaaa]

Thank you so much for these interviews. Just finished 'Showstopper' last week and it's great to see him in the flesh.

[wtmayhew]

A rite of passage for programmers should be to have to do some significant project on a Teletype. I can still recall the aroma of warm motor windings, ink and oil when I think about it.

[jej]

This guy reminds me so much of the best engineers I've worked with over the years. I think it's a personality type.

[paultrayers]

Showstopper! is a fascinating account of the development of WinNT that shows just how driven Dave and his engineers producing the most stable ever version of Windows to that

[jamesbond_]

These interviews are great -- I have several friends, both ex-DEC and @Microsoft who have worked with him, but to me he's been an unseen mythical figure behind a number of interesting technologies. It's fantastic that you're providing a "voice" for him to provide his oral history of some of the developments he's spearheaded.

[neatodd]

I miss VMS. I wrote a lot of Fortran 77 using it back in the 80's.

[thatjpwing]

I loved working in VAX/VMS when I worked at Digital. I had a Rainbow 100+ hanging off a VAXcluster and it was amazing how efficient the OS was. And version numbers!

[nufosmatic]

2:46 - Amongst the tools Schlumberger put "down hole" was a particle accelerator and return receiver which was a yard long and 1-1/2" in diameter which illuminated the surrounding rock and read the return for petroleum content. The accelerator was powered and controlled through a single coax cable. That cable connected to the sensor head and eventually connected to the VAX...

[hey_zeus-mo]

0:51 good ole days before internet updates. Thank you for your work on windows NT/2000.

[glasser]

thank you uncle Dave for inviting your nemesis Dave C. two titans swaping notes 👏

It's interesting when you two chat about system stress !

This is where live timing bugs come into play - Hardly a way for architects developers to predict these race conditions under load.

I've improved NTK performance 15% - Live system is the truth.
BRILLIANT WK.
I worked on DEC VAX VMS for pharmaceutical Mfg development
👏

[nathansmith]

You can sure see Dave C's mind is laser sharp.