Programming Windows: Another Quick Progress Report (Premium)
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 13, 2019
-
20
We’re now three months and over 50 articles into the Programming Windows series. Here’s another quick progress report.
As I noted in my first progress report, the series has come together much more quickly than I’d imagined it would when I finally resolved to scratch this itch. And it’s getting bigger and bigger all the time: After the first six weeks, I had published 23 articles. And now, after three months, I’ve published 51 articles (not counting the first progress report check-in). So there have been 28 articles since the previous update.
We’re not quite to what I consider to be the halfway point of the series. Basically, the first half deals with Windows in the pre-.NET world, and the second half is about Windows in the .NET world. I have four more articles planned for the first half of the series, though I will definitely be adding more over time as well. You can see them in the revised Table of Contents (TOC) below, but three are antitrust related and the other is about IIS, Visual InterDev, and FrontPage. Once those are completed, I will move into the .NET era.
As many have noted, this series has evolved into what is clearly a book, and we’ve had discussions at work about making that happen. Given the expected length, it may make sense to break it into two books (pre-.NET, .NET). If that does happen, I could imagine publishing the first book, which will contain additional material and hopefully some interviews, by the end of the year. And then tackling the second book in the first half of next year.
I like that it’s a book, and I hope that it’s interesting for you to see that happen in real-time. I had warned upfront that it wasn’t possible to write this thing in a truly linear or chronological fashion, that I would move in and out of topics and time frames, and that has happened even more frequently than expected. This, I know, is confusing to some, and there is a want or need for a more linear or chronological listing of the articles. The closest we can get to that is the TOC, which can never be truly chronological. Instead, it’s just organized by topics, in individual articles and in logical sections.
For now, that looks like so.
The World Before Windows
Windows API
BASIC
BASIC Inventors Take on Gates, Microsoft
Visual Basic Takes Over the World
NT
C++ and MFC
Microsoft Foundation Class Library
Components
Embrace and Extend
Netscape Navigator and JavaScript
IIS, InterDev, and FrontPage
Antitrust
Antitrust – pre-1998
Findings of Fact – Netscape
David vs. Goliath – Java
Five Words Apart – Documentation
Happy Halloween – Linux
Windows Everywhere
The End of an Era – Windows 98, SE, Me, Windows NT 5.0/2000
This is obviously just the first half of the series/book, the pre-.NET part. The second half of the book has evolved since I last published a TOC, but I’m going to hold onto that because it’s going to change a lot as I actually start writing that part.
But there is other content that I’m not quite sure how to handle or incorporate into the series/book. For example, I’ve had a written a few side stories so far, and I have some others that I could potentially add, including:
Assembly Language
The Registry
DLL Hell
CISC vs. RISC
IBM OS/2
IBM Exits the PC market
Windows CE and Palm-Sized PCs
WinG, DirectX, video games
Microsoft Office
There are also some interesting tech evolution topics that keep coming up, like how menus and toolbars have changed over the years. Maybe those are side stories too. Either way, if written, they’ll need to be placed in a logical part of the TOC.
If there is anything interesting or pertinent to this series that you think I’m missing, please let me know. I’ve tried to stay true to the “point” of the series, that the history of Windows can be told via the software development tools and technologies that Microsoft has made, and that everything that happens is a reaction to something, a competitor, perhaps, or some industry trend. But the broader story, of Microsoft’s history, is much, much bigger than what I’ve covered so far. It’s like NT: It’s so big, no one can keep it all in their head. But maybe there are other stories to tell after this series/book is complete.
We’ll see. For now, that’s where we’re at, and the minimum list of articles I need/want to complete before moving on to the .NET era. It says a lot that I’m still quite excited to get to that. This has been a lot of fun.
Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.
With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?
Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.