The original developer of the Windows Task Manager has provided a nifty history of the application and some great tips for using.
“I’m the Microsoft developer that wrote [Task Manager] at home in my den in about 1994 and then the NT silverback [developers] let me check it into the main tree even though I was a greenhorn at the time,” a Reddit user identified as daveplreddit writes in his post. “So that meant I got to bring it into work and polish it up and make it an official part of Windows, where it remains to this day. So I got to define my own day job, actually, which was nice! I don’t know if it’s still like that, but great culture and people.”
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
(Thanks to Ondra Kelka for the tip!)
Among his tips for using Task Manager, which work through at least Windows XP, are:
The author also notes that he wrote/ported Space Cadet Pinball and ZIP Folders for Microsoft, and that he worked on the Start menu, shell, Calculator, OLE32, product activation, and even MS-DOS. Amazing stuff, and a great read.