Windows at 1000 Frames Per Second: The Raymond Chen Interview

Dave Plummer interviews veteran Windows developer Raymond Chen about the history, debugging, and internal quirks of Microsoft Windows.

Windows Pinball, IBM, debugging, the confidential coffee maker, losing your car keys, and more: Dave interviews Raymond Chen, a 30-year developer on Windows at Microsoft. For my book on Asperger's/ASD, please check out: amzn.to/3GcdeUM For Raymond's book The Old New Thing: amzn.to/40Qhvad 3D Pinball animation by Jack Bertram: youtube.com/@UCvCBPIBlsjaNG8VUzOfEYcw My other channel, join now so you're there for episode 01 of my AudioBook! youtube.com/channel/UCtb6a_CnmGbSns9G8W2Ny0w Discord Chat w/ Myself and Subscribers: discord.gg/eMVWUvrkP6 Primary Equipment (Amazon Affiliate Links): * Camera: Sony FX-3 - amzn.to/3w31C0Z * Camera Lens: 50mm F1.4 Art DG HSM - amzn.to/3kEnYk4 * Microphone: Electro-Voice RE 320 - amzn.to/37gL65g * Teleprompter: Glide Gear TMP 100 - amzn.to/3MN2nlA * Teleprompter Monitor: amzn.to/3YWCSFC * SD Cards: Sony TOUGH - amzn.to/38QZGR9 * Aputure 300d II Light: amzn.to/46axuRZ CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:39 The "special edition" of Windows 95 00:02:07 The absence of 64-bit Pinball in Windows 00:03:15 The 64-bit Windows project initially targeted Itanium processors 00:04:46 During the 64-bit Windows project, resolving Pinball's collision detection problem 00:06:00 Pinball's removal from the 64-bit Windows 00:07:23 The fix for Pinball might have involved a floating point rounding issue 00:08:47 Testing for Pinball's collision detection problem 00:11:05 Raymond once received a death threat 00:12:30 Raymond joined Microsoft after applying for graduate school 00:16:07 Raymond's consistent jacket and tie attire 00:18:52 Raymond leverages his extensive network at Microsoft 00:19:31 The term "hive" in the Windows registry 00:21:06 Users sometimes tend to avoid answering dialogues they find confusing or unnecessary 00:23:06 Windows 95 faced challenges with its time zone map 00:30:35 Taskbar grouping 00:34:29 Designing intuitive vending machine interfaces 00:36:49 Windows team had mascots like "Bear," "Bunny," and "Piglet," 00:42:14 The "USB Cart of Death" was a cart loaded with multiple USB devices used for testing USB functionality 00:46:11 Porting from 32-bit to 64-bit Windows 00:50:31 Dave Cutler 00:52:06 Bill Gates 00:53:01 Windows Power Toys 00:56:12 Tweaking Windows with 'Tweak UI' 00:59:37 Microsoft's policy shift against offering unsupported downloads 01:03:49 The innovative approach to Windows 95 compatibility testing 01:07:32 A dive into game compatibility 01:10:16 Race conditions in multitasking OSs 01:12:21 Raymond Chen fixed Windows Pinball's CPU usage issue 01:14:31 The time travel debugger 01:18:23 Color-coding files (blue for compressed, green for encrypted 01:20:49 Usability studies observing users 01:23:19 Windows 286 and 386 01:25:07 Long file names stored in Unicode 01:28:33 Misaligned data in processors like RISC led to significant performance issues 01:31:52 Splitting a PC into two workstations 01:32