Parallel Efforts
D. R. Y. Don't Repeat Yourself. Good advice for individual programmers, maybe not so great for mega-multi-billion dollar corporations. How would you avoid a disaster like the way the Start Menu works on Windows? I don't know for sure, but I think part of the solution for a company that size is to use parallel, competitive efforts. Most programmers and managers have had the "no wasted, duplicated effort" mantra drummed into them for their entire careers. That makes sense for a startup, and for a small company. Once you reach the size of a Microsoft, I suspect that it's counter-productive to treat the development organization as one thing.
I'm guessing (20/20 hindsight) that it might have been better to have several teams, parallel efforts, designing candidates for the eventual Vista UI.
Maybe an example:
What was Sun's most world-affecting product of the last dozen years?
Oak, from their semi-secret "First Person" semi-spinoff.
5:51:35 PM
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