Lessons from a long career at Microsoft

Sent by a coworker:

  1. Computers will always get faster, compilers will get smarter, but build times will always get longer.
  2. The debugger will never be good enough.
  3. You cannot succeed at Microsoft until you come up with three letter acronym, like OLE, RTF, or GFX. My three letter acronym is BYB: Before You were Born. It is especially relevant as the Office source code approaches its 25th year. The acronym would be used as follows, “BYB, we worked on systems with 40 MB hard drives, and we thought it was great.”
  4. Sometimes a good solution is better than a clever solution.
  5. Never put in alerts or messages that insult or threaten the user.
  6. At some point, you will have to resolve a bug by saying, “If the user does something that dumb, they get what they deserve.”
  7. If you want developers to come to a meeting, providing food will not hurt.
  8. It is not really a bug if it has been in the code for a long time.
  9. Do not let your work get bogged down in too much process. Do not be afraid to abandon process if the benefits are not there.
  10. When you make a top ten list, only the first nine are any good.