Hardcore Software (ePub)

HARDCORE SOFTWARE shares the ups and downs of building massive software projects used by billions of people around the world including Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. The scale of the software increases as the narrator and participant grows, starting as an individual contributor on pioneering tools for building Windows applications then rising to leading Microsoft Office and then Microsoft Windows. Sinofsky shares his experiences creating and managing successful software as well as the lessons that come from failure. We learn the inside story of how Microsoft tackled the challenges of the rise of the internet, the creation of Windows 95 and Office 95, and the wildly successful pivot to building enterprise products as Sinofsky works for Chairman/CEO Bill Gates as technical assistant and then as a member and eventual leader and executive of the Office team. Following this is a period of challenging management and morale through the development of Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Sinofsky then moves to managing the Windows team and sees the team through the creation of the successful and stabilizing Windows 7 product followed by the controversial and ultimately unsuccessful product aimed at competing with Apple, Windows 8. Readers are offered a front row seat in the development of everything from the too-early to work Microsoft paperclip assistant, Clip-It, to the bold and successful redesign of the Office user interface, the re-energizing that came with Windows 7, and the attempted strategic reach of Windows 8. Through all of this, candor and insider are the words that best describe the colorful and detailed analysis of what went well and what could have gone better.