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Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters
Personal blog · proudlyserving.com/archivescareersystems
Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters is a personal blog at proudlyserving.com about career and systems. Since 2007, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “DOS Ain't Done Til Lotus Won't Run? (2005)”. The last post was in 2011, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this archive of 2005-era posts on Microsoft history, especially the 'DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run' saying. Commenters mostly cite it to check whether that quote is apocryphal.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- DOS Ain't Done Til Lotus Won't Run? (2005)10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2007-07-23
What Hacker News says?
> "Windows ain't done until WordPerfect won't run" Source? All I can find is http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done... .
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “Firefox 70”Submitted DOS Ain't Done Til Lotus Won't Run? (2005) as a story · 68 points
HN discussionY U h8 capitalism? A bit dated, but http://www.proudlyserving.com/ is still a worthwhile read to understand the Microsoft mindset.
Comment linking /
on “Windows needs a change in priorities”Submitted An Open Letter to Jeff Raikes (about Office file formats) [2005] as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> betting on the wrong horse (OS/2) Ahhhh, your hindsight is well developed. I would be interested to know the background on the reasons why Lotus made that bet. We can't know the counterfactual, but Lotus delivering on a platform owned by their deadly competitor Microsoft would seem to me to be a clearly worrysome idea to Lotus at the time. Turned out it was an existentially bad idea. Did Lotus fear Microsoft? "DOS…
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “AMD funded a drop-in CUDA implementation built on ROCm: It's now open-source”Submitted The Myth of the Lone Programmer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of the story of Windows NT and how David Cutler commented at one point after the release that divorces and nervous breakdowns were tracked in the program metrics. I expect that's hyperbole, but there is a real cost to these death marches. I couldn't find that specific quote, though, and being 25 years back it could be a false memory of who said it (I did read it somewhere, if you were on the team at the…
Comment linking /archives/2007/09/dave_cutler_win.html
on “A former Uber engineer's disaster story”Submitted DOS Ain't Done Til Lotus Won't Run? (2005) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAlso: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/09/an_open_lette...
Comment linking /archives/2005/09/an_open_letter.html
on “In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things”Is there any evidence of that? This page seems to think otherwise: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done...
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “Developer hiring and the market for lemons”> "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run". Likely apocryphal: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done...
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “How to Report a Bug to Microsoft”Yes, I remember this video too. I think it was part of the Information At Your Fingertips speech at Comdex in 1990. http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/05/information_a...
Comment linking /archives/2005/05/information_at.html
on “Samsung cites Kubrick's "2001" as Prior Art in Patent Case Against Apple”You must not be aware of the long history of Microsoft being very untrustworthy and lying about how their software behaves. e.g. funding SCO to pursue a campaign against Linux users and threatening to take them to court for using Linux: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/fact-and-fiction-in-... e.g. DOS ain't done til Lotus won't run: https://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_don... and many, man…
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “Windows 10 spies on your use of System Settings (2021)”That is not accurate, incidentally. > "It's an interesting myth, and one I've heard about in general terms, although I've never heard the specific quote before. However, I have no recollection of any instance of its actually happening with 1-2-3 or with any other product I've worked on." And, "My memory of the early days (1984-85) is that we would get early betas of DOS to test with 1-2-3 and any errors that we foun…
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “MSFT is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge and IT admins are angry”...until Lotus won't run. It's a cute saying, but almost certainly apocryphal: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done... Microsoft has always put a lot of work into keeping applications running in new OS versions. Raymond Chen has chronicled these efforts over the years in his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/ Many of the compatibility problems have been from apps that used undocumente…
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “Google is broken in IE11 on Windows 8.1”Microsoft's ugly history is full of sketchy shenanigans, like the time it seemed like they were working to make sure WordPerfect wouldn't run in DOS due to subtle, breaking changes to the API ( http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ancient-microsoft-nov... ) or those occasions where they were suspected of kneecapping Lotus in much the same way ( http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done... ). The…
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “Tim Sweeney claims that Microsoft will remove Win32, destroy Steam”Well, it's an urban legend in any case: http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done...
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “Why Feedburner is trouble ”Provenance of this reviewed at http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done... (and last discussed here at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10432608 )
Comment linking /archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
on “How Microsoft faked errors in Windows 3 on top of DR DOS”
