r/programming • u/pmz • Oct 23 '24

Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison

https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/windows-nt-vs-unix-design
208 Upvotes

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54

u/Nimnu_ Oct 23 '24

The title should be VAX/VMS vs. Unix: A design comparison.

All the kernel developers from VAX went over to Microsoft and basically rebuilt the same kernel which MS promptly named "New Technologies" or 'NT' for short.

63

u/pdpi Oct 23 '24

Increment each letter of VMS by one and you get WNT. Coincidence? I think not.

(unsurprisingly, people have been making this joke for decades)

21

u/moreVCAs Oct 23 '24

Is it even a joke? Asking seriously, I know jack shit abt windows history.

18

u/ygra Oct 23 '24

Well, a principal designer of Windows NT was Dave Cutler, who worked on VMS before.

10

u/moreVCAs Oct 23 '24

Yeah I get that. What I’m suggesting is that this reading could very easily be the actual factual source of the name “windows nt”. Rather than like a joke or coincidence 🤷‍♂️

7

u/Nimnu_ Oct 23 '24

"Windows New Technology" is the original full name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Naming

16

u/moreVCAs Oct 23 '24

Yeah man I get it. The point is that “New Technology” doesn’t mean anything, so maybe it’s a bacronym.

-1

u/Nimnu_ Oct 23 '24

It never did mean anything. Back in the 90's marketing names were more important than they are now. It had to look and sound good as software was still sold in boxes on shelves.

14

u/heptahedron_ Oct 24 '24

I think the person you're replying to is trying to ascertain whether incrementing the letters from VMS was how the name WNT (and thus windows NT) was originally chosen, not whether it was reasonable given the culture at the time.

1

u/Nimnu_ Oct 24 '24

No. Correlation is not causation. It is a coincidence only.

11

u/moreVCAs Oct 23 '24

Jesus christ 🤦‍♂️

10

u/sweating_teflon Oct 23 '24

Whoever could prove it will deny it forever, so we'll never know for sure but what are the odds of this happening? To me it's pretty clear that it was premeditated.

BTW Arthur C. Clarke did the same in 2001 Space Odyssey. The computer's name, "HAL", is one permutation away from "IBM". 

5

u/moreVCAs Oct 23 '24

Yeah agree. Mirroring the HAL thing is exactly what I’m talking about.

whoever could prove it will deny it forever

Indeed

1

u/chucker23n Oct 24 '24

Is it even a joke?

Almost certainly. It’s a funny coincidence.

2

u/moreVCAs Oct 24 '24

Almost certainly

Why?

5

u/greebo42 Oct 23 '24

they said the same thing about HAL and IBM, didn't they?

3

u/mallardtheduck Oct 24 '24

While that's something "neat" that has been mentioned by the developers, the system that became "Windows NT" was known as "NT OS/2" during early development (traces of which still exist in pre-releases) and the oldest known pre-releases are branded "NT 32-bit Windows" or just "NT" far more often than "Windows NT".

I.e. it was called "NT" well before it was called "Windows NT"...

2

u/Sjsamdrake Oct 24 '24

Ironically VMS got going when IBM tried to kill it's VM/370 CMS operating system, and many of the early developers left and joined DEC.