I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier

Electronic News, Oct 30, 1995 by Fred Moody

In actuality, the author notes, as "with all Microsoft projects: Their designers want the best product, no matter how much time it takes; their developers want to finish on time, no matter what features have to be sacrificed in order to do so; and Gates wants both, with none of the sacrifices." Thus, in Sendak's case, the stage was set for two years of stress imposed by the ever-present specter of the deadline. The fact that few, if any, of the company's products to date had met projected shipping dates provided no consolation.

Reorganization, another frequent fact of life at Microsoft, resulted not only in a turnover of personnel, but in the elimination of the entire Multimedia Publishing division at the end of Moody's year of observation. It did not, however, mean the end of the Sendak endeavor--nor the delay of its deadline. While those familiar with Microsoft's product line will know how it turned out, the difficulties involved in designing and developing such a complex product as a children's reference book provide suspense and a kind of surprise ending for readers, as well as for the personnel involved.

Although the author's intent was to keep technical terminology to a minimum in this book, this is, after all, the story of how a technological business works, and of what makes it succeed. The few basic terms explained "In Lieu of a Glossary" are for the reader totally unfamiliar with personal computers; interwoven into the story of the complex human interfacing on Sendak are brief and fascinating discussions of computer functions, tools, and bugs. At Microsoft, bugs--or problems in performance--are entered in a file aptly called "Raid," and are corrected by developers so that a finished product is shipped with "zero bugs."

Encarta had 2,100 bugs to be squashed. Think of that--and of all that goes into the production of software--the next time your computer develops a bug of its own.

Grace I. Zisk is a writer and editor living in Charlottesville, Va.