The folly of the “Vista rewrite” meme

Dave Winer: “You can view the 60-percent-Vista-rewrite story as something of a software development IQ test. Anyone who believes that it’s conceivable is someone who hasn’t got the most basic clue about how software development works.”

Well stated. There are plenty of people squawking about this story that have no clue of what they’re talking about. As a Microsoft person, I am embarrassed that it appears that we can’t ship the product in a timely manner. Having said that, there are a lot of factors here (industry factors in particular) that have little or nothing to do with our ability to write software or manage a software project. There is more work to do here, but certainly not a 60% rewrite of anything.