Architosh Staff ([email protected])

24 Oct 2003

 

Sun co-founder, Bill Joy, says Apple's OS superior to Microsoft Windows - Derides Windows for Poor Architecture

The current issue of Fortune magazine has a fantastic interview with Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems Inc. Joy, who Fortune once dubbed "The Edison of the Internet", said a number of very interesting things in the interview, including a good defense of why Sun still matters and why Java is so valuable a computer language.

In the interview Joy also made a valuable comparison between Apple and Microsoft's respective operating systems. Here's a quote:

The problem with Windows isn't so much that it's insecure, but that it is stale. The company has flailed away, making changes mainly to protect its monopoly. So lately, instead of getting better with each new release, Windows is just getting different.

Also, Windows isn't well architected. There's a simple way to find out if an operating system has been well designed. When you get an error message, go to the help system and look up the exact words in that message to see if there was enough of a concept of an architecture that they have a consistent vocabulary to talk about what's broken.

All you have to do is try it on a Mac and on a PC to see the difference.

Joy goes on to discuss that Apple took the time to come up with a concise vocabulary to talk about the OS and that this structure was pervasive throughout the whole team, from programmers to the people who write the help system. He goes on:

....but in Windows the designers of the help system used different terminology from the programmers. That reflects a lack of design discipline, which means that as the system grows, so does the ambiguity of the software itself. The result is a system encrusted with multiple layers of things that weren't really designed in so much as bolted on.

Architosh Analysis: This piece is interesting for a number of reasons. It's obviously Joy's job to deride Windows as a Sun cofounder and now former employee. But honestly, when one reads the entire article so much of what Joy talks about--and this involves more than just how badly Windows is architected--will open your eyes (or at least widen them) into the why's and how's of the current problems we have with computer systems. Sure, his little exercise above, as a means of comparison, will ring true with anybody who knows both systems well (Mac OS and Windows). Yet what really validates so much of what Joy says about Microsoft's problems lies in what he says about computer languages and the Net in general. Joy says systems will not be secure until we develop them on computer languages that are so developed that they can be as predictable as chemistry, so one always gets the same (and only one) reaction when two elements in software come together. Joy says the computer language C and C+ were never developed for the Internet era which places fundamentally different requirements on software in the connected Net world. He remarks that Java does a much better job of dealing with the problems we face in a connected and distributed environment but that it is not the ultimate answer. Joy also explains why Longhorn--Microsoft's next big OS-- isn't going to be much better at addressing Windows' fundamental problems.

What do you think of Joy's comments? Discuss them in this forum thread:

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