Hardcore Software

HARDCORE SOFTWARE shares the ups and downs of building massive software projects used by billions of people around the world including Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. The scale of the software increases as the narrator and participant grows, starting as an individual contributor on pioneering tools for building Windows applications then rising to leading Microsoft Office and then Microsoft Windows. Sinofsky shares his experiences creating and managing successful software as well as the lessons that come from failure. We learn the inside story of how Microsoft tackled the challenges of the rise of the internet, the creation of Windows 95 and Office 95, and the wildly successful pivot to building enterprise products as Sinofsky works for Chairman/CEO Bill Gates as technical assistant and then as a member and eventual leader and executive of the Office team. Following this is a period of challenging management and morale through the development of Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Sinofsky then moves to managing the Windows team and sees the team through the creation of the successful and stabilizing Windows 7 product followed by the controversial and ultimately unsuccessful product aimed at competing with Apple, Windows 8. Readers are offered a front row seat in the development of everything from the too-early to work Microsoft paperclip assistant, Clip-It, to the bold and successful redesign of the Office user interface, the re-energizing that came with Windows 7, and the attempted strategic reach of Windows 8. Through all of this, candor and insider are the words that best describe the colorful and detailed analysis of what went well and what could have gone better.

WHAT IS HARDCORE SOFTWARE? To be hardcore is to be wildly optimistic about what can be achieved tomorrow while harshly pessimistic about what works today. Creating software is an art. It is computer science and engineering. It is inspiration, and perspiration. It is inherently individual yet relies on a team. Most of all, building software is a group of people coming together to conjure something into existence and turning that into a product used by billions. That is hardcore software. HARDCORE SOFTWARE shares the ups and downs of building massive software projects used by billions of people around the world including Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. The scale of the software increases as the narrator and participant grows, starting as an individual contributor on pioneering tools for building Windows applications then rising to leading Microsoft Office and then Microsoft Windows. Sinofsky shares his experiences creating and managing successful software as well as the lessons that come from failure. We learn the inside story of how Microsoft tackled the challenges of the rise of the internet, the creation of Windows 95 and Office 95, and the wildly successful pivot to building enterprise products as Sinofsky works for Chairman/CEO Bill Gates as technical assistant and then as a member and eventual leader and executive of the Office team. Following this is a period of challenging management and morale through the development of Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Sinofsky then moves to managing the Windows team and sees the team through the creation of the successful and stabilizing Windows 7 product followed by the controversial and ultimately unsuccessful product aimed at competing with Apple, Windows 8. Readers are offered a front row seat in the development of everything from the too-early to work Microsoft paperclip assistant, Clip-It, to the bold and successful redesign of the Office user interface, the re-energizing that came with Windows 7, and the attempted strategic reach of Windows 8. Through all of this, candor and insider are the words that best describe the colorful and detailed analysis of what went well and what could have gone better.

Steven Sinofsky is a respected technologist and business leader, Steven Sinofsky is an investor, adviser, teacher, and writer. He began his career at Microsoft in 1989. Sinofsky joined Microsoft fresh out of graduate school as a software engineer when only one in 10 US households had a PC, almost no one had email, and the internet as we know it had not yet been conceived. Starting in Development Tools (software used by programmers to create software), Sinofsky worked on the first version of the new programming language C++ for the nascent Windows platform. He was Bill Gates's technical assistant during the development of Windows 95 and Windows NT and the rise of internet as we know it today. He then joined the newly formed Office Product Unit and, for twelve years and six releases, rose to senior vice president leading all of Office product development. Sinofsky was tapped to bring order- and innovation-to the Windows division as president. He served as president of the Windows division through 2012, delivering two major releases of Windows, Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as the creation of Microsoft Surface and online services such as Outlook.com and OneDrive.