Raymond Chen

Raymond Chen is a well-known developer on the Windows Shell team at Microsoft. Since joining Microsoft in 1992, Chen has worked on OS/2, Windows 95, DirectX, and later versions of Windows. Outside of Microsoft, he is known for his articles on Windows programming. He is a popular speaker at Microsoft PDCs and other conferences. He is also known for his dry humor [cite web | url=http://blog.ryjones.org/CategoryView,category,Quotable%20Raymond.aspx | title=Category:Quotable Raymond | author=Raymond Chen | work=Mindless Bit Spew | accessdate=2006-12-30 ] and his custom of wearing suits at work.cite web | url=http://www.mysticmicrosoft.com | title=Fade to Light (Chapter 16) | author=Kraig Brockschmidt | work=Mystic Microsoft | accessdate=2006-12-30 ] [cite web | url=http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/09/11/54888.aspx | title=You too can dress like Raymond | author=Raymond Chen | date=September 11, 2003 | work=The Old New Thing | accessdate=2006-12-30 ]

Writings

Articles

Chen's blog, primarily aimed at software developers, focuses on the history of Windows programming and his own experience in ensuring its backwards compatibility. He is noted for his "Psychic Debugging" articles [cite web | url=http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/03/21/399688.aspx | title=Psychic debugging: Why your expensive four-processor machine is ignoring three of its processors | author=Raymond Chen | date=March 21, 2005 | work=The Old New Thing | accessdate=2006-12-30] , as well as two useful types of thought experiments in software design: "Imagine if this were possible" and "What if two programs did this?".cite web | url=http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=116704&pvrid=114 | title=PDC 05 Talk: Five Things Every Win32 Programmer Needs to Know | author=Raymond Chen | date=September 19, 2005 | work=Professional Developers Conference | accessdate=2006-12-30]

Chen also authors the "Windows Confidential" column for Microsoft's TechNet magazine, which explores similar subject matter.

Books

In 2005 he contributed an essay [http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/24/45779.aspx "Why Not Just Block the Apps That Rely on Undocumented Behavior?"] , adapted from his blog to Joel Spolsky's book "The Best Software Writing I". [cite web | url=http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BestSoftwareWriting.html | title=Introduction to Best Software Writing I | author=Joel Spolsky | date=June 20, 2005 | work=Joel on Software | accessdate=2006-12-30 ]

Chen's first book, titled "The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows" was published by Addison-Wesley in January 2007. The book is primarily a collection of essays on technical topics, some previously published as blog posts. [cite web | url=http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/12/07/1233002.aspx | title=Okay, I changed my mind, I wrote a book after all | author=Raymond Chen | date=December 7, 2006 | work=The Old New Thing | accessdate=2006-12-30]

Hobbies

His computer-unrelated hobbies, as described in his blog, include knitting, cooking, classical music, bicycling, and learning foreign languages (Swedish, German, and Mandarin Chinese). Chen created many early episode summaries of The Simpsons for the alt.tv.simpsons newsgroup.

Before his career at Microsoft and lasting even into 1995, Raymond Chen identified himself as "just another Linux hacker" in his Usenet sig. [cite web | url=http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.os.linux/browse_thread/thread/17aa722d243cd192/7c233c9a9f97c5aa | title=Patch for ISO9660 filesystem -- Another crufty disk hack | author=Raymond Chen | date=June 7, 1993 | work=comp.os.linux | accessdate=2006-12-30] He is listed in the Linux kernel CREDITS file as "Author of Configure script". [cite web | url=http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/CREDITS | title=Linux kernel CREDITS | author=Linus Torvalds | date=September 16, 1996 | work=Kernel.org | accessdate=2006-12-30]

Quotations

"One of the questions I get is, "My app is slow to start up. What are the super secret evil tricks you guys at Microsoft are using to get your apps to start up faster?" The answer is, "The super evil trick is to do less stuff." -- "Five Things Every Win32 Programmer Needs to Know" (16 Sept. 2005)

References

Bibliography

* "The Best Software Writing I", edited by Joel Spolsky, Apress, Jun 2005. ISBN 1-59059-500-9.
* "The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows", Raymond Chen, Addison Wesley, Dec 27, 2006. ISBN 0-321-44030-7

External links

* [http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/ The Old New Thing] - Raymond Chen's blog
* [http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/topics/?col=Windows+Confidential Windows Confidential] - Raymond Chen's [http://www.technetmagazine.com/ TechNet Magazine] column
* [http://www.amazon.com/New-Thing-Silicon-Valley-Story/dp/0140296468/ The New New Thing] - inspiration for blog name