Zachmann.NET
Moving Mountains
Anders Hejlsberg, a key .NET creator
When the editors of
RDN
magazine asked me to do a
cover story on Bill Gates
for this issue, I was nearly as anxious as I was pleased.
But I couldn't help but be delighted at the prospect of catching up with folks I hadn't seen in years. I was gratified so many old friends and acquaintances were willing to share their candid views on Gates and the remarkable impact he's had on the information technology industry.
Smashing Success
An unanticipated spinoff of the project was the long and fascinating chat I had with Anders Hejlsberg, architect of the C# language and Language Integrated Query (LINQ), and key creator of Microsoft's .NET Framework. Hejlsberg is one of the most positive and creative influences on Microsoft's recent tools and platforms strategy and on the industry in general. Unassuming, modest, relaxed and often very funny, he has had as much impact on software development this past decade as any other single individual.
I first learned of Hejlsberg more than 20 years ago, after he developed the groundbreaking Turbo Pascal integrated development environment (IDE) while still a university student in Denmark. Turbo Pascal was a smashing success in the U.S. PC market in the mid-1980s, and vaulted both Borland International and its brash CEO Philippe Kahn to industry stardom.
In 1989 Hejlsberg moved from Denmark to Santa Cruz, Calif., to become chief engineer at Borland, where he led development of Delphi, by far the best IDE of its day.
Moving to Microsoft
Impressive as these accomplishments were, it wasn't until Bill Gates convinced Hejlsberg to come to Microsoft in 1996 that he finally found a canvas wide enough for his real masterpieces. I asked Hejlsberg if, at that time, he had misgivings about leaving Borland for Microsoft. He says: "It was a tough decision to make but I've never regretted it. In fact, I shudder to think of the regret I would have if I hadn't done it."
Hejlsberg's first project at Microsoft was to develop a version of Sun's Java language, J++. His candid recollections offer some fascinating insights into the origins of .NET, including the critical role that Sun played in its development:
"You know, originally we were working on a strategy to make Java a great development language on Windows and then we got sued and many Sun lawsuits came out of that. And the product that I had worked on, Visual J++, got enjoined by a judge and we had to put in, like, warning dialogs. That was the first thing I worked on [at Microsoft] and it was really an odd experience. But it was also clarifying because it showed us that Microsoft works best when Microsoft is controlling its own destiny; when we're building the technology as opposed to trying to modify someone else's technology to be better on our platform. That's not our core competency."
Setting the .NET Framework in Motion
It was, in large part, Sun's legal action in the late 1990s to limit Microsoft's work on Java that set the wheels in motion for the creation of .NET. At first, Hejlsberg doubted the project could work. Asked what surprised him most about Microsoft after he joined the company, Hejlsberg says:
"It was always clear to me that Microsoft was a technically driven company as opposed to, say, Oracle, or other, bigger companies out there -- IBM or whatever. But you could tell from the outside that Bill's passion was around the technical side of the business and in particular around the developer side of the business, which was the business I was in. So there was a lot of perceived synergy there even though I didn't actually know Bill then.
"But I think what really surprised me came a few years later when we set out to do the whole .NET platform and I just thought, 'This is crazy! We're never going to be able to swing this.' Do you know what I'm saying? At Borland we would not have been able to swing it! But I got the insight that once you get everybody rolling in the same direction at Microsoft, it's unstoppable! It can move mountains -- and we moved a mountain!"
They did indeed. And, along the way, Microsoft created a superb development platform and tools for the rest of us as well.
About the Author
William F. Zachmann, born before the modern digital computer was invented, has lived with them (and made his living off of them) all his life. He was director of research for The Forum Corp. in the mid-'70s and senior vice president of corporate research at International Data Corp. (IDC) in the '80s. He has a copy of Windows 1.0 that Bill Gates signed for him the night it was rolled out at Comdex Fall '85. Zachmann is now director of Canopus Research Inc. He programs in C# using Visual Studio 2005 with a focus on ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005.