Can You Trust Windows 2000?

The following was written in December 1999, prior to the release of Windows 2000.

Did you know that Windows 2000 has over 40 million lines of code! That's what Steve Balmer says and he should know. But guess what? At a conference a couple of years ago, a Microsoft developer was quoted as stating that Microsoft software typically contains on the order of from 14 to 17 bugs (ie errors) per 1,000 lines of code.

Hmmm, let us assume that Windows 2000 doesn't break the Microsoft mold and that it too contains somewhere in the range of 14 to 17 mistakes per 1,000 lines of code. That means that Windows 2000 has between 560,000 and 680,000 mistakes or errors. That's a lot of gotchas!


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