My favorite details from the book:

The project got slowed down because Microsoft management allowed the Presentation Manager to be written in C++. Nobody on the team was familiar with the language and being the early 90s it was still immature. The 'rewrite it in Rust' of its time.

It's a book old enough that the concept of email has to be explained to the reader, as well as why Gates would spend so much time checking his email.

I interviewed Larry Osterman on my podcast [1] and at 19:35 he talks about his time on the Windows NT team and hanging out with Greg Zachary, the author of Show Stopper, at his house in Berkeley. There's also Helen Custer who came along with Cutler to help document the creation of NT.

Lots of other fun stories from Larry's time on that team. I kind of regret not asking him about Cutler. Maybe next time!

[1] https://john-lam-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-9-larry-...

Larry Osterman is one of the Jeopardy questions to “Who’s worked at Microsoft longer than Bill Gates”

I worked with him at what turns out to have been towards the start of his time at Microsoft. Lots of great stories even then

Agreed -- this book is mesmerizingly good. Last year, we had a discussion of "Show Stopper!" with G. Pascal Zachary that also featured Jessamyn West, daughter of Tom West (of "Soul of a New Machine" fame)[0]. It was a fascinating discussion (technical difficulties with Twitter Spaces aside!).

[0] https://open.spotify.com/episode/5mx2t2aA7sSbELV5YVOD2G