TONT 34463 买下整间Egghead软件商城

原文链接：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050824-11/?p=34463

During the development of Windows 95 (which released to the public ten years ago today), application compatibility was of course a very high priority. To make sure that coverage was as broad as possible, the development manager for Windows 95 took his pick-up truck, drove down to the local Egghead Software store (back when Egghead still existed), and bought one copy of every single PC program in the store.

在 Windows 95 开发期间（正好是十年前的今天（译注：本文成文时间2005年8月24日）向公众发布），应用程序兼容性自然是优先级非常高的一项事务。为了保证（Windows 95 的软件兼容性）覆盖面尽可能广泛，开发团队的经理开上了他的皮卡，到了本地的一家 Egghead 软件商城（当时还存在）（译注：Egghead Software 是美国的一家软件分销商，1984年至2001年间存续），把里面的每一种PC软件都买了一份。

He then returned to Microsoft, unloaded all the software onto tables in the cafeteria, and invited every member of the Windows 95 team to come in and take responsibility for up to two programs. The ground rules were that you had to install and run the program, use it like a normal end user, and file a bug against everything that doesn’t work right, even the minor stuff. (Of course, you had to provide the program to the person investigating the bug upon request.) In exchange for taking responsibility for ensuring that Windows 95 was compatible with your adopted programs, you got to keep them after Windows 95 shipped. If you did a good job with your two, you could come back for more.

然后他回到公司，把买来的所有软件倒在餐厅的桌子上，并邀请 Windows 95 团队的每个成员都来取走最多2种软件并对此负责。基本的原则是，成员应当安装并运行所拿到的软件，像一名普通的最终用户那样使用软件，并对所遇到的每一个不太对劲的问题提交一份bug报告，即便是最细微的地方也需要（当然，当提出要求时，同样也需要将程序本身提交给负责调查这个bug的人）。作为对确保成员所负责的应用程序最终能与 Windows 95 相兼容的努力的交换，等 Windows 95 发布后，成员可以将软件本体据为己有。如果搞定了手里的2个软件，还可以再来取走更多的副本。

The cafeteria was filled with Windows 95 team members, browsing through the boxes upon boxes of software like bargain-hunters at a flea market. And there were the inevitable “What’d you get?” comparisons afterwards.

餐厅里挤满了 Windows 95 团队的成员，如同在跳蚤市场里捡便宜的人那样在一大堆软件盒子里挑来拣去，并且不可避免地讨论着『你拿到啥了』这样的对话。

I picked up only one program, an English/German automatic translator. It ran fine but produced pretty bad translations. (Not that the quality of the translations was in any way the fault of Windows!)

我只拿到了一个软件，是一个英德自动翻译软件，它运行起来没什么问题，就是翻译的质量太糟糕了。（这软件翻译成那样可跟 Windows 一毛钱关系都没有！）