The Visual Studio Documentary: Tony Goodhew full length interview
- Posted: Jan 12, 2010 at 7:21 AM
- 39,757 Views
- 10 Comments
Download
How do I download the videos?
- To download, right click the file type you would like and pick “Save target as…” or “Save link as…”
Why should I download videos from Channel9?
- It's an easy way to save the videos you like locally.
- You can save the videos in order to watch them offline.
- If all you want is to hear the audio, you can download the MP3!
Which version should I choose?
- If you want to view the video on your PC, Xbox or Media Center, download the High Quality WMV file (this is the highest quality version we have available).
- If you'd like a lower bitrate version, to reduce the download time or cost, then choose the Medium Quality WMV file.
- If you have a Zune, WP7, iPhone, iPad, or iPod device, choose the low or medium MP4 file.
- If you just want to hear the audio of the video, choose the MP3 file.
Right click “Save as…”
- High Quality WMV (PC, Xbox, MCE)
- MP3 (Audio only)
- MP4 (iPod, Zune HD)
- Mid Quality WMV (Lo-band, Mobile)
S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
Jason Zander Full Length Interview
Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview
Anders Hejlsberg Full Length Interview
Alan Cooper Full Length Interview
Jeff Hadfield Full Length Interview
Dan Fernandez Full Length Interview
Tony Goodhew has been a major part of the success of the Visual Studio franchise and is one of the fan favorites from The Visual Studio Documentary. He has some wonderful quotes about old times at Microsoft and helps take us into the future with the next version of Visual Studio.
Comments Closed
Comments have been closed since this content was published more than 30 days ago, but if you'd like to continue the conversation,
please create a new thread in our Forums,
or
Contact Us and let us know.
Follow the Discussion
There is no audio with SL on XP.
It's quite amazing to hear these interviews from people who have basically been there since the beginning, and have watched these products evolve into what they are today.
From all these interviews, here is what I have gathered:
1. Development is hard, plain and simple. Microsoft is doing their best doing their best to align their products into a single coherent vision, and you know what, that’s hard problem to solve
2. If Sun didn't sue Microsoft during the late 90s, .NET might have never existed. This is a terrifying thought given how much I love managed code
3. Microsoft, in some respects, is expected to cure cancer, diabetes and world hunger, or at least that is the bar the world has set for the organization
4. People expect Microsoft to solve all their problems, and when they don’t, hell hath no fury like a scorned developer
Lastly, it would be awesome if the same interviews were done around Office, Windows, and SQL Server.
Well this may just be my favorite video in the series to date. Just awesome to hear the war stories and from someone who is clearly passionate about what they do - and who doesn't pull their punches. I find myself slightly envious of the folks who have Tony Goodhew as their boss. Can we please get him back for the Visual Studio 2020 documentary!
One of the best interviews so far in the VS Documentary series
Another great installment of The Visual Studio Documentary!! I hope you guys just keep these coming! Also, as stated previously by someone else, it would be awesome for you guys to do a series like this on Windows.
Tony is hilarious for his no-BS approach. Brian (Keller) and I are big Goodhew fans... I've attended meetings in person just to hear Tony speak his mind
Brian had a post with some (infamous) Goodhewisms, but it apparently got swallowed into the interwebs when GotDotNet died. Here are some of Ed Kaim's favorite Goodhewisms for your entertainment purposes:
Like the first commentor, I'm not getting any audio. I tried both Firefox and IE (current updates on both) and I have the current Silverlight.
These interviews are great but the camera moves a bit too much for me. The constant zoom-in-zoom-out and movement makes me dizzy
I love this video!
Tony was my mentor who hired me into Microsoft to take over on Visual J# product management. I was scared of him from day 1. I mean the guy is huge, domineering, a former Australian Army sniper and an ex semi-pro rugby player - I weigh in at 150 pounds on a good day!
My second month on the job I spent 3 weeks on the road with him presenting at conferences and traveling the world. I've lost count of the number of times he drank me under the table. That's when I learned Goodhew's Uncertainty Principle of Drinking: You can either know what you were drinking, or how many you had, but not both. Truer words were never spoken.
It wasn't until several months later I realized that, despite his intimidating demeanor, Tony was on my side (he did hire me after all) and I had no reason to be scared of him. Today I respect him as one of the smartest (and wittiest) people I'll ever get the chance to work with. This interview was a great trip down memory lane!
Brian
@NullUserName:Here's how Tony was rehired into Microsoft in 1998-ish (as I recall; I'd be happy to have Tony weigh in with corrections/clarifications).
I was a Technical Evangelist on Microsoft's anti-Java team at the time, and I was visiting Australia to try to get it to vote "no" on accepting Java as a standard, and to give a "pro COM, anti CORBA" presentation while I was there. Tony was working for IBM Australia, and giving a pro-CORBA presentation.
In between talks, he zoomed right over to me with business card in hand and asked me to join him for a drink after the presentations, at which he said that CORBA -- which he had just pimped in his talk, mind you -- was a hopeless piece of *, that IBM couldn't code its way out of a paper bag, and he really, REALLY wanted to rejoin Microsoft...but that the Aussie subsidiary wouldn't hire him back because of, well...let's have another round, shall we?
I was very impressed with his presentation -- his grasp of the technologies, the competitive issues, the decision factors, his presentation technique, his charisma, etc. If he hadn't believed a word of his own talk, then he had great acting talent, too -- so I asked around as to why he'd been invited to leave Microsoft originally.
The story I got back was that he had gone on stage to give an important presentation -- you know, wireless mic, big screen, live demos, etc. -- and in mid-presentation, said "excuse me for a moment," walked behind stage for a minute or two, and then came back and resumed his presentation.
Which would have been no big deal, if he'd remembered to turn off his wireless mic while barfing his guts up from the previous night's pub crawl (or "chundering a dog's breakfast," as he might say).
I pushed hard for him to be hired into Microsoft's tools group, but got a LOT of pushback from HR against hiring someone who was reputed to have an alcohol problem. He was hired, in part, because of my counter-argument, which was that he demonstrably DIDN'T have an alcohol problem; he had a wireless mic problem. If he'd remembered to turn that off, there would have been no issue.
I'm proud to have helped Tony get hired back into Microsoft. He was a strong ally in the battle to get Visual Studio opened up to non-Microsoft languages (which some very senior people, highly praised elsewhere in the documentary, fought mightily against).
Ah, the good ol' days. I'm happy to see Tony still fighting the good fight. ;-)
--- Jim "JamesPl" Plamondon
Microsoft Technical Evangelist, 1992-2000
Remove this comment
Remove this thread
close