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Former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer has taken viewers deep into the source code for Windows Task Manager while debunking a distressing Icelandic sobriquet for Microsoft’s flagship operating system.
Plummer has already admitted to writing the stone-cold killer of processes for early versions of Windows. Still, a wander through the source code is an educational delight for engineers curious about how the internals of Windows worked all those years ago.
The Windows Task Manager, as originally written by Plummer, first turned up in Windows NT 4.0 as the last century drew to a close. He had written it as a shareware app but was persuaded to donate it to the Windows project, thus earning the gratitude of users worldwide.
The source code shown off by Plummer dates back to 2003 and the era of Windows XP.
Plummer told The Register: « It’s honestly a rock-solid implementation of an older approach to coding. I’m proud of my younger self for a job well done, but there’s so much I clearly didn’t know yet, and it shows! »
It’s all refreshingly straightforward – the code in Plummer’s possession is a simple collection of files. There are no libraries, no folder structure, just several source and header files, and, of course, image resources. The only dependency is the Windows SDK itself.
One interesting nugget of information was Task Manager set to be of the high priority class, meaning that it should still run even if the rest of Windows was having troubles.
