The Old New Thing

Microspeak - The Old New Thing

Microspeak: Redlines

December 2, 2014 Dec 2, 2014 12/2/14
Raymond Chen
To the outside world, redline can mean to mark something for removal, or it could mean the maximum safe speed of an engine. But in the world of Microsoft design, the term redlines (pronounced as if it were written as the two words red lines, but the accent is on the red) refers to a diagram showing the exact position of visual elements. They ...

Microspeak: Line of sight

November 4, 2014 Nov 4, 2014 11/4/14
Raymond Chen
I first encountered this term in a meeting I attended. Q: We would like to be able to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow without requiring a reboot. A: Yes, that is something we've been thinking about, but we don't have line of sight to having that feature before the end of the month. From context, having line of sight to a result...

Microspeak: 1 – 1 is not zero

August 5, 2014 Aug 5, 2014 08/5/14
Raymond Chen
In his reddit AMA, Joe Belfiore wrote i have regular 1-1 meetings with my counterparts in Office, Skype, Xbox. The little bit of jargon there is 1-1 meeting. This is an abbreviation for one-on-one meeting, a common business practice wherein two people, typically a manager and a direct report, have a face-to-face meeting with no one else ...

Microspeak: Tell Mode / Ask Mode

July 22, 2014 Jul 22, 2014 07/22/14
Raymond Chen
As a product nears release, the rate of change slows down, and along the way, the ship room goes through stages known as Tell Mode and Ask Mode. In Tell Mode, any changes to the product do not require prior approval, but you are required to present your changes to the next ship room meeting and be prepared to explain and defend them. The ...

Microspeak: Brownbag

June 10, 2014 Jun 10, 2014 06/10/14
Raymond Chen
Remember, Microspeak is not merely for jargon exclusive to Microsoft, but it's jargon that you need to know. The term brownbag (always one word, accent on the first syllable) refers to a presentation given during lunch. The attendees are expected to bring their lunch to the meeting room and eat while they listen to the presentation. A ...

Microspeak: bar check

April 15, 2014 Apr 15, 2014 04/15/14
Raymond Chen
A bar check sounds like the sort of thing you receive at the end of a long evening of drinking, but that's not what a bar check is. Among the things that happen at ship room meetings is reviewing each bug that has a proposed fix and deciding whether to accept or reject the fix. Another thing that happens at ship room meetings is the bar ...

The case of the redirected standard handles that won't close even though the child process has exited (and a smidge of Microspeak: reduction)

October 18, 2013 Oct 18, 2013 10/18/13
Raymond Chen
A customer had a supervisor process whose job is to launch two threads. Each thread in turn launches a child process, let's call them A and B, each with redirected standard handles. They spins up separate threads to read from the child processes' stdout in order to avoid deadlocks. What they've found is that even though child ...