Showing results for Microspeak - The Old New Thing

Aug 5, 2014
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Microspeak: 1 – 1 is not zero

Raymond Chen
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 prese...

OtherMicrospeak
Jul 22, 2014
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Microspeak: Tell Mode / Ask Mode

Raymond Chen
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 purpose o...

OtherMicrospeak
Jun 10, 2014
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Microspeak: Brownbag

Raymond Chen
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 brownbag co...

Non-ComputerMicrospeak
Apr 15, 2014
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Microspeak: bar check

Raymond Chen
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 check: Th...

OtherMicrospeak
Oct 18, 2013
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The case of the redirected standard handles that won't close even though the child process has exited (and a smidge of Microspeak: reduction)

Raymond Chen
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 process&nbs...

CodeMicrospeak
Aug 20, 2013
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Microspeak: The train

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Hop on board, don't be late, or you'll have to catch the next one.

OtherMicrospeak
Jul 16, 2013
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Microspeak: Landing, especially the heated kind

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Work on Windows occurs in several different branches of the source code, and changes in one branch propagate to other branches. When talking about a feature or other task becoming visible in a branch, the preferred jargon word at Microsoft is landing. In its purest form: We expect the feature to land in the trunk early next week. The term land...

OtherMicrospeak
Jun 18, 2013
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Microspeak: to family well

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you hang out with designers, you may hear the word family used as a verb, usually with the adverb well. The old icons now look dated and do not family well with the Web site. We renamed the feature from Auto Shape to Instant Shape so that it families well with other features like Instant Color. The authenticity certificate on the side of the...

OtherMicrospeak