One of Microsoft’s smartest on Channel 9

by on March 3, 2006

Don’t take my word about it, but when I talk with developers inside Microsoft (and outside, truth be told) about who they look up to the most, Jim Gray’s name invariably comes up. Here’s a video of him on the Behind the Code show. I was in the audience, it was a real honor. That guy has more brain cells than the rest of us, I’m pretty convinced (and he’s a darn nice guy too).

  • Innocent Bystander
    Gray is a smart guy. He wrote THE book on transaction processing - literally.

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558601902/104...

    MS has a lot of really high powered people in their labs. I'm just not seeing their contributions making it into the products though. Perhaps MS is the new Xerox inventing cool stuff but too busy with the current cash cow to ship any of it.
  • One of the highest highlights of my 8+ years at Microsoft is working with Jim Gray to develop a proposal for a huge (~300TB) database solution for a customer. Jim is not only the smartest person I know, but he's also one of the nicest and most humble -- definitely a very rare bird.
  • A few years ago I stumbled across something he'd written on generating sample data (something you'd need if you're dealing with TB sized databases, I guess). I e-mailed him out of the blue asking him for the code. I had no idea who he was. He e-mailed me right back with the code and some explanation. What I nice guy, I thought...

    Since then, I've learned what a bright and likely extremely busy person he is, and I'm amazed that he took the time to to help me out.
  • Tons of stuff have made it out of MS Research into products.

    http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/pastpres...

    This is actually only a small part of the list -- there are dozens and dozens of smaller tech transfers n top of this. and there's a lot more coming in Office 2007, Windows Vista, and the other products in the works.
  • Mike
    Guys, you are watching a starification system. Make sure to understand the consequences.
  • I, too, am a long-time admirer of Jim Gray's work.

    These videos have a high production content, but appear costly and time-consuming to produce. From my related (Anders Hejlsberg) blog item:

    "The "Behind the Code" series appears to be an enormous resource consumer, at least compared with the traditional hand-held sessions conducted by Robert Scobel and his colleagues. This one-hour episode required(?) a 27-person staff: Producer, co-producer, director, line producer, floor manager, technical director, lighting director, gaffer, grip, audio mixer, two audio assistants, four cameramen, prop master, video (switcher?), engineer (for ?), tape operator, makeup person, script supervisor, media processor, editor, title designer, audio post (producer), and field unit camerman. The production overhead might explain why an interview taped "five weeks before PDC" wasn't posted to the Channel 9 lineup until February 1, 2006. I didn't discover the existence of the interview until I wrote the post for the "Behind the Code" Jim Gray interview."

    --rj
  • I was lucky enough to be standing alone in the Digipede booth at PDC when Jim Gray walked up. We had been hoping he'd stop by--obviously, he's a luminary in the distributed processing area.

    I gave him a demo, showing him our programming model (distributed .NET objects). Not only did he "get it" right away, but he started thinking much bigger than I ever had. He remarked that our programming model is not only uniquely suited to making many machines work together, but also for allowing a developer to take advantage of a 4-, 8-, 16-, or 32- core machine (he takes it for granted that those will be on our desktops within a matter of a few years).

    It was a great point, and his brilliance shone through. I work with this subject every single day, and yet he saw a 5-minute demo, groked it, and had a blinding insight.

    You said it right, Robert. That guys has more brain cells than the rest of us!
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