Dave W Plummer (@davepl1968) / X

Dave W Plummer

16.3K posts

Dave W Plummer

@davepl1968

Hi! I'm Dave Plummer. You might remember me from such Windows components as Task Manager, Windows Pinball, Calc, ZIPFolders, Product Activation, etc. Cheers!

Joined June 2010

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103.5K

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Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
6h
Here's a topic list for my chat with Lex: 1:22 - First computer 7:00 - Dropping out of high school 14:41 - Joining Microsoft 16:53 - MS-DOS 20:05 - Windows 95 26:52 - The man behind Windows 31:48 - Debugging 37:05 - Task Manager 42:14 - 3D Pinball: Space Cadet 47:13 - Start menu
Lex Fridman
@lexfridman
Aug 30, 2025
Replying to @lexfridman
Here's the links for my conversation with Dave Plummer (@davepl1968): YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=HsLgZz… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast
18K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jul 23, 2025
I've been married 30 years. When we got married, we agreed that as the husband, I would make all the big decisions and my wife would make all the small decisions. It's worked out great! I'm just surprised there have never been any big decisions.
This post is unavailable.
8.3M
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jul 22, 2025
I'm so old I wrote that! That's assuming it's the Windows version, which is the one I worked on. The Win9x game, art, and original code, were done by Maxis/Cinematronics. I ported it to Windows NT, converted the x86 asm to C, made it work on RISC, and so on. Success has
Dave
@GamewithDave
Jul 22, 2025
Are you this old?
5.3M
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jul 16, 2025
I'm so old I worked on that dialog :-)
Dave
@GamewithDave
Jul 15, 2025
Are you this old?
2.1M
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jul 25, 2023
How I spent 1996: My boss wandered into my office and said "Hey Dave, do you want to rewrite pinball for Windows NT?". I said "Hell ya" and got paid to write and play pinball for two months... while listening to Soundgarden. And kudos to the original designers for a classic!
2M
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Mar 24, 2024
I wrote this Format dialog back on a rainy Thursday morning at Microsoft in late 1994, I think it was. We were porting the bajillion lines of code from the Windows95 user interface over to NT, and Format was just one of those areas where WindowsNT was different enough from
2.5M
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Feb 18, 2025
One of my favorite Microsoft interview questions was: "Why does a mirror invert the image horizontally but not vertically? Why are you backwards but not also upside down?"
1.9M
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jul 24, 2025
My goodness, he's right! South Park never attacks the left. Well, except for Barack Obama, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Moore, Rob Reiner, Alec Baldwin, Oprah Winfrey, Janet Reno, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates, Madonna, Barbara Streisand, Sean
Joey Salads
@JoeySalads
Jul 24, 2025
Fun fact: South Park has never mentioned, featured, or mocked Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Odd for a show that parodies reality.
741K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jul 23, 2025
Replying to @davepl1968
Full disclosure, I stole this my from father-in-law who told it to me as advice on my wedding day :-)
369K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jun 10, 2025
There, I fixed it! If you're going to do Vista, do it all the. way, I figure...
546K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Jun 16, 2025
I'm an immigrant that wrote important parts of Windows. Hope you can still sleep...
Gavin M. Wax
@GavinWax
Jun 15, 2025
Silicon Valley is a strategic national asset whose jobs should be legally reserved for U.S. citizens. It’s a matter of national security. This shouldn’t be controversial.
896K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Mar 27, 2024
This is me at Microsoft in 1994, posing with the dollar bill I won in a bet over the Windows 95 shell. I was working with a guy named Bob Day and a few other devs to port the Windows 95 user interface over to Windows NT. Even though a year of work would remain for Unicode
852K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
May 8, 2025
My first machine with a TB of RAM... I'm ready to learn Python!
503K
Dave W Plummer
@davepl1968
Oct 8, 2025
The story of FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8. If you're not the type to pay for your software, you probably know this key. What you might not know is that I worked on the first version of Windows Product Activation, and this was our first major "hack". And yet, it wasn't a
1.1M