While he might blame an outburst on the frustration of the moment, Cutler acted according to a script written long ago, when his father stubbornly refused to show pride in his achievements. “What Dave missed as a young man was a dad who could tell him: Dave, you’ve done well. Relax,” said Cutler’s high school football coach, Larry Churches. Neil Cutler endowed his son with a desire to win the respect and admiration of others through competition. “Whatever Dave was doing, he had to prove he did it better than anyone,” Churches said. Even idle pleasures fell prey to Cutler’s need to outdo others. “If you have a father who says you’ve done well, you don’t have to keep proving it, but Dave was always proving it to his dad.”

The making of NT is at once a primer on software, a portrait of a community of programmers and a gritty melodrama about the perilous task of managing complexity in an age of information. ... And writing good code is increasingly the work of large teams. Yet such teams often sink into mediocrity because their size alone can breed bureaucracy and sterility. The challenge for every large team is to organize its diverse talents while encouraging leadership and flexibility.