ZIP files on Windows prompted the employee to buy a Corvette

A former Microsoft employee recently shared an interesting story about how an idea from one of his programs became a feature that still exists today in the Windows environment, used by millions of users daily.

Dave Plummer He is a former Microsoft employee, and has worked for years on developing various features for the operating system. However, although he worked for Microsoft, Plummer also developed software focused on this system, one of which was VisualZip.

At a time when Windows was very different, Plummer developed VisualZip in 1993 as a way to open compressed documents in the Windows 95 interface. At that time, Windows 95 was still in development, but Plummer was already working on VisualZIP as a way to anticipate the arrival of the new system .

The program was very simple, and allowed you to open ZIP files directly from the Windows 95 interface, which at the time was considerably more complex.

One day, Plummer would receive a phone call from Microsoft interested in purchasing the project. Faced with the choice of continuing to develop VisualZIP against a multi-million dollar company or selling his software, he chose the latter.

Since Windows 95, this has allowed users to open ZIP files directly within the system, without having to resort to third-party software to do so. Plummer says that, even today, ZIP support is very simple, but it works for most users.

The engineer also revealed that with the profits from the sale, he will have invested in the purchase of a 1994 Chevrolet Corvette LT1, which will become his “dream” car.

Plummer also criticized the fact that Microsoft apparently forgot to optimize the code to open ZIP documents. Still in Windows 11, the engineer states that the functionality is slow because Microsoft hasn't updated the code in over 25 years, to the point that it's not even possible to take advantage of the multiple cores currently found in modern processors — and that in 1993, it was rare to find .

However, the function is acceptable for anyone who just wants to regularly open compressed files on the system. It all started with a simple program, which eventually led to the purchase of a sports car.