"Use it or don't, but I don't get all the hate." At this point, MS hate is rather pointless, but the closest analogue is today's Apple hate (and to a lesser ex

"Use it or don't, but I don't get all the hate." At this point, MS hate is rather pointless, but the closest analogue is today's Apple hate (and to a lesser extent, Oracle/Java hate, and today's small but growing Amazon cloud hate). Microsoft was the king of the hill in the 90's through early 2000's, squashed small companies everywhere when they released competing products, threatening to sue IT shops (by NDA, no less!) that used Linux for questionable patent infringement, and the economics of the software biz led to many fine platforms (OS/2, Mac System 7+) getting second-class citizen status. Today, the equivalent is Apple squashing certain web standards by ignoring them, Amazon squashing competition by building a competing version on AWS, large employers only wanting Java or .NET experience, while Oracle successfully sues Google over Java copyrights, etc. These are all manifestations of the authoritarian tech paradigms and the herd mentality which enables them, both of which many people really dislike. It unfortunately devolves into identity politics quickly ("I can't believe you use that platform" / "I can't believe you program in that language") instead of objectively looking at the good/bad sides of the dominant player. On the other hand, riding the bandwagon side can reap many benefits. These days with mobile and cloud dominance it seems there is enough of a customer base for a few solid ecosystems rather than a single one.