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It's sad that such otherwise smart people choose to stay at Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't yet realize it, but the would really would be a better place if it were
by melted 11y ago
It's sad that such otherwise smart people choose to stay at Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't yet realize it, but the would really would be a better place if it were to die. They did a lot of interesting things over the years, but their view of the world is so fundamentally out of touch with what the world is today, that they can't help but lose mindshare. They're still quite strong, as there's no alternative to them on the desktop (for most people), but they never quite gained dominance on the server (and continue to further fuck it up by introducing more and more bizarre licensing arrangements), their development environments and APIs look like a bad joke, and most decent engineers would rather have their balls/ovaries removed than code for the Microsoft platform. Nearly a decade ago, when I actually did develop for Windows, I asked a fellow engineer who coded for Linux why he refused to admit how superior C# was to Java. He basically said that he is not interested in chaining himself to any given platform. In the years that followed, I saw just how right he was.
So my message to Joe and other solid folks like him: there are tons of opportunities outside MS campus. I know large companies tend to make you believe it's a barren desert out there, but it's simply not true, and it's especially not true now, when job market is starved for good talent. Go out there, make the world a better place. Let Microsoft ride into the sunset.
- bitJericho 11y agoIt's interesting to me because the way I see it the linux scene is too busy duplicating effort by making new init routines and loggers than making good user experiences and ms has evolved their flagship OS into something incredibly user focused and good to use.
- melted 11y agoYou're mistaking a few noobs for "the Linux scene". The actual Linux scene is basically running the world by now. Not even Microsoft can ignore this fact. In fact I suspect Microsoft will recognize just how shitty Windows is for most things they want to do in cloud, but not anytime soon.
- greggyb 11y agoYou realize Linux is a first class citizen in Azure VMs, don't you? Microsoft is not only Windows.
- melted 11y agoTry to compare performance of their Linux VMs against Amazon and Google, then come back and tell me if it's first class or not.
- MichaelGG 11y agoEh Azure's performance (and particularly perf/price) is way off in general. It's weird (the SSD model is just dumb). Windows VMs on Azure regularly get "lost" on reboot and require several resizes to come back. I've been using Azure for a couple of years and it still remains just, well, messy, to put it politely. I don't think it says anything about their stance on Linux that AWS and Google do a better job.
- melted 11y agoHow is it "first class" then if it's like 35% slower on CPU-bound workloads?
- slavak 11y agoIf the Windows VMs on Azure are just as slow then that's the textbook definition of "first-class citizen." Your point would only stand if Azure ran Windows VMs as-far-as or faster than their competition, but ran Linux VMs much slower.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> In fact I suspect Microsoft will recognize just how shitty Windows is for most things they want to do in cloud, but not anytime soon. They did when they used Linux servers to centralize all the Skype traffic: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...
- jMyles 11y agoHow does Android fit into this worldview?
- pjmlp 11y agoAndroid is a Java based OS that just happens to use the Linux kernel. Google could release Android 7 with another POSIX like kernel, using the same official NDK APIs and the only apps that would break are the ones using non public APIs.
- bitJericho 11y agoSwitched to Windows Phone 8 when my expensive android phone couldn't load a contact list quickly.
- pjmlp 11y agoThe world doesn't need yet another UNIX clone factory. Microsoft, alongside Apple, are the only companies left that still care about OS research.
- ocean3 11y agoHow come then new OS feel sluggish on slightly older system. You would assume with better know how it would run better(Me running latest mac osx on old mac book pro)
- stepanhruda 11y agoBecause they also care about selling new hardware.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoWhat's that have to do with OS research? You should look at Microsoft Research's pages if you want to judge them on R&D or innovation. They do a lot of great stuff. The Midori project pushes the envelope in tons of ways that you're not going to see in most FOSS communities. That's the value of having lots of bright people in one place & paid to stay focused on the goal over long periods. Another great example is their VerveOS work for highly-assured OS's: https://people.csail.mit.edu/jeanyang/papers/pldi117-yang.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/jeanyang/papers/pldi117-yang.pd... Xax for legacy code protection was clever, too: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72878/xax-osdi08.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72878/xax-osdi08.pdf
- melted 11y agoMidori is dead, so it doesn't push any envelopes. So the dude is reduced to essentially maintenance work on a 20 year old unstable pile of garbage. What "operating systems research" does Windows 10 actually represent? It's essentially Win 8 with a slightly tweaked UI and Cortana.
- alkonaut 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pikzen 11y ago> their development environments and APIs look like a bad joke I agree, cmd.exe is bad. Everything that doesn't require the command line is better in Windows land though. Visual Studio has nothing coming even close to it (CLion is getting there for C/C++ though), .NET has an amazing set of APIs and I wouldn't trade them for any other language's, Direct3D is actually a good API compared to the pile of crap that is OpenGL. Win32 is actually not that bad compared to the crap you have to deal with on Linux. For certain things, Windows is the superior alternative. However, if your job requires you to do JS/ruby/python/etc. then by all means, go with Linux/OSX, it is clearly better. But the integration of some tools and languages on Windows beats any other OS.
- anon4 11y agoHave you tried QtCreator? It is somewhat Qt-centric, but other than that it's an excellent IDE.
- melted 11y agoHuh? For the past several years I've been doing C++ development in Vim, with YouCompleteMe providing excellent code completion. Eclipse works pretty great for C++ too, especially for browsing code. Seems to me you haven't seriously worked in Linux. The only thing that's lacking is the debugger. Everything else is either the same (for eg Java) or an order of magnitude better. All non-ms programming languages are UNIX-first. They feel bolted-on when ported. And let us also not forget the complete freedom you have on UNIX systems. Want to spin up a VM or a dozen? Go right ahead, for free. Want your server to serve five hundred people? Go ahead, no need for extra licensing. Want dev setup for nearly any language under the sun? It's a one liner. And so on and so forth. Another benefit is, the lower level APIs are the same they were two decades ago, some are even older. And that API surface is much smaller. You basically learn them once, and they're good for life. Same with much of the tooling such as text editors, build systems, command line tools, and so on. Once you grok all this, there's _really_ no going back to ball and chain that is Windows.
- vvanders 11y agoYou lost me at saying eclipse is pretty great...
- wolfgke 11y ago> there are tons of opportunities outside MS campus. [...] Go out there, make the world a better place. Let Microsoft ride into the sunset. Where are opportunities outside the MS campus for people who love research about operating systems and/or programming languages (besides academia)?