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This conflict between idealism and pragmatism makes me think of the difference between Google and Microsoft's engineering cultures. The attitude towards backwa
by narrator 10y ago
This conflict between idealism and pragmatism makes me think of the difference between Google and Microsoft's engineering cultures.
The attitude towards backward compatibility is a major difference between the engineering cultures at Google and Microsoft. Google relentlessly deprecates APIs while Microsoft supports things forever, warts and all.
Google's APIs are very idealistic. For example, Google Guice is a very idealistic dependency injection framework using and abusing the Java type system while Microsoft's APIs are very pragmatic and some are only slightly object oriented.
- SquareWheel 10y agoThis is how I've largely seen the divide between these two companies as well. There's pros and cons to both approaches. Personally I favor Google's approach to Microsoft's as I am not a fan of technical debt, but if I were an enterprise customer I might feel differently.
- pikzen 10y agoAs a developer, I much prefer Microsoft's approach. That way I don't have APIs pulled out, products being abandoned and services axed whenever Google feels like it. And let's not get started on the absolutely awful quality of APIs Google puts out.