3 ms·

So Microsoft is still mediocre security-wise, despite all of those people claiming the company has been reinvented? I can belive the reinvented claim (that's t

So Microsoft is still mediocre security-wise, despite all of those people claiming the company has been reinvented? I can belive the reinvented claim (that's the kind of thing a new, good CEO can influence), but quality goes very deep, into each employee. Any one hire can screw up fatally. It takes a lot of hard work to build a security conscious culture/company hierarchy. (Edit: Hello Redmond people!)

nebabyte 10y ago
Not just the people, but the structure. You can't just change the head and assume the body will change itself. If aspects of design and execution stay the same, you're not magically going to build better QA or better-thought-through systems/architecture because "new face". It's far safer to operate on the assumption that MS is just through-and-through incompetent at this point than try and pinpoint the cause of any one problem in a long history of them. I gave up on them around the mid-IE days (think I might've been particularly miffed when they scrapped the Courier concept) but I haven't looked back and haven't regretted it since.
- johansch 10y ago
  Exactly. Maybe in 20 years they'll be competent when 95% of the current code has been retired but until then: Sayonara. (Well, I doubt it, but there's at least a theoretical chance, right?)
  - nebabyte 10y ago
    I dunno, I'm inclined to agree with your first impulse - after all, the assumption of "well it's been a while, surely they've gotten their shit together by now?" would be the reason one would think they'd be on the ball today :P If the code's retired, it could just as easily be because some inferior process led by devs without the proper guiding vision just swapped it out for some overengineered platform they 'know how to code in better' that's being hailed as the future of such-and-such that doesn't reimplement nearly as completely or robustly features that people had come to expect, and is less stable to boot. ("Secure time" [0] anyone?) But hey, just spitballing here. MS is like the Hammer Industries of our world; never rely on Hammertech. Though I guess as long as they keep enough enterprise dinosaur contracts they'll keep limping on like Hammer too. shrug [0] https://redd.it/61o8p0 https://redd.it/61o8p0
andrewguenther 10y ago
You're being downvoted because this is a gross oversimplification of what happened as well as a completely non-productive comment, not because everyone on HN works for Microsoft.

nebabyte 10y ago

Not just the people, but the structure. You can't just change the head and assume the body will change itself. If aspects of design and execution stay the same, you're not magically going to build better QA or better-thought-through systems/architecture because "new face". It's far safer to operate on the assumption that MS is just through-and-through incompetent at this point than try and pinpoint the cause of any one problem in a long history of them. I gave up on them around the mid-IE days (think I might've been particularly miffed when they scrapped the Courier concept) but I haven't looked back and haven't regretted it since.

johansch 10y ago
Exactly. Maybe in 20 years they'll be competent when 95% of the current code has been retired but until then: Sayonara. (Well, I doubt it, but there's at least a theoretical chance, right?)
- nebabyte 10y ago
  I dunno, I'm inclined to agree with your first impulse - after all, the assumption of "well it's been a while, surely they've gotten their shit together by now?" would be the reason one would think they'd be on the ball today :P If the code's retired, it could just as easily be because some inferior process led by devs without the proper guiding vision just swapped it out for some overengineered platform they 'know how to code in better' that's being hailed as the future of such-and-such that doesn't reimplement nearly as completely or robustly features that people had come to expect, and is less stable to boot. ("Secure time" [0] anyone?) But hey, just spitballing here. MS is like the Hammer Industries of our world; never rely on Hammertech. Though I guess as long as they keep enough enterprise dinosaur contracts they'll keep limping on like Hammer too. shrug [0] https://redd.it/61o8p0 https://redd.it/61o8p0

andrewguenther 10y ago

You're being downvoted because this is a gross oversimplification of what happened as well as a completely non-productive comment, not because everyone on HN works for Microsoft.