4 ms·

> At Microsoft, the core of our vision is “Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform” This is what you want us to believe. But this makes little sense: if you reall

> At Microsoft, the core of our vision is “Any Developer, Any App, Any Platform” This is what you want us to believe. But this makes little sense: if you really believed in "any platform", this would go against your the interest of the company (Windows sales), and therefore also against the interest of shareholders. I liked you more when you didn't pretend.

DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
DevDiv stil operates as its own business - and the profit margins for licenses for Visual Studio (and Azure subscriptions) is higher than Windows. The bulk of Microsoft’s Windows license fees come from OEMs anyway.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Also, don't forget that DevDiv is the oldest Microsoft, maybe the truest Microsoft. Microsoft's first products were all programming languages/environments. If Microsoft's DevDiv should outlast Windows, that may be poetic.
asdsa5325 9y ago
They honestly aren't pretending. Linux bash shell is on windows now, Azure runs on linux servers, etc.
Analemma_ 9y ago
> this would go against your the interest of the company (Windows sales) This would've been an insightful comment in 2007, but the world has changed. Microsoft makes its money on Azure now, and that means supporting developers everywhere. For crying out loud, post-reorg Windows doesn't even have someone reporting directly to the CEO anymore.
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  If that was true then WPF and WinForms would have been part of .NET Core. If that was true then Microsoft wouldn't be pushing DirectX 12.
  - Const-me 9y ago
    > WPF and WinForms would have been part of .NET Core I’d love them to be, but unfortunately there’re technical reasons for that. Both depend on too many Windows components. WinForms is really a thin wrapper around Win32 windows and GDI+. WPF relies heavily on DirectX 9. For mobile platforms, Microsoft offers Xamarin for GUI. > Microsoft wouldn't be pushing DirectX 12. Again, there’re technical reasons. For the same reasons Apple is pushing Metal, and Khronos is pushing Vulkan, all 3 are conceptually quite similar.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
      > Again, there’re technical reasons. That's interesting. For one, MS has a long history of using DirectX to force people to buy the next version of Windows. Second, DirectX 12 seems to deliver uneven results when benchmarked against DirectX 11. Some go even as far as say it's just plain worse than the previous version. Nevertheless, MS will do what they can to make people switch to Windows 10, no matter what people really want, and what their personal and business needs are.
      - Const-me 9y ago
        > DirectX 12 seems to deliver uneven results when benchmarked against DirectX 11. Same applies to Vulkan. https://www.anandtech.com/show/10047/quick-look-vulkan-performance-on-the-talos-principle https://www.anandtech.com/show/10047/quick-look-vulkan-perfo... https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks-return-vulkan-vs-opengl/2/ https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks-return-vulkan-vs-ope... And that’s understandable. If you’ll just port a DirectX 11 game engine to 12 (or an OpenGL game engine to Vulkan), without drastic redesign of renderer, you’ll unlikely gain huge performance improvement, if any at all, compared to the older technology. The renderer need to be designed quite differently to benefit from these new multithreading focused low overhead GPU APIs, be in VK, DX12 or Metal.
        dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
        Except that it shouldn't be related to Windows 10 at all. MS did the same with DirectX10, forcing people to change their systems to Vista (for some reason they call it an "upgrade"). Eventually it turned out DirectX 10 actually can be run on Windows XP and it was just a ruse on the part of Microsoft to make people buy Vista.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  The fact that they make money on Azure made them do some Linux(kernel)-related work. It made them join Linux International. But it's because they had no choice, not because they wanted to or suddenly stopped believing in vendor lock-in. If they want to be competitive, they have to offer easy migration options from other cloud providers (Azure Migrate). What is everyone else running? Linux. So Microsoft has to do it, too. What determines popularity? To a large extent, winning the hearts and minds of developers. MS always understood this. As developers changed, MS needed to change the way they talk to them, that's it.
royjacobs 9y ago
It's a shame that this is the kind of comment that is posted on what could be a genuinely decent tool for solving a problem that is still not solved for C and C++.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  I like the tool, really. I don't know why they didn't choose to support Conan, but I guess they had a good reason to create their own tool from scratch. On the other hand, I've lived long enough to see the same tricks played my MS and not to trust them with anything. This "any platform" seems particularly double-faced when Linux is almost 30 years old but you still have to install it after Windows in multiple-system setup because Windows doesn't believe any other system could exist.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Because many in the community dislike the dependency on Python. C++17 is powerful and user friendly enough for writing such a tool.

DaiPlusPlus 9y ago

DevDiv stil operates as its own business - and the profit margins for licenses for Visual Studio (and Azure subscriptions) is higher than Windows. The bulk of Microsoft’s Windows license fees come from OEMs anyway.

WorldMaker 9y ago
Also, don't forget that DevDiv is the oldest Microsoft, maybe the truest Microsoft. Microsoft's first products were all programming languages/environments. If Microsoft's DevDiv should outlast Windows, that may be poetic.

asdsa5325 9y ago

They honestly aren't pretending. Linux bash shell is on windows now, Azure runs on linux servers, etc.

Analemma_ 9y ago

> this would go against your the interest of the company (Windows sales) This would've been an insightful comment in 2007, but the world has changed. Microsoft makes its money on Azure now, and that means supporting developers everywhere. For crying out loud, post-reorg Windows doesn't even have someone reporting directly to the CEO anymore.

Nullabillity 9y ago
If that was true then WPF and WinForms would have been part of .NET Core. If that was true then Microsoft wouldn't be pushing DirectX 12.
- Const-me 9y ago
  > WPF and WinForms would have been part of .NET Core I’d love them to be, but unfortunately there’re technical reasons for that. Both depend on too many Windows components. WinForms is really a thin wrapper around Win32 windows and GDI+. WPF relies heavily on DirectX 9. For mobile platforms, Microsoft offers Xamarin for GUI. > Microsoft wouldn't be pushing DirectX 12. Again, there’re technical reasons. For the same reasons Apple is pushing Metal, and Khronos is pushing Vulkan, all 3 are conceptually quite similar.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
    > Again, there’re technical reasons. That's interesting. For one, MS has a long history of using DirectX to force people to buy the next version of Windows. Second, DirectX 12 seems to deliver uneven results when benchmarked against DirectX 11. Some go even as far as say it's just plain worse than the previous version. Nevertheless, MS will do what they can to make people switch to Windows 10, no matter what people really want, and what their personal and business needs are.
    - Const-me 9y ago
      > DirectX 12 seems to deliver uneven results when benchmarked against DirectX 11. Same applies to Vulkan. https://www.anandtech.com/show/10047/quick-look-vulkan-performance-on-the-talos-principle https://www.anandtech.com/show/10047/quick-look-vulkan-perfo... https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks-return-vulkan-vs-opengl/2/ https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks-return-vulkan-vs-ope... And that’s understandable. If you’ll just port a DirectX 11 game engine to 12 (or an OpenGL game engine to Vulkan), without drastic redesign of renderer, you’ll unlikely gain huge performance improvement, if any at all, compared to the older technology. The renderer need to be designed quite differently to benefit from these new multithreading focused low overhead GPU APIs, be in VK, DX12 or Metal.
      - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
        Except that it shouldn't be related to Windows 10 at all. MS did the same with DirectX10, forcing people to change their systems to Vista (for some reason they call it an "upgrade"). Eventually it turned out DirectX 10 actually can be run on Windows XP and it was just a ruse on the part of Microsoft to make people buy Vista.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
The fact that they make money on Azure made them do some Linux(kernel)-related work. It made them join Linux International. But it's because they had no choice, not because they wanted to or suddenly stopped believing in vendor lock-in. If they want to be competitive, they have to offer easy migration options from other cloud providers (Azure Migrate). What is everyone else running? Linux. So Microsoft has to do it, too. What determines popularity? To a large extent, winning the hearts and minds of developers. MS always understood this. As developers changed, MS needed to change the way they talk to them, that's it.

royjacobs 9y ago

It's a shame that this is the kind of comment that is posted on what could be a genuinely decent tool for solving a problem that is still not solved for C and C++.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
I like the tool, really. I don't know why they didn't choose to support Conan, but I guess they had a good reason to create their own tool from scratch. On the other hand, I've lived long enough to see the same tricks played my MS and not to trust them with anything. This "any platform" seems particularly double-faced when Linux is almost 30 years old but you still have to install it after Windows in multiple-system setup because Windows doesn't believe any other system could exist.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Because many in the community dislike the dependency on Python. C++17 is powerful and user friendly enough for writing such a tool.