5 ms·

Lets keep in mind exactly what Microsoft does. They throw a ton of money and developers at some product and make a lot of noise about how this is their next big

by geuis 16y ago

Lets keep in mind exactly what Microsoft does. They throw a ton of money and developers at some product and make a lot of noise about how this is their next big thing. Then they seem to completely or mostly drop it and they're off to the next thing. My fear and source of consternation is their sudden "love of html5". Yeah, they're currently doing good on getting IE up to spec. Even though its still not 100% there, but that's ok since its in beta. When its officially released, it will matter then. What I firmly believe is going to happen is that IE9 is going to get released and will get the occasional security patch, but they're going to stop doing major development on it and again the MS browser will stagnate for years again. So everyone should stop getting excited when Microsoft says they're doing this one thing or another. Apple keeps its cards close to the chest and stays focused on what they're building. Microsoft is the guy at the table that always goes 'Hey guys, wow look at this King/Ace I have! Now look at my pocket Queens!'

johnzabroski 16y ago
You need a more complete history of Microsoft to know the full story. Back in the early DirectX days (1996), Microsoft was working on a technology called Chrome Effects that was intended to compete with VRML as the world's ultimate "Networkable Graphics" format. This history is covered in books such as <em>Renegades of the Empire</em>. This was stuff from back when Michael Abrash worked at Microsoft!
- vetinari 16y ago
  From cca the same time - remember Fahrenheit?
- zmonkeyz 16y ago
  I remember reading about that in Boot (lol) magazine. At the time they said it would run on a 300mhz P2 and I was floored that it would take so much processing power. :)
projectileboy 16y ago
Right on. This is exactly why I started to actively avoid consulting gigs where I'd have to work with Microsoft technologies - whatever knowledge you gain has a shelf life measured in weeks, because they're constantly on to the next shiny trinket.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  More than any other software dev I know, they seem to constantly be trumpeting that "this is a complete ground-up rewrite!" as if that were a good thing every time.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  That's odd. It seems like most of the stuff I learned 20 years ago is still useful.
  - vetinari 16y ago
    Strange. 20 years ago, the the hot Microsoft technologies were MS-DOS and Windows 3.0. Are you sure, that your knowledge of Ralf Brown's Interrupt List and VGA registers is still what current market demands?
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      OK, 17 years ago. I learned Windows NT internals, and the Windows message pump, etec... Almost all of it still is useful today. Probably the only big discontinuity has been .NET, which has been going strong now for about 8 years. All the technology is pretty much incremental built on top of those two. I find it more daunting to keep with video game controllers than I do software development technology, whether on or off the MS stack. Not that I know everything, but I've never felt like I'd wasted my time learning anything related to software tools.
      - vetinari 16y ago
        There were some Microsoft technologies, that had better shelf life than other. NT, WinAPI, COM definitely belong there.
raganwald 16y ago
Look closely at the software landscape. The companies that do well are the ones who rely least on big companies and don't have to spend all their cycles catching up and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on Windows XP. The companies who stumble are the ones who spend too much time reading tea leaves to figure out the future direction of Microsoft. People get worried about .NET and decide to rewrite their whole architecture for .NET because they think they have to. Microsoft is shooting at you, and it's just cover fire so that they can move forward and you can't, because this is how the game is played, Bubby. Are you going to support Hailstorm? SOAP? RDF? Are you supporting it because your customers need it, or because someone is firing at you and you feel like you have to respond? Joel Spolsky, "Fire and Motion," 2002 http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html
- pragmatic 16y ago
  Ironic isn't it? Most (if not all) of Joel's products are built on Microsoft technology.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    I would say being so immersed in the ecosystem makes his criticisms stronger.
bradhe 16y ago
There's more to this "strategy" than a browser. Don't forget they have a huge suite of tools for authoring web content, for instance.

by geuis 16y ago

johnzabroski 16y ago

You need a more complete history of Microsoft to know the full story. Back in the early DirectX days (1996), Microsoft was working on a technology called Chrome Effects that was intended to compete with VRML as the world's ultimate "Networkable Graphics" format. This history is covered in books such as <em>Renegades of the Empire</em>. This was stuff from back when Michael Abrash worked at Microsoft!

vetinari 16y ago
From cca the same time - remember Fahrenheit?
zmonkeyz 16y ago
I remember reading about that in Boot (lol) magazine. At the time they said it would run on a 300mhz P2 and I was floored that it would take so much processing power. :)

projectileboy 16y ago

Right on. This is exactly why I started to actively avoid consulting gigs where I'd have to work with Microsoft technologies - whatever knowledge you gain has a shelf life measured in weeks, because they're constantly on to the next shiny trinket.

glhaynes 16y ago
More than any other software dev I know, they seem to constantly be trumpeting that "this is a complete ground-up rewrite!" as if that were a good thing every time.
kenjackson 16y ago
That's odd. It seems like most of the stuff I learned 20 years ago is still useful.
- vetinari 16y ago
  Strange. 20 years ago, the the hot Microsoft technologies were MS-DOS and Windows 3.0. Are you sure, that your knowledge of Ralf Brown's Interrupt List and VGA registers is still what current market demands?
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    OK, 17 years ago. I learned Windows NT internals, and the Windows message pump, etec... Almost all of it still is useful today. Probably the only big discontinuity has been .NET, which has been going strong now for about 8 years. All the technology is pretty much incremental built on top of those two. I find it more daunting to keep with video game controllers than I do software development technology, whether on or off the MS stack. Not that I know everything, but I've never felt like I'd wasted my time learning anything related to software tools.
    - vetinari 16y ago
      There were some Microsoft technologies, that had better shelf life than other. NT, WinAPI, COM definitely belong there.

raganwald 16y ago

Look closely at the software landscape. The companies that do well are the ones who rely least on big companies and don't have to spend all their cycles catching up and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on Windows XP. The companies who stumble are the ones who spend too much time reading tea leaves to figure out the future direction of Microsoft. People get worried about .NET and decide to rewrite their whole architecture for .NET because they think they have to. Microsoft is shooting at you, and it's just cover fire so that they can move forward and you can't, because this is how the game is played, Bubby. Are you going to support Hailstorm? SOAP? RDF? Are you supporting it because your customers need it, or because someone is firing at you and you feel like you have to respond? Joel Spolsky, "Fire and Motion," 2002 http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

pragmatic 16y ago
Ironic isn't it? Most (if not all) of Joel's products are built on Microsoft technology.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  I would say being so immersed in the ecosystem makes his criticisms stronger.

bradhe 16y ago

There's more to this "strategy" than a browser. Don't forget they have a huge suite of tools for authoring web content, for instance.