12 ms·

Or you know, it could just focus on its core competencies and be good (great?) at what it does. They don't need to eat the world to provide a positive impact to

Or you know, it could just focus on its core competencies and be good (great?) at what it does. They don't need to eat the world to provide a positive impact to it...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bluGill 7y ago
MS's core competency has always been developers. IBM called Microsoft for BASIC back in the day because without MS BASIC their computer was DOA to a lot of potential customers.
- rectang 7y ago
  > MS's core competency has always been developers. As a developer who still has to work very hard to forgive MS for all the pain IE6 put me through a decade ago, this grates on my ears, even though I understand that it might be true in the abstract. Classically, MS has been good to developers who agree to be chained to their platform, but has made life extremely difficult for developers who want or need to be platform independent. Platform vendors and developers will forever have conflicting interests.
  - sundvor 7y ago
    A lot has happened since IE6.. I think it might be time to move on. Eg their main focus for .net Core has been multi platform - ie the last 3-4 years! Visual Studio Code. And on browsers they are building what will probably be a better Chromium than Google's Chrome, in the new Edge.
    - rectang 7y ago
      I don't think developers should place too much trust in any platform vendor. (Apple and Swift, Apple and Metal, Google and AMP, Google and Dart, Amazon and AWS... the list is endless.) Their interests are fundamentally at odds with ours. Platform vendors benefit when developers are locked in by network effects. Developers maximize their value when their skills are transferable. And that goes for Github and its package registry. Concentration of power is problematic.
      - rswail 7y ago
        Except that in the commerical software world, you can't stay independent with "purity". The costs of supporting multiple cloud providers is still a cost. K8S, Docker, Pulumi, Packer are starting to reduce that interoperability gap, but it's still a friction. I've moved to .NET on Ubuntu for our current project (I'm an Engineer Manager/Architect, but the team is C#). It's been remarkably smooth and low friction. So it's a balance, the interests of a platform vendor are of course that you stay on their platform. But currently there's enough competition that it's still a buyers market. AWS is getting a bit too powerful, Azure is doing a good job of keeping MS shops in the MS world, but GCP is disappointing.
        rectang 7y ago
        In the abstract, what would best serve developer interests is if platforms are as compatible as possible, especially in their superficial details. That minimizes switching costs, both in terms of what it takes to port real software from one platform to another, and in terms of what a developer must learn to apply what they already know when working with a new platform. Taken to an ad absurdum conclusion, developers want all platform vendors to coordinate in order to minimize switching costs. Of course there are lots of good reasons such a level of coordination will never be realized. :) In the meantime, there will always be efforts to create adapters which generalize the interfaces of multiple platforms and put them behind a common wrapper interface. But while such interoperability efforts serve developer interests, they work against the interest of vendors in encouraging platform lock-in. The dynamic isn't pure in terms of real product offerings because vendors also understand that portability provides value to developers, and so some vendors will provide at least some portability in order to differentiate themselves. But I maintain that the fundamental interest structure is unchanging.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - herewulf 7y ago
      All Trojan horses.
  - philliphaydon 7y ago
    Yet MS introduced us to Ajax and CSS Grids.
  - ksec 7y ago
    >As a developer who still has to work very hard to forgive MS for all the pain IE6 put me through a decade ago, this grates on my ears, even though I understand that it might be true in the abstract. Yes, Active X, Windows, Java etc, and god knows how many awful things they did I cant remember them all. But years later Bill Gate decide to donate his wealth to good cause. Not only is this not a PR / Marketing Stunt, he is actually using his time and energy running it. That alone halves whatever hatred I have had. Ever since they lost the Smartphone OS race ( if you consider they were even part of it ), I don't consider M$ a monopoly or threat any more. And given the amount of Good things they have done since new CEO took helm, WSL, and now WSL2, VS Code, .Net Fully Open Sources with MIT license, ditching IE ( God that feels good ) , Direct X RT, along with lots of Research put out, I think it is worth reevaluating that hatred against M$ we once had. We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.
    - rswail 7y ago
      Back in the 80s, IBM was evil, Apple and Microsoft were good. I have an "I HATE IBM" badge from a very early computer show. MS was mainly known for its languages and its apps, more than the OS. IBM PCs still came with CP/M or PCDOS (MSDOS). Then when Windows 3 came out, MS started to act like IBM but on steroids, thinking they owned the "stack" (as it was). OS/2 was the last attempt to extract the "PC compatible" world from the Windows domination. Then IE6 and ActiveX ensconced MS in the enterprise. What used to be "you won't get fired for buying IBM" became "you won't get fired for buying MS because there's no choice". The onset of the web and competitors in MS's dominant space (well except for apps, Office still rules the world) and the demise of the Ballmer years (especially the death of their mobile/phone ecology) means that MS is now actually doing what IBM did about 15 years ago when they adopted Linux. To quote Vonnegut, "So it goes".
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Microsoft started acting like IBM from the moment the DOS licensing was agreed with IBM. Incredibly naive on IBM's part, or perhaps they simply expected to sell so few machines it wouldn't matter. After all the first PC was deliberately crippled to stay away from more expensive IBM kit. MS were acting like mini IBM throughout the 80s, and before the mid 80s had very much gained a negative reputation globally. It was against Microsoft, not IBM, that was the usual target of complaint when the first AT clones were coming out - 84? 85? I think Windows 1 was about the same time. Certainly enough of a reputation to be amazed they were still collaborating with IBM to produce the first OS/2, again around the mid 80s.

Or you know, it could just focus on its core competencies and be good (great?) at what it does. They don't need to eat the world to provide a positive impact to it...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bluGill 7y ago

MS's core competency has always been developers. IBM called Microsoft for BASIC back in the day because without MS BASIC their computer was DOA to a lot of potential customers.

rectang 7y ago
> MS's core competency has always been developers. As a developer who still has to work very hard to forgive MS for all the pain IE6 put me through a decade ago, this grates on my ears, even though I understand that it might be true in the abstract. Classically, MS has been good to developers who agree to be chained to their platform, but has made life extremely difficult for developers who want or need to be platform independent. Platform vendors and developers will forever have conflicting interests.
- sundvor 7y ago
  A lot has happened since IE6.. I think it might be time to move on. Eg their main focus for .net Core has been multi platform - ie the last 3-4 years! Visual Studio Code. And on browsers they are building what will probably be a better Chromium than Google's Chrome, in the new Edge.
  - rectang 7y ago
    I don't think developers should place too much trust in any platform vendor. (Apple and Swift, Apple and Metal, Google and AMP, Google and Dart, Amazon and AWS... the list is endless.) Their interests are fundamentally at odds with ours. Platform vendors benefit when developers are locked in by network effects. Developers maximize their value when their skills are transferable. And that goes for Github and its package registry. Concentration of power is problematic.
    - rswail 7y ago
      Except that in the commerical software world, you can't stay independent with "purity". The costs of supporting multiple cloud providers is still a cost. K8S, Docker, Pulumi, Packer are starting to reduce that interoperability gap, but it's still a friction. I've moved to .NET on Ubuntu for our current project (I'm an Engineer Manager/Architect, but the team is C#). It's been remarkably smooth and low friction. So it's a balance, the interests of a platform vendor are of course that you stay on their platform. But currently there's enough competition that it's still a buyers market. AWS is getting a bit too powerful, Azure is doing a good job of keeping MS shops in the MS world, but GCP is disappointing.
      - rectang 7y ago
        In the abstract, what would best serve developer interests is if platforms are as compatible as possible, especially in their superficial details. That minimizes switching costs, both in terms of what it takes to port real software from one platform to another, and in terms of what a developer must learn to apply what they already know when working with a new platform. Taken to an ad absurdum conclusion, developers want all platform vendors to coordinate in order to minimize switching costs. Of course there are lots of good reasons such a level of coordination will never be realized. :) In the meantime, there will always be efforts to create adapters which generalize the interfaces of multiple platforms and put them behind a common wrapper interface. But while such interoperability efforts serve developer interests, they work against the interest of vendors in encouraging platform lock-in. The dynamic isn't pure in terms of real product offerings because vendors also understand that portability provides value to developers, and so some vendors will provide at least some portability in order to differentiate themselves. But I maintain that the fundamental interest structure is unchanging.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - herewulf 7y ago
    All Trojan horses.
- philliphaydon 7y ago
  Yet MS introduced us to Ajax and CSS Grids.
- ksec 7y ago
  >As a developer who still has to work very hard to forgive MS for all the pain IE6 put me through a decade ago, this grates on my ears, even though I understand that it might be true in the abstract. Yes, Active X, Windows, Java etc, and god knows how many awful things they did I cant remember them all. But years later Bill Gate decide to donate his wealth to good cause. Not only is this not a PR / Marketing Stunt, he is actually using his time and energy running it. That alone halves whatever hatred I have had. Ever since they lost the Smartphone OS race ( if you consider they were even part of it ), I don't consider M$ a monopoly or threat any more. And given the amount of Good things they have done since new CEO took helm, WSL, and now WSL2, VS Code, .Net Fully Open Sources with MIT license, ditching IE ( God that feels good ) , Direct X RT, along with lots of Research put out, I think it is worth reevaluating that hatred against M$ we once had. We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.
  - rswail 7y ago
    Back in the 80s, IBM was evil, Apple and Microsoft were good. I have an "I HATE IBM" badge from a very early computer show. MS was mainly known for its languages and its apps, more than the OS. IBM PCs still came with CP/M or PCDOS (MSDOS). Then when Windows 3 came out, MS started to act like IBM but on steroids, thinking they owned the "stack" (as it was). OS/2 was the last attempt to extract the "PC compatible" world from the Windows domination. Then IE6 and ActiveX ensconced MS in the enterprise. What used to be "you won't get fired for buying IBM" became "you won't get fired for buying MS because there's no choice". The onset of the web and competitors in MS's dominant space (well except for apps, Office still rules the world) and the demise of the Ballmer years (especially the death of their mobile/phone ecology) means that MS is now actually doing what IBM did about 15 years ago when they adopted Linux. To quote Vonnegut, "So it goes".
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Microsoft started acting like IBM from the moment the DOS licensing was agreed with IBM. Incredibly naive on IBM's part, or perhaps they simply expected to sell so few machines it wouldn't matter. After all the first PC was deliberately crippled to stay away from more expensive IBM kit. MS were acting like mini IBM throughout the 80s, and before the mid 80s had very much gained a negative reputation globally. It was against Microsoft, not IBM, that was the usual target of complaint when the first AT clones were coming out - 84? 85? I think Windows 1 was about the same time. Certainly enough of a reputation to be amazed they were still collaborating with IBM to produce the first OS/2, again around the mid 80s.