4 ms·

So you mean Microsoft is to blame for Netscape 4.x sucking and crashing on every OS? Office has code dating back to the 80s. Read more for a backstory http://w

So you mean Microsoft is to blame for Netscape 4.x sucking and crashing on every OS? Office has code dating back to the 80s. Read more for a backstory http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html

rbanffy 16y ago
Who said anything about Netscape? No. It's not OK for Netscape to ship buggy software and it's certainly not OK for a 200+ billion dollar company to do so. What's the excuse? They couldn't hire programmers to correctly implement their own spec years after it being published?
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  >Who said anything about Netscape? You did, in a way. By saying this: >>I think Microsoft's view of software quality has contaminated the industry. >They couldn't hire programmers to correctly implement their own spec years after it being published? Throwing bodies at something doesn't make it right in software engineering. Haven't you heard of bugs and issues in Google's or Apple's products? After all, Apple is a bigger company now. I was going to link to some Apple bugs but Apple Discussions was down (cue 'why can't a 200+ billion company keep their forums up? Can't they hire more people to fix it?' ) Unable to add beyond 100 pages to document(maybe they need to hire more people to hit 200?) http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2687922&tstart=45 http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=26879... http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/apple-looking-into-slow-ios-4-performance-on-iphone-3g.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/apple-looking-into... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdk2cJpSXLg&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdk2cJpSXLg&feature=playe...
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > in a way You mean you interpreted as me saying something about Netscape. > Throwing bodies at something doesn't make it right in software engineering Usually no, but Microsoft can throw a lot of bodies and rebuild from scratch, this time with good engineering. > Apple is a bigger company now. I don't think so. It's just more valuable.
    - recoiledsnake 16y ago
      Rebuilding something like Office will take a decade and will likely have no benefits at all. Rewrites rarely make sense at all. Just see how old some of the code thats in widespread use is. Android is built on Linux that started in 1991(ignoring that Linux was based on the even older Minix and it's Unix roots). OS X/iOS are based on BSD, Darwin and Unix which are quite old. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html >I don't think so. It's just more valuable. The point still stands.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        > Rebuilding something like Office will take a decade and will likely have no benefits at all. I think that allowing to launch better, faster, safer, leaner and stabler versions faster with less bugs and for less money, while, at the same time, uncovering and correcting bugs that have been in the codebase for decades would be a plus. > ignoring that Linux was based on the even older Minix That's good, because it was not. One could say it was inspired on Minix and Unix. > OS X/iOS are based on BSD, Darwin and Unix OSX is more closely related to NeXTStep Your history lessons are failing you.
        recoiledsnake 16y ago
        >I think that allowing to launch better, faster, safer, leaner and stabler versions faster with less bugs and for less money, while, at the same time, uncovering and correcting bugs that have been in the codebase for decades would be a plus. Did you even read the link I provided? Netscape killed itself in rewrite, MS almost did that with Vista before hitting reboot and starting over with old code and now you would want MS to undertake a super expensive rewrite? Things rarely work so ideally in the real world, especially for humongous feature/code bases like Office.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Yes, I did read your link. The relationship of NeXT to this discussion (about Microsoft's inability to correctly implement something they invented and that they want others to implement too - because it's a standard after all) escapes me. Attributing Netscape's demise to a rewrite of the browser is a bit exaggerated. They were under enormous pressure with a company with more resources to spend monthly than their entire market cap and giving away a browser bundled with Windows. The pressure to deliver new versions made them cut corners and allowed the browser to accumulate an enormous quantity of kludges that culminated with the need to throw it out and restart from scratch. If anything, they should have been rewriting from the start, never allowing the cruft build up. It's an investment that pays back more often than not, specially if you are under the pressure to deliver new features quickly. BTW, your fixation with Netscape is interesting too. You brought it up and tried to reason I did. That's also something that escapes me. Why would a full rewrite of Microsoft Office be so expensive? How much did Sun, Oracle and independent collaborators put in OpenOffice anyway? Microsoft has the resources for that. The reason they don't do it is because they don't need to.

rbanffy 16y ago

Who said anything about Netscape? No. It's not OK for Netscape to ship buggy software and it's certainly not OK for a 200+ billion dollar company to do so. What's the excuse? They couldn't hire programmers to correctly implement their own spec years after it being published?

recoiledsnake 16y ago
>Who said anything about Netscape? You did, in a way. By saying this: >>I think Microsoft's view of software quality has contaminated the industry. >They couldn't hire programmers to correctly implement their own spec years after it being published? Throwing bodies at something doesn't make it right in software engineering. Haven't you heard of bugs and issues in Google's or Apple's products? After all, Apple is a bigger company now. I was going to link to some Apple bugs but Apple Discussions was down (cue 'why can't a 200+ billion company keep their forums up? Can't they hire more people to fix it?' ) Unable to add beyond 100 pages to document(maybe they need to hire more people to hit 200?) http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2687922&tstart=45 http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=26879... http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/apple-looking-into-slow-ios-4-performance-on-iphone-3g.ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/apple-looking-into... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdk2cJpSXLg&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdk2cJpSXLg&feature=playe...
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > in a way You mean you interpreted as me saying something about Netscape. > Throwing bodies at something doesn't make it right in software engineering Usually no, but Microsoft can throw a lot of bodies and rebuild from scratch, this time with good engineering. > Apple is a bigger company now. I don't think so. It's just more valuable.
  - recoiledsnake 16y ago
    Rebuilding something like Office will take a decade and will likely have no benefits at all. Rewrites rarely make sense at all. Just see how old some of the code thats in widespread use is. Android is built on Linux that started in 1991(ignoring that Linux was based on the even older Minix and it's Unix roots). OS X/iOS are based on BSD, Darwin and Unix which are quite old. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html >I don't think so. It's just more valuable. The point still stands.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > Rebuilding something like Office will take a decade and will likely have no benefits at all. I think that allowing to launch better, faster, safer, leaner and stabler versions faster with less bugs and for less money, while, at the same time, uncovering and correcting bugs that have been in the codebase for decades would be a plus. > ignoring that Linux was based on the even older Minix That's good, because it was not. One could say it was inspired on Minix and Unix. > OS X/iOS are based on BSD, Darwin and Unix OSX is more closely related to NeXTStep Your history lessons are failing you.
      - recoiledsnake 16y ago
        >I think that allowing to launch better, faster, safer, leaner and stabler versions faster with less bugs and for less money, while, at the same time, uncovering and correcting bugs that have been in the codebase for decades would be a plus. Did you even read the link I provided? Netscape killed itself in rewrite, MS almost did that with Vista before hitting reboot and starting over with old code and now you would want MS to undertake a super expensive rewrite? Things rarely work so ideally in the real world, especially for humongous feature/code bases like Office.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Yes, I did read your link. The relationship of NeXT to this discussion (about Microsoft's inability to correctly implement something they invented and that they want others to implement too - because it's a standard after all) escapes me. Attributing Netscape's demise to a rewrite of the browser is a bit exaggerated. They were under enormous pressure with a company with more resources to spend monthly than their entire market cap and giving away a browser bundled with Windows. The pressure to deliver new versions made them cut corners and allowed the browser to accumulate an enormous quantity of kludges that culminated with the need to throw it out and restart from scratch. If anything, they should have been rewriting from the start, never allowing the cruft build up. It's an investment that pays back more often than not, specially if you are under the pressure to deliver new features quickly. BTW, your fixation with Netscape is interesting too. You brought it up and tried to reason I did. That's also something that escapes me. Why would a full rewrite of Microsoft Office be so expensive? How much did Sun, Oracle and independent collaborators put in OpenOffice anyway? Microsoft has the resources for that. The reason they don't do it is because they don't need to.