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With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook ge

by typon 6y ago

With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook get beaten here?

neurobashing 6y ago
Microsoft has always had a huge developer tools footprint, so it's a natural fit.
- orthoxerox 6y ago
  That they did, but VS had always been aimed at MS tech stack: VC++, VB, C#, F#. And then VS Code appeared seemingly out of the blue, rapidly becoming the editor of choice for languages all across the tech landscape.
  - scudd 6y ago
    I think the VSCode extension marketplace greatly helps with the huge breadth of tooling. Not sure if this is applicable to regular Visual Studio as well, I've honestly never used it.
    - Osiris 6y ago
      Visual Studio (full edition) doesn't have extensions. It's a full blown IDE and everything is built-in. Despite having a similar name, the two products sharing almost nothing in common.
      - nvrspyx 6y ago
        I'm pretty late to this, but Visual Studio (full edition) does have extensions. Resharper, for instance, is a popular Visual Studio extension. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/ https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    The first version of Microsoft made BASIC interpreters for any and every "home computer" that asked them to (and was willing to buy it). For a large chunk of the lifetime of the Macintosh, Microsoft was the largest Mac OS application developer, and cross-platform C++ tools was important for that. The Microsoft of "only one tech stack" is probably the outlier, more than the rule.
ZeroCool2u 6y ago
Well I'd point out that Facebook gave us react, basically altering the default programming paradigm for webdev, and Google, well Google plays God and judges all Webdevs via SEO. Plus regardless of what folks think of Flutter, Google has done some incredible work there. There's some very interesting things happening with it related to WebDev that are slowly but surely coming. Real cross platform native desktop support (as in compiled, not interpreted, imagine no more electron apps taking up huge amounts of RAM and being slow while they do it), ahead of time compilation to native platform code for arbitrary dart executables, and transpilation to js from Dart, which will soon have sound null safety enabled by default, all in a single code base is pretty wild. So, I'd say Google is making moves in a very interesting direction.
- chronofar 6y ago
  I really hope Flutter for web does come together and doesn't get abandoned or become nerfed or neglected via Google's ever shifting product teams, I like it so much better than any javascript framework out there.
- augusto-moura 6y ago
  There's angular for Google and Microsoft too, even though React is better for a lot of use cases, a lot of traditional devs still place their bets in Angular. As a brazilian a see this a lot in some regions of the country. We can't forget the differences in context of the different parts of the world
- originalvichy 6y ago
  Don’t forget chrome. It is pushing the web forward so fast that the great Firefox has been in the backseat for nearly a decade.
scudd 6y ago
I think WSL should also be listed among awesome new developer amenities from Microsoft. I know a lot of people view it as a capitulation considering its Microsoft, but WSL is such a great tool. I purchased a Macbook about 2 years ago out of curiosity, as it seems a lot of developers prefer them. I'll admit the screen is beautiful, but so much of the developer niceties are simply the Mac taking advantage of POSIX interoperability. As WSL continues to grow, I could definitely see going back to a Windows machine.
- pierrefermat1 6y ago
  I think WSL will get there eventually but in its current state it's just more tedious to use for permissions/networking/compatability issues. Mostly things you can work around but just a bit more tinkering
  - crandycodes 6y ago
    (disclosure I work for Microsoft but not on this stuff) Biggest benefit for me has been how simple it has made ssh on Windows. I got a nicer spec'd Surface Laptop 3 during my last hardware refresh and haven't missed Macbook at all.
    - barrkel 6y ago
      Confusing. Do you mean as an ssh server? Because there is no functional difference between Cygwin ssh client running in mintty vs WSL (1 or 2, doesn't matter) ssh running in wsltty. I think if I sat you down in front of them and switched them out you wouldn't notice a thing.
      - pierrefermat1 6y ago
        https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh I think he's referring to the SSH integration inside VS code so you can open up a remote folder as if it was a local one in the IDE
    - 6y ago
pjettter 6y ago
Plus they iterate faster than anyone else out there and upgrading is painless (VSCode, not Windows)
sneak 6y ago
> With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space I think buying NPM and GitHub, and inducing Docker to add Windows support, got them more (in the long run) in this space than those two things.
mekster 6y ago
TypeScript is miles ahead of others I'm surprised. Swift can't even tell it's no longer a "nil" after "if some_var != nil" and felt like I'm helping the language instead of the other way and PHP's typing is still very young and Ruby seems to be introducing some weird declaration file instead of simple inline typing.

by typon 6y ago

With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook get beaten here?

neurobashing 6y ago

Microsoft has always had a huge developer tools footprint, so it's a natural fit.

orthoxerox 6y ago
That they did, but VS had always been aimed at MS tech stack: VC++, VB, C#, F#. And then VS Code appeared seemingly out of the blue, rapidly becoming the editor of choice for languages all across the tech landscape.
- scudd 6y ago
  I think the VSCode extension marketplace greatly helps with the huge breadth of tooling. Not sure if this is applicable to regular Visual Studio as well, I've honestly never used it.
  - Osiris 6y ago
    Visual Studio (full edition) doesn't have extensions. It's a full blown IDE and everything is built-in. Despite having a similar name, the two products sharing almost nothing in common.
    - nvrspyx 6y ago
      I'm pretty late to this, but Visual Studio (full edition) does have extensions. Resharper, for instance, is a popular Visual Studio extension. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/ https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  The first version of Microsoft made BASIC interpreters for any and every "home computer" that asked them to (and was willing to buy it). For a large chunk of the lifetime of the Macintosh, Microsoft was the largest Mac OS application developer, and cross-platform C++ tools was important for that. The Microsoft of "only one tech stack" is probably the outlier, more than the rule.

ZeroCool2u 6y ago

Well I'd point out that Facebook gave us react, basically altering the default programming paradigm for webdev, and Google, well Google plays God and judges all Webdevs via SEO. Plus regardless of what folks think of Flutter, Google has done some incredible work there. There's some very interesting things happening with it related to WebDev that are slowly but surely coming. Real cross platform native desktop support (as in compiled, not interpreted, imagine no more electron apps taking up huge amounts of RAM and being slow while they do it), ahead of time compilation to native platform code for arbitrary dart executables, and transpilation to js from Dart, which will soon have sound null safety enabled by default, all in a single code base is pretty wild. So, I'd say Google is making moves in a very interesting direction.

chronofar 6y ago
I really hope Flutter for web does come together and doesn't get abandoned or become nerfed or neglected via Google's ever shifting product teams, I like it so much better than any javascript framework out there.
augusto-moura 6y ago
There's angular for Google and Microsoft too, even though React is better for a lot of use cases, a lot of traditional devs still place their bets in Angular. As a brazilian a see this a lot in some regions of the country. We can't forget the differences in context of the different parts of the world
originalvichy 6y ago
Don’t forget chrome. It is pushing the web forward so fast that the great Firefox has been in the backseat for nearly a decade.

scudd 6y ago

I think WSL should also be listed among awesome new developer amenities from Microsoft. I know a lot of people view it as a capitulation considering its Microsoft, but WSL is such a great tool. I purchased a Macbook about 2 years ago out of curiosity, as it seems a lot of developers prefer them. I'll admit the screen is beautiful, but so much of the developer niceties are simply the Mac taking advantage of POSIX interoperability. As WSL continues to grow, I could definitely see going back to a Windows machine.

pierrefermat1 6y ago
I think WSL will get there eventually but in its current state it's just more tedious to use for permissions/networking/compatability issues. Mostly things you can work around but just a bit more tinkering
- crandycodes 6y ago
  (disclosure I work for Microsoft but not on this stuff) Biggest benefit for me has been how simple it has made ssh on Windows. I got a nicer spec'd Surface Laptop 3 during my last hardware refresh and haven't missed Macbook at all.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    Confusing. Do you mean as an ssh server? Because there is no functional difference between Cygwin ssh client running in mintty vs WSL (1 or 2, doesn't matter) ssh running in wsltty. I think if I sat you down in front of them and switched them out you wouldn't notice a thing.
    - pierrefermat1 6y ago
      https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh I think he's referring to the SSH integration inside VS code so you can open up a remote folder as if it was a local one in the IDE
  - 6y ago

pjettter 6y ago

Plus they iterate faster than anyone else out there and upgrading is painless (VSCode, not Windows)

sneak 6y ago

> With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space I think buying NPM and GitHub, and inducing Docker to add Windows support, got them more (in the long run) in this space than those two things.

mekster 6y ago

TypeScript is miles ahead of others I'm surprised. Swift can't even tell it's no longer a "nil" after "if some_var != nil" and felt like I'm helping the language instead of the other way and PHP's typing is still very young and Ruby seems to be introducing some weird declaration file instead of simple inline typing.