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Microsoft's strategy at this point seems incredibly confusing. As a developer they haven't had a consistent message on how to target Windows GUI development in

Microsoft's strategy at this point seems incredibly confusing. As a developer they haven't had a consistent message on how to target Windows GUI development in .NET core and their own product offerings seem to indicate their is some kind of internal war about the right direction to take. They deliver incredibly cool things like WSL2 and VSCode but the ultimate outcome will probably be that most developers will ditch Windows as their dev operating system of choice and use a Mac or install a Linux. At this stage, the small amount of consulting I do for Microsoft clients really feels like the late 1980s where customers were looking to get off proprietary minicomputers - lots of rehosting on cheaper servers, siloing legacy systems and moving onto more fashionable tech. Even their preferred development environment, .NET, has an equivalent development and deployment experience on Linux based systems. Most of the people who were using Windows as their daily driver have shifted to a phone and for most consumers access to a web browser and a mobile app store is everything they need. On top of all that, their server operating systems seem to get worse with each release (Powershell, you suck) and now they are determined to cripple their flagship desktop operating system against the relentless tide of open-ness. At this stage it looks like they will end up like DEC. Remembered sometimes fondly by people who use any other system than Microsoft in their daily work.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Why is PowerShell a reason why the server OS is getting worse? It seems like a better thought-out alternative to the Unix shell, at least.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  I have a personal distaste for it and I'm not alone. It seems deliberately arcane. I mean I get the idea that Microsoft couldn't keep up with their own features via the GUI it just takes too long, so they needed a scripting language. I also get the idea that a lot of the scripting had to cover 25 years of tech choices (registry settings, DCOM and other things that Windows has) and something like Unix shell scripting was inadequate. I do think they could have encapsulated their DCOM and registry stuff into Unix like utilities instead of the weirdness that is Powershell. Most people from a Unix background (like me) are used to bourne shell like shells and single function utilities and reflexively do things in a particular way. Powershell seems like you have to have a browser open to accomplish anything. Inexperience sure, but nobody could learn enough Powershell and remember it to be productive. edit: I also hate, hate, hate that Powershell ISE doesn't work exactly the same as a normal Powershell session. How can you build two things that are ostensibly the same underpinning but work differently? Absolute madness.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    > Powershell seems like you have to have a browser open to accomplish anything. Inexperience sure, but nobody could learn enough Powershell and remember it to be productive. I could level exactly the same criticism against Unix shells, as someone who has used them for over 10 years. I usually either can figure out the command easily, or I have to Google for a Stack Exchange answer. That said, I agree with your point about the GUI. It seems to me that at some point during the past decade, Windows has gone from an environment where everything is configurable with a GUI and maybe a registry key, to an environment so heavy on mandatory CLI usage for configuration that it's becoming indistinguishable from Linux in this aspect. To be clear, this is a bad thing for those who prefer the GUI approach. I understand that you see PowerShell's divergence from Unix-ness as something weird, but really I think that an (optionally) structured data output format cannot come to Unix soon enough. Parsing things with tr, awk and cryptic command line switches is a notorious Unix weakness that PowerShell (and some native Linux shells) solves quite easily.
    - smackeyacky 5y ago
      Yes, it is just familiarity that makes Powershell seem weird and Unix shells are notoriously cryptic, coming from a background where saving keystrokes was important so all those criticisms are definitely valid. I still miss that GUI though, when I context switch between a Unix box and a Windows box and then I'm suddenly confronted with some Powershell task, it always make me sigh a little, not least because my old noodle has trouble parsing Powershell as readable. Here's a bit of Powershell I use to go through an Outlook mailbox to look for some stuff (just a snippet) and the where-object and new-object things with dashes in the middle instead of underscores just make it harder to understand. Especially when you have where-object and then you have -eq in the same line. $account = $namespace.Accounts | where-object {$_.DisplayName -eq "smackeyacky@nowhere.com"}

selfhoster11 5y ago

Why is PowerShell a reason why the server OS is getting worse? It seems like a better thought-out alternative to the Unix shell, at least.

smackeyacky 5y ago
I have a personal distaste for it and I'm not alone. It seems deliberately arcane. I mean I get the idea that Microsoft couldn't keep up with their own features via the GUI it just takes too long, so they needed a scripting language. I also get the idea that a lot of the scripting had to cover 25 years of tech choices (registry settings, DCOM and other things that Windows has) and something like Unix shell scripting was inadequate. I do think they could have encapsulated their DCOM and registry stuff into Unix like utilities instead of the weirdness that is Powershell. Most people from a Unix background (like me) are used to bourne shell like shells and single function utilities and reflexively do things in a particular way. Powershell seems like you have to have a browser open to accomplish anything. Inexperience sure, but nobody could learn enough Powershell and remember it to be productive. edit: I also hate, hate, hate that Powershell ISE doesn't work exactly the same as a normal Powershell session. How can you build two things that are ostensibly the same underpinning but work differently? Absolute madness.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > Powershell seems like you have to have a browser open to accomplish anything. Inexperience sure, but nobody could learn enough Powershell and remember it to be productive. I could level exactly the same criticism against Unix shells, as someone who has used them for over 10 years. I usually either can figure out the command easily, or I have to Google for a Stack Exchange answer. That said, I agree with your point about the GUI. It seems to me that at some point during the past decade, Windows has gone from an environment where everything is configurable with a GUI and maybe a registry key, to an environment so heavy on mandatory CLI usage for configuration that it's becoming indistinguishable from Linux in this aspect. To be clear, this is a bad thing for those who prefer the GUI approach. I understand that you see PowerShell's divergence from Unix-ness as something weird, but really I think that an (optionally) structured data output format cannot come to Unix soon enough. Parsing things with tr, awk and cryptic command line switches is a notorious Unix weakness that PowerShell (and some native Linux shells) solves quite easily.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Yes, it is just familiarity that makes Powershell seem weird and Unix shells are notoriously cryptic, coming from a background where saving keystrokes was important so all those criticisms are definitely valid. I still miss that GUI though, when I context switch between a Unix box and a Windows box and then I'm suddenly confronted with some Powershell task, it always make me sigh a little, not least because my old noodle has trouble parsing Powershell as readable. Here's a bit of Powershell I use to go through an Outlook mailbox to look for some stuff (just a snippet) and the where-object and new-object things with dashes in the middle instead of underscores just make it harder to understand. Especially when you have where-object and then you have -eq in the same line. $account = $namespace.Accounts | where-object {$_.DisplayName -eq "smackeyacky@nowhere.com"}