7 ms·

Microsoft .NET Devs Anonymously Responds to Microsoft .NET Leadership

151 points by ghuntley 5y ago

ghuntley 5y ago
- Mirrored at http://gist.github.com/ghuntley/3bebb260c8b4411791ff8f880ca63989 http://gist.github.com/ghuntley/3bebb260c8b4411791ff8f880ca6.... - Sources within .NET team tell me that the pastebin is real.
- dustinmoris 5y ago
  Same here
azalemeth 5y ago
Honestly, this is just Microsoft being Microsoft. I was never convinced that their F/OSS strategy ("MS <3 Linux") was anything other than either a move for power, or to promote lock-in – we now have it from the horse's mouth: they want both.
- wvenable 5y ago
  The personification of companies is the problem. Microsoft is not a person making decisions for good or evil -- it's a collection of thousands of people all with different ideas and different abilities to execute on them. What's on display right now is how this group of people are collectively making decisions. I'm not sure, given the swift turn around, that this is bad news for OSS at Microsoft.
  - spr93 5y ago
    A "group of people ... collectively making decisions" doesn't help make sense of anything. A company is itself a group collectively making decisions. Where you draw the "group" line is arbitrary unless you understand the decision-making structure. From the outside you can only make assumptions about which teams or management layers define the "the group." I also used to believe that personifying companies was silly, but now that I've worked closely with the C-suites of various companies, I've come to understand that companies do have unique cultures and company culture matters. It's the culture that guides decision-making--does customer service and long-term investment matter more than next quarter's goals? Do we want to do thing that's most profitable in the short term because we're cavalier about staying dominant in the long run or are we cautiously managed? As others have pointed out, MSFT's execs grew up in the Gates-Ballmer culture. MSFT's current actions are consistent with its past actions and attitudes under that regime. I think it's therefore totally legitimate for the parent poster to be concerned about Microsoft, and express that concern by personifying the entity.
    - wvenable 5y ago
      This swift reversal is consistent with Microsoft's past actions and attitudes? I don't feel that's the case. These days we seem to be unprecedented access to the internal workings of companies; from exactly which execs are making decisions to the opinions of individual managers and developers. It used to be that you'd have to talk about Microsoft as a monolith because this level of information wasn't available. But I don't think saying "this is just Microsoft being Microsoft" is a very useful or interesting comment. If anything, this is just the start of defining what Microsoft will be in the future. We haven't really seen the conclusion yet and it's definitely not assured that things are going regress to the 90s.
BeefySwain 5y ago
Is there some context available or can someone provide some background?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ghuntley 5y ago
  - http://dusted.codes/can-we-trust-microsoft-with-open-source http://dusted.codes/can-we-trust-microsoft-with-open-source - http://theverge.com/2021/10/22/22740701/microsoft-dotnet-hot-reload-removal-decision-open-source http://theverge.com/2021/10/22/22740701/microsoft-dotnet-hot... - https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 Organisational design defect - the .NET language is open-source and wants to be available on all platforms, on all devices and fundamentally an open programming language (ie all editors). The problem is the .NET SDK team is paid by the Visual Studio team. CVP ripped out SDK features to sell more Visual Studio product because the org is run as a profit centre that is stuck in a Ballmeresk Cold War with Jetbrains vs Satya “Azure is the future” Moments after the public “reversal” blog post key engineers and product managers took to twitter to celebrate the victory and the community movement with expensive scotch. (“Thanks for your support”)
  - msft-throwaway 5y ago
    .NET, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Code are all expensive ad campaigns funded by Azure. .NET and Visual Studio have excellent attach rate to Azure. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft.
    - ghuntley 5y ago
      Time to resolve https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 then.
    - eyegor 5y ago
      dotnet and vs have been around a lot longer than azure. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
minimaul 5y ago
> So that we don't give away features to Rider? Rider's a really good .NET IDE - it's my preference by far over VS Code, and over VS as well - but it's exactly the kind of thing an 'open' .NET ecosystem should be embracing. If this is the MS management mindset (and I don't find it that hard to believe), then .NET is never going to be truly open. edit: the bugginess of OmniSharp + VS Code for .NET development doesn't work to push me towards VS. VS is okay for the most part on Windows, much worse on Mac and not an option at all on Linux. It 100% pushed me away from VS Code and towards JetBrains - now I use Rider, PyCharm, and PHPStorm instead of VS Code.
- andix 5y ago
  Microsoft could make a fast and responsive version of visual studio, then we would probably use it. But right now rider is mostly better and much cheaper.
  - ShaneMcGowan 5y ago
    Even on high spec machines, visual studio feels so clunky and slow. Haven't used Rider but Intellij for Java development is a dream compared to visual studio for .NET development
    - bigtex 5y ago
      I use Rider in a Windows VM and it is night and day compared to VS 2019 in regard to speed.
    - andix 5y ago
      Input latency That’s the thing that makes Visual Studio so annoying. Even typing is slow. A lot of other stuff too.
    - minimaul 5y ago
      It's really noticeable, and a lot worse than it used to be. My dev desktop is a 5800X with 64G of RAM and a nice samsung m.2 SSD. VS feels slow on it. Rider doesn't. VS Code doesn't.
Someone1234 5y ago
Feels like Microsoft knows Visual Studio's days are numbered and are just trying to drag their feel as much as possible. For certain legacy things there will always be a "Visual Studio." Nobody has any interest in building a new environment for Windows Desktop application development for example. But for web, VSCode eats VS's lunch. It is more flexible, higher performance, with a better design. So when they force Asp.net/MVC core developers to use the inferior Windows only tool, they're just shooting themselves in the foot as far as .Net adoption goes. MSDN as a concept can stay around, but they have to start yesterday changing the thinking around it and instead of it being a "Visual Studio + Benefits" it is "Benefits + Services + Legacy Visual Studio." MSDN could include a half dozen premium VSCode extensions today, but they're stuck in this 1990s product thinking modality. Microsoft went "services, services, services" back in 2007, except the Developer Division and that has to change now. If they were service/benefit focused instead of product, they wouldn't even care about Rider existing and their goal would be to get "Rider + MSDN" subs because the value add would be high enough to justify it. Or heck release premium Rider extensions (identical to VSCode) that require MSDN (and or premium CLI-based functionality).
- ripley12 5y ago
  I get the impression that virtually everyone in Developer Division understands this - except senior leadership.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  >Nobody has any interest in building a new environment for Windows Desktop application development for example. Rider has support for Avalonia UI and its designer, FYI. So there's definitely some interest, not sure how much.
- alexfrydl 5y ago
  Until I heard Visual Studio 2022 was coming out recently, I literally thought Microsoft had ceded the ecosystem in 2019. It's very surprising to hear it's the total opposite. I've been doing C# since .NET 1.0 and I can't imagine why anyone would use VS over Rider. Won't they just have to buy Resharper anyway?
n8cpdx 5y ago
I just had an old acquaintance on the Azure team try to get me to apply at Microsoft. I told him I can’t, because all the teams at Microsoft I’d want to work (particularly Windows) are suffering from poor management with user- and human-hostile values. I can’t work at a company that goes out of its way to make the world worse for people through software. I gave a long list of examples of user hostile work coming out of Windows, but suggested I thought maybe DevDiv was an exception. A lot of the bad things in the world of windows dev are a direct result of the DevDiv v Windows feud that’s been going on since SteveSi was leading. Oops. I was wrong. It turns out apparently all of Microsoft is driven by leadership that wants to make the world a worse place for human beings. Ads, sneaky non-optional telemetry, ripping features out of OSS code, and then lying about all of the above are management choices driven by the top. I remember when they used to try to recruit for user obsession. That was a long time ago. It’s a shame, because their business model, unlike some other companies, is not fundamentally dependent on screwing users. This is all a Choice in the most profound sense, and an unnecessary choice at that.
- wayneftw 5y ago
  > ...unlike some other companies... Which ones?
  - n8cpdx 5y ago
    Specifically Facebook comes to mind. They claim they need to use algorithms for maximum engagement, which is probably true. I still think they would be fine if they just made the news feed chronological (I remember when it more or less worked that way) and let users make their own choices about what to see. I use Twitter that way, where at least they give the option. Next door also has that option, but they automatically turn it off after (iirc) 60 days. Of course if they weren’t just promoting things that made people upset, engagement would drop and they would be less fantastically profitable. But their users would be healthier and probably happier. I think it is valid for companies to choose to make $5 billion in profit a year over $10 billion, if that’s the cost of respecting human dignity and promoting human thriving. I get that that’s a controversial opinion.
- 5y ago
bob1029 5y ago
It's clear the game is to prolong the lifespan of Visual Studio for as long as is feasible. I wouldn't have any problems with this if Microsoft actually bothered to make it a good experience. Visual studio should start up in <1 second and not do ridiculous bullshit like change layout every time you start/stop the debugger. Also, woe be unto any developer who decides to build a large, complex Blazor app. Razor component editing in VS2022 is a stoichiometrically-ideal dumpster fire. Select that text in a way the IDE didn't prefer? Prepare for 30s of locked-up circus. It's a Faustian bargain to be sure - Will it come back quicker than if I had just killed the VS process and reopened all my windows? Who knows. I guess I'll wait a few more seconds... I am really tired of the shitty engineering and lack of focus on the developer ergonomics. It is clear more time & energy went into adding Azure trash into VS than making it smoother to work with. I appreciate all the survey prompts in VS - It makes it look like you are giving a shit, but it is pretty clear that those surveymonkies effectively wind up in the zoo. My proposal to Microsoft is this: Rewrite the whole thing from zero. Call it "Visual Studio Lite" or whatever. I'll actually pay you for this - if you spend real engineering hours on it and make it the smoothest experience available on desktop. There is no reason Overwatch should be able to run better than my IDE, especially when a trillion-dollar company is involved and is also responsible for the entire operating system upon which these things are happening. The % of features in VS2022 that I need for .NET development today is something like 5-10%. Get rid of the rest for those of us not supporting VB6, et. al. If the latest language features, libraries & frameworks weren't so amazing, I would have moved to a different ecosystem a long time ago. I'm seriously considering dropping Blazor because the tooling is so trash. I love the concept of how it works, but if it's a nightmare to develop on I'll build a different path. </rant>
- electroly 5y ago
  > change layout every time you start/stop the debugger This one is a bona fide feature that I hope they do NOT remove, FWIW. It's switching to the debugger layout, which you can customize independent of the development layout. This is what lets you bring up the call stack, watch, etc. panels in the layout you prefer and it'll remember that, without having them appear during development where they are useless. > Rewrite the whole thing from zero. Call it "Visual Studio Lite" Or, perhaps, "Visual Studio Code"? :)
ilaksh 5y ago
It's a company. They are going to do what they feel they need to do to make money. The idea that Microsoft could be some kind of open source oasis is an obvious fiction. Developers who hitch their wagon want to believe that type of thing. But it's just not realistic.
Shadonototra 5y ago
microsoft, and dotnet as a result, is poorly managed i keep saying that for more than 10 years, it's no wonder GO took off i guess they are lucky they managed to lobby governments all over the world and "sell" their azure, office and team ;) maybe lobby is not the proper word anymore based on how much effective it is, it almost as if they are working side by side to achieve certain globalist goals
solarkraft 5y ago
First of all: THANK YOU for caring about this. .NET was dying during the first 3/4 of the 2010s and was just about gaining momentum to get out of its sorry state. A sorry state Visual Studio IS A PART OF THE REASON FOR. > Keeping Hot Reload as a "value add" for Visual Studio keeps those locked into the paid product and less reason to jump to VS Code No. It gives less of a reason to adopt .NET. If you don't want .NET to die (I like it, but honestly am not sure if it's really worth fighting for anymore considering it includes rewarding this god damn company), this is a hugely important moment. Microsoft needs to (re-?!?!)learn that they can't push their shitty products down peoples' throats if they want to keep their oh-so-nice ecosystem. If things went more my way Visual Studio would immediately be killed off, Microsoft's veto power removed, .NET GPL licensed and MAUI extended to support Linux. Might be a pretty attractive platform, then.

151 points by ghuntley 5y ago

- Mirrored at http://gist.github.com/ghuntley/3bebb260c8b4411791ff8f880ca63989 http://gist.github.com/ghuntley/3bebb260c8b4411791ff8f880ca6.... - Sources within .NET team tell me that the pastebin is real.

dustinmoris 5y ago
Same here

azalemeth 5y ago

Honestly, this is just Microsoft being Microsoft. I was never convinced that their F/OSS strategy ("MS <3 Linux") was anything other than either a move for power, or to promote lock-in – we now have it from the horse's mouth: they want both.

wvenable 5y ago
The personification of companies is the problem. Microsoft is not a person making decisions for good or evil -- it's a collection of thousands of people all with different ideas and different abilities to execute on them. What's on display right now is how this group of people are collectively making decisions. I'm not sure, given the swift turn around, that this is bad news for OSS at Microsoft.
- spr93 5y ago
  A "group of people ... collectively making decisions" doesn't help make sense of anything. A company is itself a group collectively making decisions. Where you draw the "group" line is arbitrary unless you understand the decision-making structure. From the outside you can only make assumptions about which teams or management layers define the "the group." I also used to believe that personifying companies was silly, but now that I've worked closely with the C-suites of various companies, I've come to understand that companies do have unique cultures and company culture matters. It's the culture that guides decision-making--does customer service and long-term investment matter more than next quarter's goals? Do we want to do thing that's most profitable in the short term because we're cavalier about staying dominant in the long run or are we cautiously managed? As others have pointed out, MSFT's execs grew up in the Gates-Ballmer culture. MSFT's current actions are consistent with its past actions and attitudes under that regime. I think it's therefore totally legitimate for the parent poster to be concerned about Microsoft, and express that concern by personifying the entity.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    This swift reversal is consistent with Microsoft's past actions and attitudes? I don't feel that's the case. These days we seem to be unprecedented access to the internal workings of companies; from exactly which execs are making decisions to the opinions of individual managers and developers. It used to be that you'd have to talk about Microsoft as a monolith because this level of information wasn't available. But I don't think saying "this is just Microsoft being Microsoft" is a very useful or interesting comment. If anything, this is just the start of defining what Microsoft will be in the future. We haven't really seen the conclusion yet and it's definitely not assured that things are going regress to the 90s.

BeefySwain 5y ago

Is there some context available or can someone provide some background?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ghuntley 5y ago
- http://dusted.codes/can-we-trust-microsoft-with-open-source http://dusted.codes/can-we-trust-microsoft-with-open-source - http://theverge.com/2021/10/22/22740701/microsoft-dotnet-hot-reload-removal-decision-open-source http://theverge.com/2021/10/22/22740701/microsoft-dotnet-hot... - https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 Organisational design defect - the .NET language is open-source and wants to be available on all platforms, on all devices and fundamentally an open programming language (ie all editors). The problem is the .NET SDK team is paid by the Visual Studio team. CVP ripped out SDK features to sell more Visual Studio product because the org is run as a profit centre that is stuck in a Ballmeresk Cold War with Jetbrains vs Satya “Azure is the future” Moments after the public “reversal” blog post key engineers and product managers took to twitter to celebrate the victory and the community movement with expensive scotch. (“Thanks for your support”)
- msft-throwaway 5y ago
  .NET, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Code are all expensive ad campaigns funded by Azure. .NET and Visual Studio have excellent attach rate to Azure. Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Time to resolve https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505 then.
  - eyegor 5y ago
    dotnet and vs have been around a lot longer than azure. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.

minimaul 5y ago

> So that we don't give away features to Rider? Rider's a really good .NET IDE - it's my preference by far over VS Code, and over VS as well - but it's exactly the kind of thing an 'open' .NET ecosystem should be embracing. If this is the MS management mindset (and I don't find it that hard to believe), then .NET is never going to be truly open. edit: the bugginess of OmniSharp + VS Code for .NET development doesn't work to push me towards VS. VS is okay for the most part on Windows, much worse on Mac and not an option at all on Linux. It 100% pushed me away from VS Code and towards JetBrains - now I use Rider, PyCharm, and PHPStorm instead of VS Code.

andix 5y ago
Microsoft could make a fast and responsive version of visual studio, then we would probably use it. But right now rider is mostly better and much cheaper.
- ShaneMcGowan 5y ago
  Even on high spec machines, visual studio feels so clunky and slow. Haven't used Rider but Intellij for Java development is a dream compared to visual studio for .NET development
  - bigtex 5y ago
    I use Rider in a Windows VM and it is night and day compared to VS 2019 in regard to speed.
  - andix 5y ago
    Input latency That’s the thing that makes Visual Studio so annoying. Even typing is slow. A lot of other stuff too.
  - minimaul 5y ago
    It's really noticeable, and a lot worse than it used to be. My dev desktop is a 5800X with 64G of RAM and a nice samsung m.2 SSD. VS feels slow on it. Rider doesn't. VS Code doesn't.

Someone1234 5y ago

Feels like Microsoft knows Visual Studio's days are numbered and are just trying to drag their feel as much as possible. For certain legacy things there will always be a "Visual Studio." Nobody has any interest in building a new environment for Windows Desktop application development for example. But for web, VSCode eats VS's lunch. It is more flexible, higher performance, with a better design. So when they force Asp.net/MVC core developers to use the inferior Windows only tool, they're just shooting themselves in the foot as far as .Net adoption goes. MSDN as a concept can stay around, but they have to start yesterday changing the thinking around it and instead of it being a "Visual Studio + Benefits" it is "Benefits + Services + Legacy Visual Studio." MSDN could include a half dozen premium VSCode extensions today, but they're stuck in this 1990s product thinking modality. Microsoft went "services, services, services" back in 2007, except the Developer Division and that has to change now. If they were service/benefit focused instead of product, they wouldn't even care about Rider existing and their goal would be to get "Rider + MSDN" subs because the value add would be high enough to justify it. Or heck release premium Rider extensions (identical to VSCode) that require MSDN (and or premium CLI-based functionality).

ripley12 5y ago
I get the impression that virtually everyone in Developer Division understands this - except senior leadership.
HideousKojima 5y ago
>Nobody has any interest in building a new environment for Windows Desktop application development for example. Rider has support for Avalonia UI and its designer, FYI. So there's definitely some interest, not sure how much.
alexfrydl 5y ago
Until I heard Visual Studio 2022 was coming out recently, I literally thought Microsoft had ceded the ecosystem in 2019. It's very surprising to hear it's the total opposite. I've been doing C# since .NET 1.0 and I can't imagine why anyone would use VS over Rider. Won't they just have to buy Resharper anyway?

n8cpdx 5y ago

I just had an old acquaintance on the Azure team try to get me to apply at Microsoft. I told him I can’t, because all the teams at Microsoft I’d want to work (particularly Windows) are suffering from poor management with user- and human-hostile values. I can’t work at a company that goes out of its way to make the world worse for people through software. I gave a long list of examples of user hostile work coming out of Windows, but suggested I thought maybe DevDiv was an exception. A lot of the bad things in the world of windows dev are a direct result of the DevDiv v Windows feud that’s been going on since SteveSi was leading. Oops. I was wrong. It turns out apparently all of Microsoft is driven by leadership that wants to make the world a worse place for human beings. Ads, sneaky non-optional telemetry, ripping features out of OSS code, and then lying about all of the above are management choices driven by the top. I remember when they used to try to recruit for user obsession. That was a long time ago. It’s a shame, because their business model, unlike some other companies, is not fundamentally dependent on screwing users. This is all a Choice in the most profound sense, and an unnecessary choice at that.

wayneftw 5y ago
> ...unlike some other companies... Which ones?
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Specifically Facebook comes to mind. They claim they need to use algorithms for maximum engagement, which is probably true. I still think they would be fine if they just made the news feed chronological (I remember when it more or less worked that way) and let users make their own choices about what to see. I use Twitter that way, where at least they give the option. Next door also has that option, but they automatically turn it off after (iirc) 60 days. Of course if they weren’t just promoting things that made people upset, engagement would drop and they would be less fantastically profitable. But their users would be healthier and probably happier. I think it is valid for companies to choose to make $5 billion in profit a year over $10 billion, if that’s the cost of respecting human dignity and promoting human thriving. I get that that’s a controversial opinion.
5y ago

bob1029 5y ago

It's clear the game is to prolong the lifespan of Visual Studio for as long as is feasible. I wouldn't have any problems with this if Microsoft actually bothered to make it a good experience. Visual studio should start up in <1 second and not do ridiculous bullshit like change layout every time you start/stop the debugger. Also, woe be unto any developer who decides to build a large, complex Blazor app. Razor component editing in VS2022 is a stoichiometrically-ideal dumpster fire. Select that text in a way the IDE didn't prefer? Prepare for 30s of locked-up circus. It's a Faustian bargain to be sure - Will it come back quicker than if I had just killed the VS process and reopened all my windows? Who knows. I guess I'll wait a few more seconds... I am really tired of the shitty engineering and lack of focus on the developer ergonomics. It is clear more time & energy went into adding Azure trash into VS than making it smoother to work with. I appreciate all the survey prompts in VS - It makes it look like you are giving a shit, but it is pretty clear that those surveymonkies effectively wind up in the zoo. My proposal to Microsoft is this: Rewrite the whole thing from zero. Call it "Visual Studio Lite" or whatever. I'll actually pay you for this - if you spend real engineering hours on it and make it the smoothest experience available on desktop. There is no reason Overwatch should be able to run better than my IDE, especially when a trillion-dollar company is involved and is also responsible for the entire operating system upon which these things are happening. The % of features in VS2022 that I need for .NET development today is something like 5-10%. Get rid of the rest for those of us not supporting VB6, et. al. If the latest language features, libraries & frameworks weren't so amazing, I would have moved to a different ecosystem a long time ago. I'm seriously considering dropping Blazor because the tooling is so trash. I love the concept of how it works, but if it's a nightmare to develop on I'll build a different path. </rant>

electroly 5y ago
> change layout every time you start/stop the debugger This one is a bona fide feature that I hope they do NOT remove, FWIW. It's switching to the debugger layout, which you can customize independent of the development layout. This is what lets you bring up the call stack, watch, etc. panels in the layout you prefer and it'll remember that, without having them appear during development where they are useless. > Rewrite the whole thing from zero. Call it "Visual Studio Lite" Or, perhaps, "Visual Studio Code"? :)

ilaksh 5y ago

It's a company. They are going to do what they feel they need to do to make money. The idea that Microsoft could be some kind of open source oasis is an obvious fiction. Developers who hitch their wagon want to believe that type of thing. But it's just not realistic.

Shadonototra 5y ago

microsoft, and dotnet as a result, is poorly managed i keep saying that for more than 10 years, it's no wonder GO took off i guess they are lucky they managed to lobby governments all over the world and "sell" their azure, office and team ;) maybe lobby is not the proper word anymore based on how much effective it is, it almost as if they are working side by side to achieve certain globalist goals

solarkraft 5y ago

First of all: THANK YOU for caring about this. .NET was dying during the first 3/4 of the 2010s and was just about gaining momentum to get out of its sorry state. A sorry state Visual Studio IS A PART OF THE REASON FOR. > Keeping Hot Reload as a "value add" for Visual Studio keeps those locked into the paid product and less reason to jump to VS Code No. It gives less of a reason to adopt .NET. If you don't want .NET to die (I like it, but honestly am not sure if it's really worth fighting for anymore considering it includes rewarding this god damn company), this is a hugely important moment. Microsoft needs to (re-?!?!)learn that they can't push their shitty products down peoples' throats if they want to keep their oh-so-nice ecosystem. If things went more my way Visual Studio would immediately be killed off, Microsoft's veto power removed, .NET GPL licensed and MAUI extended to support Linux. Might be a pretty attractive platform, then.