4 ms·

So the question is do you need a whole separate unit within a company to create this "innovation"? Sometimes in microsoft land "innovation" == "not reading wide

by mamp 15y ago

So the question is do you need a whole separate unit within a company to create this "innovation"? Sometimes in microsoft land "innovation" == "not reading widely enough".

robert_nsu 15y ago
You don't, however, I think the article is playing up the word "innovation" a bit too much. All I see is some guy (who works for Microsoft) writing a program to make his life a little easier.
- xpaulbettsx 15y ago
  I would tend to agree actually, I always cringe at the words "grassroots" and "innovation". The Garage is all about some people who are frankly way more like the HN crowd than most inside Microsoft, trying to bring back Hacker Ethos, DIY code culture to Microsoft. If it doesn't exist, hack it out and make things more awesome. Trying to release what comes out of it externally is trickier, many of the things that come out of it just don't make sense outside of MS, but for the things that do, they should see the light of day (ideally, as Open Source, but that's trickier). The point is, there are folks inside Microsoft who Get It, and they're trying to turn the battleship around, even if it seems like small beans to the rest of the world. Whether they are successful or not will determine whether anyone will care about Microsoft in ten years. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the people who was on the Garage Council)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
xpaulbettsx 15y ago
The Garage is a community, not a paid group (sometimes this isn't clear to folks outside of MS). The point you should take from this news though, is that Microsoft is now helping its developers release their projects they hack on in their spare time as Microsoft, if they meet the quality bars as well as being popular / useful enough inside Microsoft.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  This is my precise issue with Microsoft today. People rush to use Entity Framework, despite more featureful community projects that are better tested and have a wide base of users. There is a poor or nonexistent community surrounding many of the Microsoft technologies. The fact that community projects targeting Microsoft properties have to be released with Microsoft's control and branding is very disappointing.
  - xpaulbettsx 15y ago
    I have no idea what you're trying to tell me. How is EF related to developers working on side projects?
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      Sorry, I took "The Garage is a community" to mean non-Microsoft employees. More to that apology, a re-read of your comment leaves me wondering just what I was thinking. Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. My point might be summarized or expressed in a different way. I worked with .NET for the last 12 months and I can remember (just off the top of my head) 4 distinct issues that were trivial to fix but where not documented or described anywhere. They were weeks of work. On the other hand, I'm working with non-Microsoft tools and languages now, and I've had more than three of these scale of issues resolved in literally less than a minute in an IRC channel, and if not, in a tweet, or a forum post. My joke is that if Google/Binging is not productive in a .NET technology/tool/etc, my next best hope is posting on a forum with ridiculously buggy forum-software, and waiting two weeks for a response. There have been more than one post about this phenomena on HN as well. To be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a "Microsoft problem", I'm just not sure why the tactics and resources available for more open or community-based projects are so vastly different than the .NET/Azure/Windows scene (again, in my experience).
      - shriphani 15y ago
        There's definitely a very active win32 channel on freenode - if not there's channel 9 (which isn't unusable) and apphub. What were you using ? * Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. * Why use an unrelated thread to give a braindump ? You seemed to have no problems posting trollbait in response to this post.
Jacob4u2 15y ago
I don't think the "Garage" is necessarily a separate unit. > “The Garage is open to anyone, which means we have people from all over the company working together. The Garage provides support through Garage Weeks, Science Fairs, free hosting, and a worldwide community to help you build things you wouldn’t be able to accomplish on your own,” Hawkins said." - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/Features/2011/aug11/08-19Garage.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/Features/2011/aug11/08-19... I'll leave the troll bait "'Innovation == not reading widely enough'" statement alone even though I'm severely tempted to waste my time on that.
- mamp 15y ago
  Fair enough (shamefully a bit bored and trying to create my own entertainment...). Must be slow news day on HN if this is on the front page.

by mamp 15y ago

So the question is do you need a whole separate unit within a company to create this "innovation"? Sometimes in microsoft land "innovation" == "not reading widely enough".

robert_nsu 15y ago

You don't, however, I think the article is playing up the word "innovation" a bit too much. All I see is some guy (who works for Microsoft) writing a program to make his life a little easier.

xpaulbettsx 15y ago
I would tend to agree actually, I always cringe at the words "grassroots" and "innovation". The Garage is all about some people who are frankly way more like the HN crowd than most inside Microsoft, trying to bring back Hacker Ethos, DIY code culture to Microsoft. If it doesn't exist, hack it out and make things more awesome. Trying to release what comes out of it externally is trickier, many of the things that come out of it just don't make sense outside of MS, but for the things that do, they should see the light of day (ideally, as Open Source, but that's trickier). The point is, there are folks inside Microsoft who Get It, and they're trying to turn the battleship around, even if it seems like small beans to the rest of the world. Whether they are successful or not will determine whether anyone will care about Microsoft in ten years. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the people who was on the Garage Council)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

xpaulbettsx 15y ago

The Garage is a community, not a paid group (sometimes this isn't clear to folks outside of MS). The point you should take from this news though, is that Microsoft is now helping its developers release their projects they hack on in their spare time as Microsoft, if they meet the quality bars as well as being popular / useful enough inside Microsoft.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
This is my precise issue with Microsoft today. People rush to use Entity Framework, despite more featureful community projects that are better tested and have a wide base of users. There is a poor or nonexistent community surrounding many of the Microsoft technologies. The fact that community projects targeting Microsoft properties have to be released with Microsoft's control and branding is very disappointing.
- xpaulbettsx 15y ago
  I have no idea what you're trying to tell me. How is EF related to developers working on side projects?
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Sorry, I took "The Garage is a community" to mean non-Microsoft employees. More to that apology, a re-read of your comment leaves me wondering just what I was thinking. Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. My point might be summarized or expressed in a different way. I worked with .NET for the last 12 months and I can remember (just off the top of my head) 4 distinct issues that were trivial to fix but where not documented or described anywhere. They were weeks of work. On the other hand, I'm working with non-Microsoft tools and languages now, and I've had more than three of these scale of issues resolved in literally less than a minute in an IRC channel, and if not, in a tweet, or a forum post. My joke is that if Google/Binging is not productive in a .NET technology/tool/etc, my next best hope is posting on a forum with ridiculously buggy forum-software, and waiting two weeks for a response. There have been more than one post about this phenomena on HN as well. To be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a "Microsoft problem", I'm just not sure why the tactics and resources available for more open or community-based projects are so vastly different than the .NET/Azure/Windows scene (again, in my experience).
    - shriphani 15y ago
      There's definitely a very active win32 channel on freenode - if not there's channel 9 (which isn't unusable) and apphub. What were you using ? * Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. * Why use an unrelated thread to give a braindump ? You seemed to have no problems posting trollbait in response to this post.

Jacob4u2 15y ago

I don't think the "Garage" is necessarily a separate unit. > “The Garage is open to anyone, which means we have people from all over the company working together. The Garage provides support through Garage Weeks, Science Fairs, free hosting, and a worldwide community to help you build things you wouldn’t be able to accomplish on your own,” Hawkins said." - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/Features/2011/aug11/08-19Garage.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/Features/2011/aug11/08-19... I'll leave the troll bait "'Innovation == not reading widely enough'" statement alone even though I'm severely tempted to waste my time on that.

mamp 15y ago
Fair enough (shamefully a bit bored and trying to create my own entertainment...). Must be slow news day on HN if this is on the front page.