4 ms·

I think 1960 called, and asked for its programming revelations back. Code as data is cool? Lambda is powerful? Well... indeed.

by pc 18y ago

kylec 18y ago
Microsoft has always been a little slow on the uptake
- gruseom 18y ago
  Your comment got me thinking. I think the issue is not that MS are slow - they used to be pretty quick at some things. Rather, it's that they've always been willfully ignorant of the larger computing culture. They never had any interest in connecting with or learning from the richest programming traditions or the best ideas or the hacker communities. They just created their own technological anti-utopia, a sort of Greenspunland in which myriads of half-baked, wildly complicated things conflict with each other. Entire armies of programmers grow up there and never leave. I know this sounds cranky. It's because I started my professional programming life in this dark forest and it took years to find my way out. And I think it's a shame that they dominated the industry for as long as they did, because they wrought such damage on the level of ideas. There's a certain type of smart-but-ignorant programmer who is infatuated with his own IQ, doesn't want to learn from anybody who knows more, and just cranks out reams of code (often filled with pseudo-abstractions that make it a lot worse than plain old bad code). I think of MS as the corporate equivalent of this type. Edit: I should add that not everybody at MS is like this, of course. But the exceptions are people who grew up outside that culture.
  - greyman 18y ago
    Things got improved recently...I tend to like the new Visual Studio 2008 + .NET + C# combo. Despite the numerous critique I partially agree with, Microsoft showed the continuous commitment to improve their software, and I personally still think that staying with them, as a profesional developer, is not a bad choice.
- andreyf 18y ago
  Microsoft has always been a little slow on the uptake No, our industry is slow on the uptake. Microsoft makes products. They don't make languages to be cool or expressive or powerful, but as products to sell.
gruseom 18y ago
You have to understand how godawful of a rat's nest COM was, and the reams of technical gobbledygook that Don Box churned out while pushing it (and then the same thing all over again with XML and SOAP), to fully appreciate the irony of his discovering the first thing about Lisp in 2005. Edit: Also, a telltale question: do you think he ever actually built anything with Lisp or Scheme? I'll bet he went straight to "improving" on it. Edit 2: moved irrelevant bit to a different comment.

I think 1960 called, and asked for its programming revelations back. Code as data is cool? Lambda is powerful? Well... indeed.

by pc 18y ago

I think 1960 called, and asked for its programming revelations back. Code as data is cool? Lambda is powerful? Well... indeed.

kylec 18y ago

Microsoft has always been a little slow on the uptake

gruseom 18y ago
Your comment got me thinking. I think the issue is not that MS are slow - they used to be pretty quick at some things. Rather, it's that they've always been willfully ignorant of the larger computing culture. They never had any interest in connecting with or learning from the richest programming traditions or the best ideas or the hacker communities. They just created their own technological anti-utopia, a sort of Greenspunland in which myriads of half-baked, wildly complicated things conflict with each other. Entire armies of programmers grow up there and never leave. I know this sounds cranky. It's because I started my professional programming life in this dark forest and it took years to find my way out. And I think it's a shame that they dominated the industry for as long as they did, because they wrought such damage on the level of ideas. There's a certain type of smart-but-ignorant programmer who is infatuated with his own IQ, doesn't want to learn from anybody who knows more, and just cranks out reams of code (often filled with pseudo-abstractions that make it a lot worse than plain old bad code). I think of MS as the corporate equivalent of this type. Edit: I should add that not everybody at MS is like this, of course. But the exceptions are people who grew up outside that culture.
- greyman 18y ago
  Things got improved recently...I tend to like the new Visual Studio 2008 + .NET + C# combo. Despite the numerous critique I partially agree with, Microsoft showed the continuous commitment to improve their software, and I personally still think that staying with them, as a profesional developer, is not a bad choice.
andreyf 18y ago
Microsoft has always been a little slow on the uptake No, our industry is slow on the uptake. Microsoft makes products. They don't make languages to be cool or expressive or powerful, but as products to sell.

gruseom 18y ago

You have to understand how godawful of a rat's nest COM was, and the reams of technical gobbledygook that Don Box churned out while pushing it (and then the same thing all over again with XML and SOAP), to fully appreciate the irony of his discovering the first thing about Lisp in 2005. Edit: Also, a telltale question: do you think he ever actually built anything with Lisp or Scheme? I'll bet he went straight to "improving" on it. Edit 2: moved irrelevant bit to a different comment.