6 ms·

Tech community treats Microsoft since Balmer with kids gloves, like it's some sort of non-profit organization for saving the planet.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Where do you come up with this information? Just look at the weekly anti-Microsoft articles around here, including this one you're commenting on.
- wrldos 4y ago
  This place can be quite bipolar. I actually quit HN for a long period over the "second coming of Microsoft" when the entire HN crowd was crowing of Satya's ascent into grand hegemon position because the sycophantry was making me wretch. My comments about the same old Microsoft were downvoted to oblivion and any dissident voices squashed. The US tech community spoke and would not listen to warnings. And here we are, back at ground zero.
Jenk 4y ago
From my perspective it's the younger (and/or less mature) tech community that do this, and even then that's just sychophancy posts on reddit or elsewhere about how amazing C# is and you're a dumb-dumb for using anything that isn't C# etc. Those of us with longer teeth treat MS just the same as any org: We don't trust a single one of them.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  The young whippersnappers will learn with experience.
- wrldos 4y ago
  I think you're right on the mark there. I'm jaded and cynical enough to know what's going to hurt me and what's going to pay the bills and that's where my interest stops. 20 years of C# and 35 years of Unix now :( Worshipping any vendor is quite frankly a bit sad. I tend to avoid having to solve problems now. If I do it tends to go somewhere vendor neutral like python on whatever platform happens to be lying around and not annoying me at the time.
- radicalbyte 4y ago
  They're right about C#, it's an amazing language because it's solid + steals the good parts from other languages. The best choice I ever made was switching from Java/PHP to C# back in the early 2000s. I absolutely hate Microsoft for what they've done to Windows and Office - both of these were fantastic products for desktop users 20 years ago but nowadays they're either a bloated mess (Office) or spyware. We really need to see PC gaming move completely away from it.
  - wrldos 4y ago
    They still are good products. If you stick your fingers in you ears and forget about the bad bits. It's like living in a garden shed which has been painted nicely inside. You can live a happy existence with a bit of ignorance. So I'm miserable.
    - hgsgm 4y ago
      Looking for things to dislike makes you miserable.
      - wrldos 4y ago
        Yes you're right. Unfortunately while using things for like I keep standing in the poop on the shed carpet.
      - Jenk 4y ago
        Counter point: Ignoring the bits you don't like when they present themselves is deluding one's self.
  - awill88 4y ago
    C# is the language I would have to be held at gunpoint to learn, personally.
    - cosmodisk 4y ago
      But why? Because it comes from Microsoft? The other poster was right - the language itself is excellent.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  When I was young I kinda liked them too. From the windows 3.11 / Win95 days until the end of Windows 2000 (let's forget Windows ME ever happened please). When office was already as capable as it is now and visual basic Kickstarted new rapid development. Of course back then they were already full into megalomaniac mode with their attempt at having MSN (Microsoft Network) replace the open internet. No it was not just a news service then. However we all laughed them away. These days I'm more cynical. And I hate telemetry and spyware which really wasn't a thing in those days for lack of always-on connectivity. So, is it just my age or are things really worse?
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    For a 1995 era vision, you can make a reasoned case for MSN. The competition was not necessarily the Open Internet, it was AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve. The walled-garden platform did offer some benefits, particularly when you've got an audience new to the medium. This was an era before ubiquitous search, so the fact everything was in a single navigable heirarchy was more valuable. (Remember, this is also back when Yahoo was valuable as a directory.) Since there was a single gatekeeper, you could promise a safer, more accountable and family-friendly environment for the social channels. Again, appealing to new users. There may also have been potential for more exclusive content; if the walled-garden clients offered richer media (or the services better kickback) than what can be provided by a normal 1995 HTML tag-soup site running through an early IE or Netscape, it would be worth partnering with them. I'm actually surprised that the walled gardens went down without a fight. They could have stayed around presenting themselves as a "premium over-the-top channel" style offering-- you can get the same basic internet as everyone else, but for just $5 more, all this extra. I can recall my parents were willing to pay $25/month for AOL when generic dialup was in the $10-15 range to remain part of specific communities inside the walled garden. AOL did an incredibly poor job pivoting as people moved to broadband-- I can recall there was a package to use their propriatery offerings with an external ISP, but it was expensive, until one day it was free because they realized they needed to keep their portal/email audience from imploding totally.
  - jimbo9991 4y ago
    No, I think things are also worse but you have to understand there is a generation coming of age that never experienced paying for an operating system or really even paying any kind of substantial price for software of any kind. To them it would absolutely be worse to pay for software but not have it harvest your data. Most people aren't very cognizant of the data harvesting.
- jimbo9991 4y ago
  They've certainly managed to rehabilitate their public image. Not gonna lie I'm very impressed by Satya's leadership in that respect. I would probably prefer old Microsoft that was transparently evil though, license fees are more honest than data harvesting. Of course we know now that the license fee strategy simply isn't viable given what happened to IBM, so I doubt we ever see a change of course.
bob1029 4y ago
Microsoft is a big place. Lately, the tech community is probably focusing more on their improvements to .NET (which now works on non windows PCs) rather than their OS product line.
- wrldos 4y ago
  Um, every .Net Core developer I know, which is quite a few at multiple companies, are still doing everything on Windows and Visual Studio classic. Windows is still a massive concern for the tech community and most of those people seem to absolutely dislike windows 11 to the point they're all using Macs at home. Even our windows-centric SQL Server DBAs have macs at home. No one is going to buy corporate Macs though because Windows and Office is the best corporate dystopia for the compliance check boxers.
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    There’s literally another thread on the front page right now where one of the top commenters is taking about using macOS for this. A snarky “Um,” at the beginning of your comment doesn’t negate the fact that it sounds like you’re embedded in corporate hell, which doesn’t represent everyone making software.
    - wrldos 4y ago
      yes I use it on macOS as well. I'm writing this on my Mac. I am an active independent user group member. This isn't just about startups and big tech who are actually fairly low on seat counts. There are huge numbers lots of us corporate dystopias using this stack. On Windows. And you'll have never heard of any of us.
      - bob1029 4y ago
        I think some of us aren't having as bad a time as others. The trick is to carefully select technologies and pay attention to what you actually need to operate. Blindly diving 100% into the Microsoft offering hellscape is definitely going to be a bad time. I use .NET/VS/Windows/etc throughout. I recognize products like Azure and SQL Server are a potential trap. So, I use .NET6+ but with SQLite and minimal AspNetCore projects instead of SQL Server and IIS. I could deploy our product to Linux with a few tweaks (i.e. drop System.Drawing image conversion laziness). At work, we are a Windows-only shop for the most part. My daily driver is still a Windows PC. I have an M1 mbp I use around the house, but I generally dont get emotionally invested in exactly who vended my OS/machine. I chase the UX. I have zero loyalties to trademarks either way. Other factors are give or take depending on moon phases. If the machine feels good and fast, I use it. I don't fight it anymore. There are bigger problems in my mind.
zamalek 4y ago
> non-profit organization No edition of Windows is free. This is the very reasonable expectation that if you pay for a product, then you are not the product.
- kitkat_new 4y ago
  I haven't paid anything since Windows 8. Win 10 and 11 have been given to me for free.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    When you use an OS that collects massive amounts of your data to use against you it means you'll be paying for it for the rest of your life. Windows 10 and 11 might be the most expensive pieces of software you've ever not really owned.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    you are the product, and they are not giving you away for free
  - zamalek 4y ago
    Have you purchased a Windows computer in that time period? The cost of a Windows license is hidden in the overall cost of the machine. > Win 10 and 11 Windows is just Windows at this point. You are still using the Windows 8 license that your purchased. The version numbers are nothing more than a measurement of how brazen Microsoft is getting. Show me where I can get a legal copy of Windows that is free to install on a pristine machine and I'll concede that it is free. Microsoft have simply added a subscription fee to Windows, where you are the subscription fee.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    > Win 10 and 11 have been given to me for free. Have been? You didn't have to have an already licensed Windows installation to upgrade? You _exchanged_ your older license for the newer one for free; you didn't get one extra for free. When you purchase a complete, new computer, the windows license is included in price (OEM). If you build your computer from parts or when you spin a new VM, you have to get a new license. Windows 10/11 Home (OEM) is about 120 EUR + VAT, Pro (OEM) about 160 EUR + VAT. That's quite a far cry from free.
smeagull 4y ago
Really? I feel like the tech community just ignores them because they've become irrelevant. Even Azure is essentially a backup for people who don't trust only relying on AWS, and haven't yet been bitten by out of date documentation and bugs that "Yes we know about that", but mysteriously there's nothing online about it at all
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  Tech might be in an AWS and Macbook bubble but outside of it, the enterprise world is very, very heavily Microsoft. You will need to pry Excel out of the cold, dead hands of everyone who is even peripheral to finance. Similarly, Outlook has its devotees - yeah it's a bloated mess, but it's what the execs know and want. So that means you're deploying Office. And if you're deploying Office, you're deploying Office 365, and so that means everyone's on Azure anyway, so there's your identity management and vendor lockin. Yeah, Microsoft is not sexy in the eyes of devs. But they are the dominant platform in just about every industry that's not-tech.
RedComet 4y ago
Do you mean Nadella? Ballmer caught more flack than any big tech CEO (until possibly Musk, if he counts).

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Where do you come up with this information? Just look at the weekly anti-Microsoft articles around here, including this one you're commenting on.

wrldos 4y ago
This place can be quite bipolar. I actually quit HN for a long period over the "second coming of Microsoft" when the entire HN crowd was crowing of Satya's ascent into grand hegemon position because the sycophantry was making me wretch. My comments about the same old Microsoft were downvoted to oblivion and any dissident voices squashed. The US tech community spoke and would not listen to warnings. And here we are, back at ground zero.

Jenk 4y ago

From my perspective it's the younger (and/or less mature) tech community that do this, and even then that's just sychophancy posts on reddit or elsewhere about how amazing C# is and you're a dumb-dumb for using anything that isn't C# etc. Those of us with longer teeth treat MS just the same as any org: We don't trust a single one of them.

JohnFen 4y ago
The young whippersnappers will learn with experience.
wrldos 4y ago
I think you're right on the mark there. I'm jaded and cynical enough to know what's going to hurt me and what's going to pay the bills and that's where my interest stops. 20 years of C# and 35 years of Unix now :( Worshipping any vendor is quite frankly a bit sad. I tend to avoid having to solve problems now. If I do it tends to go somewhere vendor neutral like python on whatever platform happens to be lying around and not annoying me at the time.
radicalbyte 4y ago
They're right about C#, it's an amazing language because it's solid + steals the good parts from other languages. The best choice I ever made was switching from Java/PHP to C# back in the early 2000s. I absolutely hate Microsoft for what they've done to Windows and Office - both of these were fantastic products for desktop users 20 years ago but nowadays they're either a bloated mess (Office) or spyware. We really need to see PC gaming move completely away from it.
- wrldos 4y ago
  They still are good products. If you stick your fingers in you ears and forget about the bad bits. It's like living in a garden shed which has been painted nicely inside. You can live a happy existence with a bit of ignorance. So I'm miserable.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    Looking for things to dislike makes you miserable.
    - wrldos 4y ago
      Yes you're right. Unfortunately while using things for like I keep standing in the poop on the shed carpet.
    - Jenk 4y ago
      Counter point: Ignoring the bits you don't like when they present themselves is deluding one's self.
- awill88 4y ago
  C# is the language I would have to be held at gunpoint to learn, personally.
  - cosmodisk 4y ago
    But why? Because it comes from Microsoft? The other poster was right - the language itself is excellent.
wkat4242 4y ago
When I was young I kinda liked them too. From the windows 3.11 / Win95 days until the end of Windows 2000 (let's forget Windows ME ever happened please). When office was already as capable as it is now and visual basic Kickstarted new rapid development. Of course back then they were already full into megalomaniac mode with their attempt at having MSN (Microsoft Network) replace the open internet. No it was not just a news service then. However we all laughed them away. These days I'm more cynical. And I hate telemetry and spyware which really wasn't a thing in those days for lack of always-on connectivity. So, is it just my age or are things really worse?
- hakfoo 4y ago
  For a 1995 era vision, you can make a reasoned case for MSN. The competition was not necessarily the Open Internet, it was AOL/Prodigy/Compuserve. The walled-garden platform did offer some benefits, particularly when you've got an audience new to the medium. This was an era before ubiquitous search, so the fact everything was in a single navigable heirarchy was more valuable. (Remember, this is also back when Yahoo was valuable as a directory.) Since there was a single gatekeeper, you could promise a safer, more accountable and family-friendly environment for the social channels. Again, appealing to new users. There may also have been potential for more exclusive content; if the walled-garden clients offered richer media (or the services better kickback) than what can be provided by a normal 1995 HTML tag-soup site running through an early IE or Netscape, it would be worth partnering with them. I'm actually surprised that the walled gardens went down without a fight. They could have stayed around presenting themselves as a "premium over-the-top channel" style offering-- you can get the same basic internet as everyone else, but for just $5 more, all this extra. I can recall my parents were willing to pay $25/month for AOL when generic dialup was in the $10-15 range to remain part of specific communities inside the walled garden. AOL did an incredibly poor job pivoting as people moved to broadband-- I can recall there was a package to use their propriatery offerings with an external ISP, but it was expensive, until one day it was free because they realized they needed to keep their portal/email audience from imploding totally.
- jimbo9991 4y ago
  No, I think things are also worse but you have to understand there is a generation coming of age that never experienced paying for an operating system or really even paying any kind of substantial price for software of any kind. To them it would absolutely be worse to pay for software but not have it harvest your data. Most people aren't very cognizant of the data harvesting.
jimbo9991 4y ago
They've certainly managed to rehabilitate their public image. Not gonna lie I'm very impressed by Satya's leadership in that respect. I would probably prefer old Microsoft that was transparently evil though, license fees are more honest than data harvesting. Of course we know now that the license fee strategy simply isn't viable given what happened to IBM, so I doubt we ever see a change of course.

bob1029 4y ago

Microsoft is a big place. Lately, the tech community is probably focusing more on their improvements to .NET (which now works on non windows PCs) rather than their OS product line.

wrldos 4y ago
Um, every .Net Core developer I know, which is quite a few at multiple companies, are still doing everything on Windows and Visual Studio classic. Windows is still a massive concern for the tech community and most of those people seem to absolutely dislike windows 11 to the point they're all using Macs at home. Even our windows-centric SQL Server DBAs have macs at home. No one is going to buy corporate Macs though because Windows and Office is the best corporate dystopia for the compliance check boxers.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  There’s literally another thread on the front page right now where one of the top commenters is taking about using macOS for this. A snarky “Um,” at the beginning of your comment doesn’t negate the fact that it sounds like you’re embedded in corporate hell, which doesn’t represent everyone making software.
  - wrldos 4y ago
    yes I use it on macOS as well. I'm writing this on my Mac. I am an active independent user group member. This isn't just about startups and big tech who are actually fairly low on seat counts. There are huge numbers lots of us corporate dystopias using this stack. On Windows. And you'll have never heard of any of us.
    - bob1029 4y ago
      I think some of us aren't having as bad a time as others. The trick is to carefully select technologies and pay attention to what you actually need to operate. Blindly diving 100% into the Microsoft offering hellscape is definitely going to be a bad time. I use .NET/VS/Windows/etc throughout. I recognize products like Azure and SQL Server are a potential trap. So, I use .NET6+ but with SQLite and minimal AspNetCore projects instead of SQL Server and IIS. I could deploy our product to Linux with a few tweaks (i.e. drop System.Drawing image conversion laziness). At work, we are a Windows-only shop for the most part. My daily driver is still a Windows PC. I have an M1 mbp I use around the house, but I generally dont get emotionally invested in exactly who vended my OS/machine. I chase the UX. I have zero loyalties to trademarks either way. Other factors are give or take depending on moon phases. If the machine feels good and fast, I use it. I don't fight it anymore. There are bigger problems in my mind.

zamalek 4y ago

> non-profit organization No edition of Windows is free. This is the very reasonable expectation that if you pay for a product, then you are not the product.

kitkat_new 4y ago
I haven't paid anything since Windows 8. Win 10 and 11 have been given to me for free.
- autoexec 4y ago
  When you use an OS that collects massive amounts of your data to use against you it means you'll be paying for it for the rest of your life. Windows 10 and 11 might be the most expensive pieces of software you've ever not really owned.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  you are the product, and they are not giving you away for free
- zamalek 4y ago
  Have you purchased a Windows computer in that time period? The cost of a Windows license is hidden in the overall cost of the machine. > Win 10 and 11 Windows is just Windows at this point. You are still using the Windows 8 license that your purchased. The version numbers are nothing more than a measurement of how brazen Microsoft is getting. Show me where I can get a legal copy of Windows that is free to install on a pristine machine and I'll concede that it is free. Microsoft have simply added a subscription fee to Windows, where you are the subscription fee.
- vetinari 4y ago
  > Win 10 and 11 have been given to me for free. Have been? You didn't have to have an already licensed Windows installation to upgrade? You _exchanged_ your older license for the newer one for free; you didn't get one extra for free. When you purchase a complete, new computer, the windows license is included in price (OEM). If you build your computer from parts or when you spin a new VM, you have to get a new license. Windows 10/11 Home (OEM) is about 120 EUR + VAT, Pro (OEM) about 160 EUR + VAT. That's quite a far cry from free.

smeagull 4y ago

Really? I feel like the tech community just ignores them because they've become irrelevant. Even Azure is essentially a backup for people who don't trust only relying on AWS, and haven't yet been bitten by out of date documentation and bugs that "Yes we know about that", but mysteriously there's nothing online about it at all

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
Tech might be in an AWS and Macbook bubble but outside of it, the enterprise world is very, very heavily Microsoft. You will need to pry Excel out of the cold, dead hands of everyone who is even peripheral to finance. Similarly, Outlook has its devotees - yeah it's a bloated mess, but it's what the execs know and want. So that means you're deploying Office. And if you're deploying Office, you're deploying Office 365, and so that means everyone's on Azure anyway, so there's your identity management and vendor lockin. Yeah, Microsoft is not sexy in the eyes of devs. But they are the dominant platform in just about every industry that's not-tech.

RedComet 4y ago

Do you mean Nadella? Ballmer caught more flack than any big tech CEO (until possibly Musk, if he counts).