6 ms·

When I was a younger (and more-foolish) web dev few years ago, already well in the decline of IE, I met someone much older who said he was one of the developers

When I was a younger (and more-foolish) web dev few years ago, already well in the decline of IE, I met someone much older who said he was one of the developers of IE. He must have seen it coming in my face from my grin, or he had experience on the topic, so he quickly reminded me of something that was absolutely true; back then when IE was released it WAS at the top of web tech development, the problem came with the trail of users still active years/decades later, since the tech itself was pretty good when it was released. Sure in some releases they might not have been literally the best, and they did employ shady techniques, but it's true that they were always technically advanced and competent releases.

cpach 3y ago
I guess IE’s reputation was also shaded by the reputation of Microsoft. The Microsoft back in the 90s and early 00s was IMHO, not a very nice company. But how they have evolved! For someone starting out with Linux in the 90s I could never dream of Microsoft being a part of the open source ecosystem. In my book, Satya Nadella has been a very good steward of his company.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Personally, I preferred the Microsoft of the 90s and 00s who were concerned about getting my money at the cash register. These days, Microsoft are concerned about getting my money at my god damn desk every second of the god damn day.
  - xattt 3y ago
    Announcing Microsoft Nickel & Dime 365! No fiddling with “purchases” or “subscriptions”. Everything you earn is transferred directly to us!
- samhuk 3y ago
  > But how they have evolved! I'de disagree with that statement as some of their moves (such as purchasing GitHub) could be equally viewed as part of their typical EEE strategy that permeated the entire business. WSL could also be, and indeed is by many, viewed the same way ("Microsoft is just trying to pseudo-own the linux ecosystem by embedding it within Windows"). Personally, seeing how EEE permeated the entire business in the infamous 90's & 00's era Microsoft and all of the dirty laundry that ended up being aired, I don't doubt for a second that the current-era Microsoft is just as bad, but better at hiding it. Apples don't fall far from the tree. Fool me once...
  - politelemon 3y ago
    I'll disagree with your disagreement. They carry with them the reputation from the 00s, which most of us seem to be incapable of letting go of. There a fundamental assumption being made here that they are incapable of change. To me their actions speak louder than slogans and have proven themselves good citizens in many areas. Scrutiny is good. They should constantly be scrutinized. Yet we have Google and Apple who regularly escape the same scrutiny that they ought to be getting, and instead are given a free pass for more nefarious actions than ms have committed. If we're going to take a stance if distrust, it needs to be extended to everyone. Otherwise it's just politics and brand loyalty.
    - executesorder66 3y ago
      Okay, but they still haven't changed. They haven't done jack shit for open source. Buying Github doesn't mean anything. They also haven't done jack shit for open platforms either. They can't ship working cross-platform software that matters to save their lives. (VSCode doesn't matter. There are a million other text editors) Things that DO matter, that they have locked into their ecosystem are things like Office or Teams. Teams is based on electron, and they still fucked up the cross-platform capabilities. Teams on Linux is absolute ass. Why not port Office to Linux? I thought Microsoft <3 Linux. They don't. They haven't changed. They lose a ton of devs to Linux and Mac, since doing any kind of dev work is a pain. Their solution? Ship an entire Linux OS (WSL2) alongside their own OS, since their dev tools are dogshit. They didn't do this out of goodwill, they are trying to stop the bleeding. So please tell me, in the last 20 years, is there really anything microsoft has _actually_ done to foster any kind of goodwill from Linux people?
      - zargon 3y ago
        > their dev tools are dogshit I agree with you except for this. Microsoft has, since the '90s, always had top-tier dev tools. They're a different ecosystem than unixy development, and hence incompatible and unfamiliar with a different user experience. Linux's dominance in the server environment has caused it to gather developer mindshare in the last 20 years and so there are many developers who prefer the Linux tooling ecosystem. And yes, Microsoft is trying to (and succeeding at) keep them in Windows with WSL. I expect to see them use the 'extend' playbook to trap them on the platform (if they haven't already, I'm not following very closely).
lll-o-lll 3y ago
> but it's true that they were always technically advanced and competent releases. Wow. Historical revisionism if ever I saw it. Netscape imploded like the fall of Rome, rent by incompetent business leaders and crumbling from unassailable technical debt. IE defeated the competition by anti-competitive practice, then had no competition as their opponents scored all of the own goals. Mozilla was a slow rising Phoenix from the ashes of that catastrophe. From there, Microsoft did what big companies do best, having destroyed their competition. Absolutely… sweet… stuff all. Years of nothing. Technically advanced? Competent? Ha I say! If miserly underinvestment is now “technical brilliance” I weep for the youth. Thank goodness that competition eventually returned; but there are reasons every single human who could jumped on chrome when it was released.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > but there are reasons every single human who could jumped on chrome when it was released. ...Advertising? Antitrust action? Because, let's be honest, Firefox had been around for a while, and Opera was there even longer. The people who waited until Chrome for to jump ship were, mostly, people who hadn't heard of an alternative.
  - lll-o-lll 3y ago
    Chrome was fast and minimal when first released while Firefox famously ate all of your memory. No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible. This was in the days of “don’t be evil” and people even liking google. Firefox had its advocates, but it wasn’t the simple “just way better than IE” that chrome was. I shamefully moved from Firefox to chrome. For the tabs man, I needed those tabs.
    - pessimizer 3y ago
      > No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible. Confused about this comment. At all points during the history of even single-process Firefox, as far as I know, it could handle far more tabs than Chrome, as in not even worth comparing. Chrome would start actively falling apart at 100 tabs. Firefox could eat up all of your memory with 20 tabs, but would only be marginally worse at 1000 tabs. Firefox died because it systematically started eliminating all of its advantages over Chrome and imitating it in even superficial ways, and became openly user-hostile as it became completely financially dependent on Google. Imo it had only a little bit to do with Chrome's performance, which was often based on visually cheating and assuming that nobody needed more than 20 tabs, but also had tab isolation so the browser wasn't always hard crashing. Still, plenty of people are impressed by a quickly appearing unresponsive UI, plenty don't need more than 20 tabs, and hard crashes suck. > For the tabs man, I needed those tabs. I needed tree-style vertical tabs, so I was locked in because Chrome wasn't flexible enough to build them.
petercooper 3y ago
back then when IE was released it WAS at the top of web tech development I remember when IE4 came out. It was a fascinating piece of software (and extremely crashy too in beta) packed with all sorts of forward looking technologies like Active Channel, Active Desktop, a chat app, Outlook Express, and more. I'm a bit sad, but I could literally watch a 2 hour documentary on IE4, there must be so many stories behind its development and eventual demise.
stcroixx 3y ago
It was always implementing proprietary stuff and breaking w3c standards following their predatory business model. It only gained traction because it was bundled with windows and MS lost that case in federal court. Maybe a MS dev believes it was good tech, but nobody I knew shared that opinion.
phendrenad2 3y ago
Makes you wonder what's stopping Chrom(ium-based) browsers from suffering the same fate. Maybe the simple fact that the browser exists to attract users so they can be packaged and sold to advertisers, vs the browser existing to trap you in a desktop OS ecosystem.

cpach 3y ago

I guess IE’s reputation was also shaded by the reputation of Microsoft. The Microsoft back in the 90s and early 00s was IMHO, not a very nice company. But how they have evolved! For someone starting out with Linux in the 90s I could never dream of Microsoft being a part of the open source ecosystem. In my book, Satya Nadella has been a very good steward of his company.

Dalewyn 3y ago
Personally, I preferred the Microsoft of the 90s and 00s who were concerned about getting my money at the cash register. These days, Microsoft are concerned about getting my money at my god damn desk every second of the god damn day.
- xattt 3y ago
  Announcing Microsoft Nickel & Dime 365! No fiddling with “purchases” or “subscriptions”. Everything you earn is transferred directly to us!
samhuk 3y ago
> But how they have evolved! I'de disagree with that statement as some of their moves (such as purchasing GitHub) could be equally viewed as part of their typical EEE strategy that permeated the entire business. WSL could also be, and indeed is by many, viewed the same way ("Microsoft is just trying to pseudo-own the linux ecosystem by embedding it within Windows"). Personally, seeing how EEE permeated the entire business in the infamous 90's & 00's era Microsoft and all of the dirty laundry that ended up being aired, I don't doubt for a second that the current-era Microsoft is just as bad, but better at hiding it. Apples don't fall far from the tree. Fool me once...
- politelemon 3y ago
  I'll disagree with your disagreement. They carry with them the reputation from the 00s, which most of us seem to be incapable of letting go of. There a fundamental assumption being made here that they are incapable of change. To me their actions speak louder than slogans and have proven themselves good citizens in many areas. Scrutiny is good. They should constantly be scrutinized. Yet we have Google and Apple who regularly escape the same scrutiny that they ought to be getting, and instead are given a free pass for more nefarious actions than ms have committed. If we're going to take a stance if distrust, it needs to be extended to everyone. Otherwise it's just politics and brand loyalty.
  - executesorder66 3y ago
    Okay, but they still haven't changed. They haven't done jack shit for open source. Buying Github doesn't mean anything. They also haven't done jack shit for open platforms either. They can't ship working cross-platform software that matters to save their lives. (VSCode doesn't matter. There are a million other text editors) Things that DO matter, that they have locked into their ecosystem are things like Office or Teams. Teams is based on electron, and they still fucked up the cross-platform capabilities. Teams on Linux is absolute ass. Why not port Office to Linux? I thought Microsoft <3 Linux. They don't. They haven't changed. They lose a ton of devs to Linux and Mac, since doing any kind of dev work is a pain. Their solution? Ship an entire Linux OS (WSL2) alongside their own OS, since their dev tools are dogshit. They didn't do this out of goodwill, they are trying to stop the bleeding. So please tell me, in the last 20 years, is there really anything microsoft has _actually_ done to foster any kind of goodwill from Linux people?
    - zargon 3y ago
      > their dev tools are dogshit I agree with you except for this. Microsoft has, since the '90s, always had top-tier dev tools. They're a different ecosystem than unixy development, and hence incompatible and unfamiliar with a different user experience. Linux's dominance in the server environment has caused it to gather developer mindshare in the last 20 years and so there are many developers who prefer the Linux tooling ecosystem. And yes, Microsoft is trying to (and succeeding at) keep them in Windows with WSL. I expect to see them use the 'extend' playbook to trap them on the platform (if they haven't already, I'm not following very closely).

lll-o-lll 3y ago

> but it's true that they were always technically advanced and competent releases. Wow. Historical revisionism if ever I saw it. Netscape imploded like the fall of Rome, rent by incompetent business leaders and crumbling from unassailable technical debt. IE defeated the competition by anti-competitive practice, then had no competition as their opponents scored all of the own goals. Mozilla was a slow rising Phoenix from the ashes of that catastrophe. From there, Microsoft did what big companies do best, having destroyed their competition. Absolutely… sweet… stuff all. Years of nothing. Technically advanced? Competent? Ha I say! If miserly underinvestment is now “technical brilliance” I weep for the youth. Thank goodness that competition eventually returned; but there are reasons every single human who could jumped on chrome when it was released.

pyrale 3y ago
> but there are reasons every single human who could jumped on chrome when it was released. ...Advertising? Antitrust action? Because, let's be honest, Firefox had been around for a while, and Opera was there even longer. The people who waited until Chrome for to jump ship were, mostly, people who hadn't heard of an alternative.
- lll-o-lll 3y ago
  Chrome was fast and minimal when first released while Firefox famously ate all of your memory. No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible. This was in the days of “don’t be evil” and people even liking google. Firefox had its advocates, but it wasn’t the simple “just way better than IE” that chrome was. I shamefully moved from Firefox to chrome. For the tabs man, I needed those tabs.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    > No matter how much you had, it would eat it. I remember being mocked for the number of tabs I would always have open, but secretly, they were just jealous that it was actually possible. Confused about this comment. At all points during the history of even single-process Firefox, as far as I know, it could handle far more tabs than Chrome, as in not even worth comparing. Chrome would start actively falling apart at 100 tabs. Firefox could eat up all of your memory with 20 tabs, but would only be marginally worse at 1000 tabs. Firefox died because it systematically started eliminating all of its advantages over Chrome and imitating it in even superficial ways, and became openly user-hostile as it became completely financially dependent on Google. Imo it had only a little bit to do with Chrome's performance, which was often based on visually cheating and assuming that nobody needed more than 20 tabs, but also had tab isolation so the browser wasn't always hard crashing. Still, plenty of people are impressed by a quickly appearing unresponsive UI, plenty don't need more than 20 tabs, and hard crashes suck. > For the tabs man, I needed those tabs. I needed tree-style vertical tabs, so I was locked in because Chrome wasn't flexible enough to build them.

petercooper 3y ago

back then when IE was released it WAS at the top of web tech development I remember when IE4 came out. It was a fascinating piece of software (and extremely crashy too in beta) packed with all sorts of forward looking technologies like Active Channel, Active Desktop, a chat app, Outlook Express, and more. I'm a bit sad, but I could literally watch a 2 hour documentary on IE4, there must be so many stories behind its development and eventual demise.

stcroixx 3y ago

It was always implementing proprietary stuff and breaking w3c standards following their predatory business model. It only gained traction because it was bundled with windows and MS lost that case in federal court. Maybe a MS dev believes it was good tech, but nobody I knew shared that opinion.

phendrenad2 3y ago

Makes you wonder what's stopping Chrom(ium-based) browsers from suffering the same fate. Maybe the simple fact that the browser exists to attract users so they can be packaged and sold to advertisers, vs the browser existing to trap you in a desktop OS ecosystem.