8 ms·

A favorite past-time of HN when a post with an interesting title on the microsoft.com domain appears, is to guess whether it's Raymond Chen, and then to fawn ov

by vsnf 3y ago

A favorite past-time of HN when a post with an interesting title on the microsoft.com domain appears, is to guess whether it's Raymond Chen, and then to fawn over Raymond Chen. All very well deserved, but are there any examples of interesting posts on microsoft.com from someone who isn't Raymond Chen discussed here?

doesnt_know 3y ago
It’s a pretty easy guess at this point since there isn’t much else of value published on that domain.
- mapreduce 3y ago
  The MSDN documents on the website have been invaluable to me. I mean I started by writing chat tools on Windows and their API docs have been excellent in getting me started. I mean stuff like https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-getwindow https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... I cannot understand why you think such a large website with so much documentation is of no value!
  - cylemons 3y ago
    Value in the context of Hacker News means something that is amusing, insightful, or impressive. It is very rare for plain ol' documentation to make it to the front page.
taspeotis 3y ago
Eric Lippert used to publish some good stuff, and Michael Kaplan. Occasionally there is decent technical content from the SQL Server team [1]. [1] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2022/07/21/improve-scalability-with-system-page-latch-concurrency-enhancements-in-sql-server-2022/ https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2022/07/21/improv...
- lifthrasiir 3y ago
  Note that Michael Kaplan's original blog ceased to exist after he died and MS "renewed" MSDN blogs, but the archive is still available [1]. [1] https://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/ https://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jcrites 3y ago
  Eric is no longer with Microsoft, by the way. He was previously on the C# compiler team. I believe he was at JetBrains when I last looked him up. Looks like his blog "Fabulous Adventures in Coding" is on his website now: https://ericlippert.com/ https://ericlippert.com/ (I worked with him briefly in, I think it was, 2005.)
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Was Scott Hanselman ever officially on microsoft.com?
tialaramex 3y ago
Microsoft ships a moderately interesting modern language C# and so there are posts which attract a small amount of comment about new C# versions and their features, e.g 12 comments about C# 8.0 And likewise they ship new hardware sometimes, a new Surface Pro got hundreds of comments. A big problem for these posts and for The Old New Thing (Raymond Chen's blog) is that Microsoft doesn't understand URL stability and so old material is too often moved, misfiled, or just destroyed altogether for no good reason. In particular it seems as though the web site (more vital now than ever for the company's appearance to the rest of the world) is routinely offered as a fun toy for a new executive to make their mark on to show how they've got exciting new visions for the company. Maybe this week Microsoft decided they loved blogs, everything is a blog now, want to announce Microsoft Boring Product 8.6.4? Write a blog post, and your customers can respond to the blog post, because we're an exciting modern tech compan... no, we abandoned that idea, all blogs are to be removed and the customer posts go with thme. Yes that means you've written what is now an article "responding" to customer questions which no longer exist but too bad we don't have time to fix that because now Microsoft is a video-first company, they are dynamic and hot, here are six hour long videos about Microsoft Boring Product and we are going to be delivering a new video every single week uh, wait, that's expensive, OK, no sorry there are no further videos about Boring Product, it's now a Wiki! Yes, experts even from outside Microsoft can contribute valuable material about Boring Product, we're going to transition all our boring stale material into user editable dyna... Nope! New plan, we're locking every wiki article and we're removing the unofficial content, yes, customers were relying on BigBabo4239's sixty paragraph explanation of how to use Power Shell with Boring Product but that no longer aligns with our corporate strategy so we've deleted it...
- logifail 3y ago
  > the web site [..] is routinely offered as a fun toy for a new executive to make their mark on to show how they've got exciting new visions for the company To be fair to Microsoft, this issue affects a great many other companies, even outside the technology space. My personal favourite has got to be www.britishairways.com, where you can discover older and older versions of their website layered like the concentric rings of some ancient tree. https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_gb/ https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_gb/ https://www.britishairways.com/travel/webforms/public/en_gb?eId=120001&wfpId=mmb_ticket_refund https://www.britishairways.com/travel/webforms/public/en_gb?... and even the gloriously broken https://www.britishairways.com/onbusiness/how.shtml https://www.britishairways.com/onbusiness/how.shtml
hardware2win 3y ago
Stephen Toub https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/how-async-await-really-works/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/how-async-await-really...
ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
Yes, papers or articles from MS research, e.g. from Simon Peyton-Jones or about Koka or Lean. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36471591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36471591 ... Guess something about VS or VS code too.
allenrb 3y ago
Busted. Saw this and immediately thought it had to be a Raymond Chen post. Whatever he’s getting paid, it probably isn’t enough.

by vsnf 3y ago

doesnt_know 3y ago

It’s a pretty easy guess at this point since there isn’t much else of value published on that domain.

mapreduce 3y ago
The MSDN documents on the website have been invaluable to me. I mean I started by writing chat tools on Windows and their API docs have been excellent in getting me started. I mean stuff like https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-getwindow https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... I cannot understand why you think such a large website with so much documentation is of no value!
- cylemons 3y ago
  Value in the context of Hacker News means something that is amusing, insightful, or impressive. It is very rare for plain ol' documentation to make it to the front page.

taspeotis 3y ago

Eric Lippert used to publish some good stuff, and Michael Kaplan. Occasionally there is decent technical content from the SQL Server team [1]. [1] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2022/07/21/improve-scalability-with-system-page-latch-concurrency-enhancements-in-sql-server-2022/ https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2022/07/21/improv...

lifthrasiir 3y ago
Note that Michael Kaplan's original blog ceased to exist after he died and MS "renewed" MSDN blogs, but the archive is still available [1]. [1] https://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/ https://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jcrites 3y ago
Eric is no longer with Microsoft, by the way. He was previously on the C# compiler team. I believe he was at JetBrains when I last looked him up. Looks like his blog "Fabulous Adventures in Coding" is on his website now: https://ericlippert.com/ https://ericlippert.com/ (I worked with him briefly in, I think it was, 2005.)
selimthegrim 3y ago
Was Scott Hanselman ever officially on microsoft.com?

tialaramex 3y ago

Microsoft ships a moderately interesting modern language C# and so there are posts which attract a small amount of comment about new C# versions and their features, e.g 12 comments about C# 8.0 And likewise they ship new hardware sometimes, a new Surface Pro got hundreds of comments. A big problem for these posts and for The Old New Thing (Raymond Chen's blog) is that Microsoft doesn't understand URL stability and so old material is too often moved, misfiled, or just destroyed altogether for no good reason. In particular it seems as though the web site (more vital now than ever for the company's appearance to the rest of the world) is routinely offered as a fun toy for a new executive to make their mark on to show how they've got exciting new visions for the company. Maybe this week Microsoft decided they loved blogs, everything is a blog now, want to announce Microsoft Boring Product 8.6.4? Write a blog post, and your customers can respond to the blog post, because we're an exciting modern tech compan... no, we abandoned that idea, all blogs are to be removed and the customer posts go with thme. Yes that means you've written what is now an article "responding" to customer questions which no longer exist but too bad we don't have time to fix that because now Microsoft is a video-first company, they are dynamic and hot, here are six hour long videos about Microsoft Boring Product and we are going to be delivering a new video every single week uh, wait, that's expensive, OK, no sorry there are no further videos about Boring Product, it's now a Wiki! Yes, experts even from outside Microsoft can contribute valuable material about Boring Product, we're going to transition all our boring stale material into user editable dyna... Nope! New plan, we're locking every wiki article and we're removing the unofficial content, yes, customers were relying on BigBabo4239's sixty paragraph explanation of how to use Power Shell with Boring Product but that no longer aligns with our corporate strategy so we've deleted it...

logifail 3y ago
> the web site [..] is routinely offered as a fun toy for a new executive to make their mark on to show how they've got exciting new visions for the company To be fair to Microsoft, this issue affects a great many other companies, even outside the technology space. My personal favourite has got to be www.britishairways.com, where you can discover older and older versions of their website layered like the concentric rings of some ancient tree. https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_gb/ https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_gb/ https://www.britishairways.com/travel/webforms/public/en_gb?eId=120001&wfpId=mmb_ticket_refund https://www.britishairways.com/travel/webforms/public/en_gb?... and even the gloriously broken https://www.britishairways.com/onbusiness/how.shtml https://www.britishairways.com/onbusiness/how.shtml

hardware2win 3y ago

Stephen Toub https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/how-async-await-really-works/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/how-async-await-really...

ReleaseCandidat 3y ago

Yes, papers or articles from MS research, e.g. from Simon Peyton-Jones or about Koka or Lean. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36471591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36471591 ... Guess something about VS or VS code too.

allenrb 3y ago

Busted. Saw this and immediately thought it had to be a Raymond Chen post. Whatever he’s getting paid, it probably isn’t enough.