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Git, Cloud, Node, Metro, is Microsoft starting to get a little bit cool?
- webmat 14y agoI love how some of the screenshots show the Chrome browser and a Mac console :-)
- xutopia 14y agoMaybe they are becoming cooler after all! ;-)
- rufibarbatus 14y agoBut also IE/Windows. And at the bottom of the article, there are links for additional resources in Windows and UNIX-like flavours.
- Killswitch 14y agoWas the first thing I noticed.
- Kudos 14y agoMicrosoft seems to think that Node is a general purpose web application platform. It would be cooler if they recognised its values (real-time applications) and promoted it on that basis.
- ghurlman 14y agoFor their purposes (Node = another thing running on Azure), it is just another platform. It's not their job to sell the platforms, just host them.
- JoelMcCracken 14y agoMicrosoft has made various token attempts at being open source friendly in the past. Thing is, Microsoft has a lot to live down from the OSS perspective. I wont begin to consider Microsoft for anything serious until it "makes good" within an order of magnitude of the harm it has tried to do to the open source community.
- latch 14y agoI feel the same. I'd even argue that they continue to do more harm than good. So they aren't even moving in the right direction. For me, telling their employees that patents would only be used defensively, then using them offensively (against Android) is as bad as anything they've ever done.
- rufibarbatus 14y agoMicrosoft is a behemoth of a company with presumably layers of bureaucratic and historical debris all over the place. Short of a very profound, top-down remodelling of the company, it's actually refreshing to see that new voices are popping up inside of MS and being allowed to advance this quickly. That is not to say they don't have a lot to make up for, just that there might still be hope for Microsoft.
- jonhohle 14y agoAnd this certainly is completely different from when they partnered with Apple, and then screwed them over. Or when they partnered with IBM, and then screwed them over. Or when they partnered with Mosaic, and then screwed them over. Or when they partnered with hardware OEMs, and then used then to screw over competitors. I'm sure this time, MS is really serious about being a community player.
- yawgmoth 14y agoAm I the only one who finds statements like this to be somewhat fanatical? Companies compete in all sorts of ways, but I find it hard to believe that Microsoft is some malevolent (thanks) empire trying to crush every OSS entity that they see. Perhaps I just am not familiar enough with what they've done to harm OSS.
- joshuacc 14y ago"maligned empire" Perhaps you meant "malevolent empire?"
- barranger 14y agoIt never ceases to amaze me how fast microsoft has been iterating with Azure, With Scott Gu running the team things have gotten even better. As for the latest release just the change from that hideous Sliverlight management console is reason enough to be excited. The really interesting announcements should be coming in a few months when the different component providers (CloudDB, MongoDB, etc) start offering Azure based offerings.
- moondowner 14y agoYou can host node apps on lots of platforms - Heroku, OpenShift, DotCloud, Cloud Foundry, Rackspace Cloud - the list goes on... When you have so much competition, and you aren't the first in the game, you have to change ;)
- mindcrime 14y agoNo, there really isn't anything cool about Microsoft; and I can't really see why anybody would use their inferior, proprietary, locked-down crap instead of F/OSS solutions. Besides, I think they murder programmers for code or something... OK, maybe they're not as evil as the fictional Microsoft-a-like in Antitrust[1] but still, cmon, this is Microsoft we're talking about. "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"[2], anybody? And aren't these guys still trying to prohibit dual booting of Windows alongside Linux/Android on some devices or something? Yeah, that's cool behavior. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_%28film%29 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
- KhalidAbuhakmeh 14y agoReally I just think this is a knee-jerk reaction. I think Microsoft is really trying and people are just gonna hate. Show me a successful company who isn't getting sued by another one. P.S. I still can't dual boot android on my iPhone, so why is Apple any better? Apple is a closed system, more so than Microsoft. P.P.S. I love Apple and Microsoft.
- mindcrime 14y agoReally I just think this is a knee-jerk reaction. I think Microsoft is really trying and people are just gonna hate. I wouldn't really say it's knee-jerk. Microsoft have earned my mistrust with their demonstrated pattern of past behavior. Believe me, I've been a Microsoft critic going back to the early/mid 90's, so this isn't a recent thing. And, regardless of whether that's true or not, they're still pitching proprietary, closed-source, locked-down crap that I, for one, have zero interest in. Given a choice between "stuff" that I can't open up, poke around in, take apart, modify, rebuild, etc., and "stuff" that I have complete control over, why would I want the former? P.S. I still can't dual boot android on my iPhone, so why is Apple any better? They're not. F%!# Apple, as far as I'm concerned. :-) Apple is a closed system, more so than Microsoft. Yes, and? F%!# Apple AND Microsoft, as far as I'm concerned.
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- csarva 14y agoIf only they could come up with something better than cmd.exe, Windows could be a fairly decent system to work on. With Cygwin and other tools, the environment is fine, just lacking a decent local terminal and most of the 3rd party ones are just as bad last I looked.
- lmm 14y agoHave you tried PowerShell? That's exactly what it's meant to do
- meanguy 14y ago... have you tried PowerShell? It's actually more like a scripting language. But if they called it PowerScript we'd just make fun of it for being bad Python. And the command window itself still sucks. I use cygwin/rxvt/screen/bash and only get burned a few times a week.
- revolutions 14y agoMentioned this above somewhere, but thought I'd leave it here, too. Try Console. http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ It makes working in Windows much, much nicer.
- KhalidAbuhakmeh 14y agoThe only thing interesting to me is that Ruby (on Rails) is missing from the developer center. Seems like if you support PHP, then RoR would be an easy win. https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/tutorials/create-a-website-(mac)/ https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/tutorials/... Probably coming soon.
- bsphil 14y agoOnly the hacker community could think so.
- TylerE 14y agoSeems to me they are being hipster - the opposite of true cool. They're grasping at straws - whatever seems to be hot.
- dredmorbius 14y agoSo ... you're saying that Microsoft are trying to be cool ... before it is cool?
- TylerE 14y agoSort of. True coolness is not something one can consciously attain, only earn through actions.
- thomasnext 14y agoDon't forget IE9, the first browser with a dubstep commercial! http://youtu.be/7u2KN_Q0sy8 http://youtu.be/7u2KN_Q0sy8 But, really, cool? Microsoft is trying too hard. Watching their videos is akin to rogue state propaganda. Does anyone really believe that IE9 is the "coolest" or "most beautiful" browser ever? (Let alone that being an important metric at all.) It's unfortunate that Microsoft thinks we'll actually believe this stuff. On the other hand, props to them. I wouldn't have known about Alex Clare's "Too Close" track without that commercia.
- cooldeal 14y agoIs this something new? Microsoft has almost always supported popular platforms other than their own if they think they can make a few bucks off them. There are a whole bunch of examples for this including Office for Mac, IE for Mac, Hyper-V support for Linux, OneNote, Bing, On{x} for Android. Of course you can ask why is there no Office for Linux? I believe the answer is more simple than "EVIL M$'. It takes a huge amount of effort to port Office to a new platform(remember how Chrome faced a bunch of issues with Desktop Linux), and MS probably believes it is not cost effective since some of Linux' users want nothing to do with Office or any MS product anyway. If Linux breaks 10% of user share, maybe you'll see Office for it. There are very strong rumors that MS is going to launch Office for iPad at the same they're going to release Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets with Office, which is going to one less reason for users to buy a Windows RT tablet over the iPad.
- debacle 14y agoMicrosoft has been working towards cool for a few years. All they need for me to never move away is a native POSIX shell.
- sp332 14y agoYou can install Services for Unix, it comes with the Korn shell.
- meanguy 14y agoThe shell really is inexcusable. Ever seen this? So close yet so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX I moved to cygwin+bash years ago which is 95% there -- and boy does the 5% have really sharp edges.
- debacle 14y agoI use MSYS right now, which does an okay job for what I need it for, but it can be confusing when the MSYS grep isn't the same as the GnuWin32 grep (GnuWin32 has -P, MSYS grep doesn't).
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoPOSIX isn't divine and infallible. PowerShell is actually quite nice, save for the arcane Windows console UI. I still prefer zsh, but that's no reason to immediately discard a competitor.
- debacle 14y agoI have a windows workstation. Every single server I interact with is POSIX. POSIX isn't divine and infallible and PowerShell is nice, but it isn't as ubiquitous and I only have enough patience for one arcane shell language.
- revolutions 14y agoTry http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/. It's wonderful.
- d4nt 14y agoI think it rarely makes sense to view Microsoft as one consistent entity; you have to look at which division is doing this and what are they're motives[1]. The Azure bit may have some affinity to the Windows Server division but probably doesn't feel pressure to sell desktop OS or Microsoft Office licenses. I think Azure wants to attract developers away from GAE and AWS, in that context this move makes perfect sense. This is no more unusual than MS Office being available on Mac or Silverlight support being somewhat absent from Windows 8. Both things make some degree of sense when you 'follow the money'. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6
- dredmorbius 14y agoNo, they are not. The company has, and has always had, a winner-take-all, paranoid violent reaction to all possible competitors in any of the spaces it occupies. It has established and held a strong market position by defining for itself an exclusive platform, first through mandatory per-unit licensing (MS DOS/Windows 3x), later through its mutually leveraged dominance of the desktop OS / office suite space, which it has tried (with varying levels of success) to extend into servers and services largely through mail and calendar, directory, collaboration, and database (MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, Sharepoint, MS SQL Server) tools. Introduction of any of these within a business environment pretty much inevitably sticks a wedge in the door. Moreover, interaction between Microsoft and other tools is often weak and buggy, encouraging a Microsoft-only monoculture. I've just addressed this in a recent thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081701 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081701 As others have noted, Microsoft have a hell of a lot to live down. Not just in the F/OSS world, but in their mortally aggressive attitude toward all comers: DR DOS, Novell, WordPerfect, Lotus, Netscape, Sun, Linux, GPL, BeOS, and Google. Among others. Currently, they are looking to quash competition on the x86 platform by locking down the UEFI bootloader: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsoft%E2%80%99s-take-uefi-may-impede-linux-and-that%E2%80%99s-being-polite http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsoft%E2%80%99s-take... http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/red-hat-linux-paying-to-get-past-uefi-restrictions-on-windows-8/3666 http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/red-hat-linux-pa... Many, myself included, see Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures as one more in a long succession of Microsoft-acting proxies fighting its battles on the patent front: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/30/intellectual-ventures-nathan-myhrvold-patent-troll-comes-to-d10/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/30/intellectu... "Looking cool" is the last and least thing they've got to do to atone. (Edit: paranoid winner-take-all intro paragraph).
- CurtHagenlocher 14y ago<i>Currently, they are looking to quash competition on the x86 platform by locking down the UEFI bootloader</i> You misspelled ARM.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
- fnulp 14y agoNo. Not ever. Doesn't even matter what they do. Cool is many things, but a huge bureaucratic apparatus is not ever part of it. It's stuff that makes food taste better, and sex hotter. So, you can easily see that there is not much actually cool stuff in the tech world to begin with, but Microsoft?! HAHAHAHA. That's like some fucked mixture between Milhouse and Mr. Burns. Thanks for the laughs though.
- Symmetry 14y agoMicrosoft is a big complicated company. It shouldn't be surprising that there are cool parts and less cool parts.
- jinushaun 14y agoPeople talk about MS in generalizations and forget that it's made up of individuals like you and me. Individuals that use Mac and Linux at home, who code Ruby and Node.js in their free time and use git. These people inside MS exist and recent moves by MS show that their efforts to change MS from within are working.
- realize 14y agoAll except the Azure bit.