4 ms·

That isn't true. Microsoft has made some genuinely good software over the years.

by bigstrat2003 2mo ago

inigyou 2mo ago
Like what
- pishpash 2mo ago
  Here's a list of MS software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software You cannot find a single one that was good, or better than whatever was the alternative at the time?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Evidently you can't, or you would have named it
    - pishpash 2mo ago
      You're digging yourself a bigger hole. Keep digging.
  - tapoxi 2mo ago
    I actually went into reading this thinking I'd agree with you that "yeah that's such hyperbole they must have made something good", and to my shock the good things they have shipped they eventually ruined. Examples: Edge (bloated with ads and Copilot), Office (now a subscription, hasn't evolved, annoying integration with copilot), Skype (dead), Halo (virtually dead), Doom (studio gutted), Visual Studio Code (locked down marketplace, replaced plugins with their own, now a giant GitHub copilot ad), Flight Simulator (massive regression with 2024)
    - terribleperson 2mo ago
      Their list of studio acquisitions over the years is damning. Something must be deeply wrong at Microsoft, because it seems like after one game release worth of time of being under Microsoft, studios become unable to release games in any reasonable amount of time.
  - VorpalWay 2mo ago
    Looked through it. I'm only considering things while they owned it. For example, Github was pretty good until Microsoft made them migrate to Azure. Uptime has been bad since. Several of the games are good, but those were mostly made by game studios they own (or later bought). Those are not really part of the core Microsoft culture. Old versions of Office (pre-ribbon UI) were perfectly usable (if you ignore the years of Clippy, or you disabled that). But in recent years, not. VS Code was good but it has been getting worse. Every new release is 90% AI features rather than useful things. And it is an open source project anyway, so they aren't the only contributor. I guess Minesweeper and Solitare are still pretty good (unless they messed them up in Windows 11, which I have stopped using entirely). But that is pretty damming isn't it? Pretty much everything on that list is bad currently. And the majority was never great.
  - cyberax 2mo ago
    Internet Explorer was _better_ than Netscape in the 90-s and the early 2000-s. Microsoft Office (and especially Excel) was just about perfect around 2003, and only degraded since then. I would argue that Office 2003 is still the best office to this day. DirectX was a godsend for game developers (up until around 2020 when MS stopped caring about anything).
- fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
  As someone else stated earlier, the NT kernel is actually great. I find Windows 10 and 11 really good once you tweak it a bit and remove some cruft and tweak regedit/GPO settings. Both for modern software. Not to talk about backwards compatibility, Steam games from 2009 run just fine. Windows is also the standard for online games with anti-cheat. Also, for companies, Excel is a must. Yes, still is. The whole ecosystem of AD+GPO+ Exchange since 2000 is unparalleled, Novell had something like AD but AD won. That continues with Office 365 where it's not just an office package. It is Identity/accounts/SSO (Entra), MDM (Intune), EDR/"antivirus", Storage (OneDrive), Sharepoint (docs + storage), Teams (Slack + Zoom). You can buy Okta, Zoom, Slack, Gsuite, an EDR, an MDM but at that point you are paying a lot more for your stack... I understand if you are a smaller company, then Gsuite + Slack and Zoom is a good choice. But go over 100 people and it starts to not make sense. I also hear developers liking their IDEs, both full VS and VS Code. /IT admin
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    The NT kernel was actually an IBM project, which got divorced from IBM because of contract stuff and Microsoft got to keep a copy. It grew out of VMS which was a heavyweight OS for DEC VAXen, which IBM acquired.
    - foobiekr 2mo ago
      No. You are thinking of the ibm Mach-kernel “workplace OS” which descended from the os/2 interaction once IBM and Microsoft broke up. NT was entirely a Microsoft project. They hired the prism team from DEC and started completely from scratch. Mach and microkernels were hot at one point despite having many issues with performance.
    - fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
      Well, somewhat. It has been a while since I read a book on NT kernel - "Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" NT kernel was "supposed" to run OS/2 apps and Windows apps. But the NT kernel is of MS making, NOT IBM. The connection to VAX/VMS is due to MS hiring Dave Cutler, who worked there before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler
- autoexec 2mo ago
  Spider solitaire
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  VB, QuickBasic, .NET (C# as improved Java, F#, C++/CLI), MSIL/CLR (WebAssembly in 2001), VSCode, TypeScript, COM, PowerShell.
pishpash 2mo ago
It really became a problem only with Windows RT attempting to merge mobile OS with desktop. All the non-sensical UX compromises are still from that. Later they abandoned consumerware after losing the mobile space but that's a different story. Microsoft isn't really a consumer software company any more so there's no point judging it on that basis.

That isn't true. Microsoft has made some genuinely good software over the years.

inigyou 2mo ago

Like what

pishpash 2mo ago
Here's a list of MS software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_software You cannot find a single one that was good, or better than whatever was the alternative at the time?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Evidently you can't, or you would have named it
  - pishpash 2mo ago
    You're digging yourself a bigger hole. Keep digging.
- tapoxi 2mo ago
  I actually went into reading this thinking I'd agree with you that "yeah that's such hyperbole they must have made something good", and to my shock the good things they have shipped they eventually ruined. Examples: Edge (bloated with ads and Copilot), Office (now a subscription, hasn't evolved, annoying integration with copilot), Skype (dead), Halo (virtually dead), Doom (studio gutted), Visual Studio Code (locked down marketplace, replaced plugins with their own, now a giant GitHub copilot ad), Flight Simulator (massive regression with 2024)
  - terribleperson 2mo ago
    Their list of studio acquisitions over the years is damning. Something must be deeply wrong at Microsoft, because it seems like after one game release worth of time of being under Microsoft, studios become unable to release games in any reasonable amount of time.
- VorpalWay 2mo ago
  Looked through it. I'm only considering things while they owned it. For example, Github was pretty good until Microsoft made them migrate to Azure. Uptime has been bad since. Several of the games are good, but those were mostly made by game studios they own (or later bought). Those are not really part of the core Microsoft culture. Old versions of Office (pre-ribbon UI) were perfectly usable (if you ignore the years of Clippy, or you disabled that). But in recent years, not. VS Code was good but it has been getting worse. Every new release is 90% AI features rather than useful things. And it is an open source project anyway, so they aren't the only contributor. I guess Minesweeper and Solitare are still pretty good (unless they messed them up in Windows 11, which I have stopped using entirely). But that is pretty damming isn't it? Pretty much everything on that list is bad currently. And the majority was never great.
- cyberax 2mo ago
  Internet Explorer was _better_ than Netscape in the 90-s and the early 2000-s. Microsoft Office (and especially Excel) was just about perfect around 2003, and only degraded since then. I would argue that Office 2003 is still the best office to this day. DirectX was a godsend for game developers (up until around 2020 when MS stopped caring about anything).
fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
As someone else stated earlier, the NT kernel is actually great. I find Windows 10 and 11 really good once you tweak it a bit and remove some cruft and tweak regedit/GPO settings. Both for modern software. Not to talk about backwards compatibility, Steam games from 2009 run just fine. Windows is also the standard for online games with anti-cheat. Also, for companies, Excel is a must. Yes, still is. The whole ecosystem of AD+GPO+ Exchange since 2000 is unparalleled, Novell had something like AD but AD won. That continues with Office 365 where it's not just an office package. It is Identity/accounts/SSO (Entra), MDM (Intune), EDR/"antivirus", Storage (OneDrive), Sharepoint (docs + storage), Teams (Slack + Zoom). You can buy Okta, Zoom, Slack, Gsuite, an EDR, an MDM but at that point you are paying a lot more for your stack... I understand if you are a smaller company, then Gsuite + Slack and Zoom is a good choice. But go over 100 people and it starts to not make sense. I also hear developers liking their IDEs, both full VS and VS Code. /IT admin
- inigyou 2mo ago
  The NT kernel was actually an IBM project, which got divorced from IBM because of contract stuff and Microsoft got to keep a copy. It grew out of VMS which was a heavyweight OS for DEC VAXen, which IBM acquired.
  - foobiekr 2mo ago
    No. You are thinking of the ibm Mach-kernel “workplace OS” which descended from the os/2 interaction once IBM and Microsoft broke up. NT was entirely a Microsoft project. They hired the prism team from DEC and started completely from scratch. Mach and microkernels were hot at one point despite having many issues with performance.
  - fryanyway_swe 2mo ago
    Well, somewhat. It has been a while since I read a book on NT kernel - "Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" NT kernel was "supposed" to run OS/2 apps and Windows apps. But the NT kernel is of MS making, NOT IBM. The connection to VAX/VMS is due to MS hiring Dave Cutler, who worked there before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler
autoexec 2mo ago
Spider solitaire
pjmlp 2mo ago
VB, QuickBasic, .NET (C# as improved Java, F#, C++/CLI), MSIL/CLR (WebAssembly in 2001), VSCode, TypeScript, COM, PowerShell.

pishpash 2mo ago

It really became a problem only with Windows RT attempting to merge mobile OS with desktop. All the non-sensical UX compromises are still from that. Later they abandoned consumerware after losing the mobile space but that's a different story. Microsoft isn't really a consumer software company any more so there's no point judging it on that basis.