6 ms·

The consumer guys at Microsoft are just plain wrong

38 points by michaelhoffman 14y ago

aneth4 14y ago
Blah, blah, Microsoft sucks, blah ... "AZURE IS GOING TO WIN".. Wait, what? Either this is off the mark or I'm missing a major initiative that could change the internet and save Microsoft. Is there a great article lingering about explaining why Azure is going to win?
- onedev 14y ago
  You summed up my reaction quite nicely.
- crag 14y ago
  Oh I think Azure will do well. And win in the Enterprise market. Look, outside the bubble of the bay area startup land - the world is different. MS Office is everywhere; SharePoint is everywhere; Windows Server is everywhere. MS is positioned very well. In the Enterprise world. Not consumer world. Outside of the xbox (nd that has it's issues as well) MS has already lost the consumer market. Consumers don't buy PC cause of Windows. The get Widows becuase it's the default OS on the PC they are buying. Most care-less what OS is running as long as they can check their email, play a few game and look at look/listen/create media.
  - meaty 14y ago
    Yep the consumers buy a laptop because it is pink or cheap which usually ends up running windows as its the only thing at the price point. When they buy a tablet, they buy a shit no brand one running an ancient android release, realise it sucks and just go and buy a shit windows laptop. Less than ten percent of consumers are not moronic enough to buy something better the first time. The businesses buy windows because its good enough and already works for what they need and they don't want to learn it all again. I live in an expensive bit of London where people can afford i-this and that and everyone still had cheap pink laptops running windows. Phones are different but there is a definite shift towards blackberry and windows phone around me from iPhones. Most people whinge about their iPhone these days.
runako 14y ago
Lost me at "Let me make this clear, AZURE IS GOING TO WIN the cloud computing infrastructure and platform battle." without providing any further justification for this bold claim.
nemothekid 14y ago
Does anyone who actually uses Azure want to chime in? I admit that I may live in a bubble, but if Azure is going to win, and I have heard almost nothing about it that gives it the edge over the Heroku/AWS/GAE triumvirate, I would certainly like to know.
- krautsourced 14y ago
  I haven't used it myself, but I think in the enterprise market it actually is being used quite a bit. I have heard good things from people who used it, but am at a loss at giving you a concrete example. Maybe it's worth giving it a go, just to form an opinion...
  - dasil003 14y ago
    Wasn't Apple using it for iCloud? Or was that just a rumor?
    - qntmfred 14y ago
      they were
- meaty 14y ago
  It's tidier than AWS and GAE, better performing and slightly more expensive. Tooling is good, support is excellent (I can get someone who knows arse from elbow on the phone in 2 minutes flat). Some of it is a little odd, but it makes sense eventually. API is a little clunky though. We have some kit in it (Linux and windows which might sound odd), but it seems to be pretty reliable. Our AD forest root servers are in it and two OpenLDAP roots for clients as is our web site (which is 3rd party PHP). It basically does everything. It's sort of GAE's app model and AWS's server + network model in one. We did have a network/vlan issue but they sorted that on the phone in literally 10 minutes.
JanezStupar 14y ago
I don't think that MS failed to ship SDK's because of some strategy. I believe that they simply weren't ready for release.
epeus 14y ago
Microsoft has a very dedicated set of devs that like .Net, and for them Azure is lovely. I doubt if any of them are on Hacker News though. These will be the people this chap is talking to, so he won't see the existential threat of Cloud to microsoft.
- junto 14y ago
  Cough... here.
- jongalloway2 14y ago
  Why do you doubt we're on Hacker News?
  - marcocampos 14y ago
    If you're using any Microsoft technology people around here assume that you are a boring programmer that's a slave to the evil Redmond overloards and are not in anyway interested in fancy tech news that are posted in Hacker News. Keep up the good work, you guys in the ASP.NET team are doing great :)
- seejc 14y ago
  Here also.
- thaiphan 14y ago
  There are also official SDKs for Windows Azure in Java, Python, JavaScript and PHP. You don't need to be a .NET developer to think it's a swell platform to develop for.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
    And node.js http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/ http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/
- SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
  I work in a smallish company, with about 30 coders. I would not say that "Microsoft has" us, but C# and .Net is our primary software development environment. We all read hacker news. If you divide coders into two distinct categories - ".Net devs" and "hacker news readers", then you are mixing up at least 2 different things that aren't that strongly related.
krautsourced 14y ago
I'm not entirely agreeing with everything here - there was a lot of communication going on through the Windows developer blogs, with (at times ridiculously long) postings on the state of Win8 development. The problem was however that this was a total one-way communication. The hundreds of comments (some angry, some reasonable) below were ignored. I don't think there was a single positive response to ditching the start button over the metro interface. Yet still they did it (and it's shit, as expected (imho)). Granted, there was a lot of whining about dropping the Glass look as well, and I have to admit that the new win8 theme looks quite nice now that I see it in real life. The fact however that the first thing I do is put a shortcut to a shutdown batch file on my desktop, so I don't have to jump through hoops to find that menu, says it all. I ditched win8 within days.
vellum 14y ago
So according to the author: 1.) Successful platforms keep devs in the loop, 2.) Azure keeps devs in the loop, 3.) ∴ “AZURE IS GOING TO WIN” I’d like to see some data to back up his claims that Azure “has the Big Mo” and that it’s displacing Amazon + Salesforce.
- dasil003 14y ago
  The piece isn't really about that though. Despite being an extreme claim, it's really just a tangential opinion. I think the piece can stand pretty well even if you disagree with this, but I would certainly be interested in a separate article on the topic.
mythz 14y ago
Agreed with a lot of the article up until: "AZURE IS GOING TO WIN". This is likely the result of spending too much time inside a Microsoft cocoon and has no idea that most of the outside world isn't built on Azure, or even windows servers. The only thing Azure is going to win at is being the default/preferred cloud provider for Microsoft MVPs and other VS.NET devs primarily based on a Microsoft tech stack.
- meaty 14y ago
  Perhaps us .Net devs are the silent majority? Windows pays the bills for a lot of people. One of our clients has 17,000 windows desktops, 3,500 windows laptops, 500 windows servers and a team of 80 people looking after it all. None of this is connected to the internet or is tongue-wagged about profusely. There are thousands of companies that size hiding that no one hears about here be use they are not clever, vc funded or bleeding edge. The world is built on lots of things, but a chunk of it certainly is built on windows, possibly more than you can see with the naked eye.
  - mythz 14y ago
    No not silent majority, not even close. Naming a single instance is not representative of the real-world at all. Unfortunately Amazon/Azure are coy with their numbers but I expect there is likely an order of magnitude more instances deployed on Amazon than Azure. Some rough numbers to provide some meaningful context of Microsoft's overall server market share: Microsoft only has 11.62% of the total web server market share of active sites, 12.86% activity from the top 100M busiest sites: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/03/01/march-2013-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/03/01/march-2013-web-... Only a fraction of the top internet sites are deployed on a Microsoft platform: http://www.seomoz.org/top500 http://www.seomoz.org/top500 C# (the most popular .NET language) is the 12th most popular language on GitHub: https://github.com/languages/C%23 https://github.com/languages/C%23
    - gjulianm 14y ago
      That's not a meaningful context. That web server market share doesn't include all the on-premises servers for Intranets, mail, shared folders... Neither the Github percentage is representative. In fact, when your parent was referring to with 'silent majority' is that those C# projects are not on GitHub, not open source, just internal tools. I don't say that .NET is a majority, or minority, or whatever. I sincerely don't have the data. But those numbers you gave don't prove anything.
skc 14y ago
There are many of us here I think. But lets be honest for a minute, HN isn't exactly the right place to speak up about cool stuff you're doing with Microsoft tech.
clark-kent 14y ago
Is there anyone using Azure with no Microsoft Technology on their stack? I'm really curious about this. I know there maybe some former .Net devs that are doing node.js on Azure. But is there any pure Linux/LAMP/php/python/ruby devs choosing Azure over AWS and others.

Blah, blah, Microsoft sucks, blah ... "AZURE IS GOING TO WIN".. Wait, what? Either this is off the mark or I'm missing a major initiative that could change the internet and save Microsoft. Is there a great article lingering about explaining why Azure is going to win?

onedev 14y ago
You summed up my reaction quite nicely.
crag 14y ago
Oh I think Azure will do well. And win in the Enterprise market. Look, outside the bubble of the bay area startup land - the world is different. MS Office is everywhere; SharePoint is everywhere; Windows Server is everywhere. MS is positioned very well. In the Enterprise world. Not consumer world. Outside of the xbox (nd that has it's issues as well) MS has already lost the consumer market. Consumers don't buy PC cause of Windows. The get Widows becuase it's the default OS on the PC they are buying. Most care-less what OS is running as long as they can check their email, play a few game and look at look/listen/create media.
- meaty 14y ago
  Yep the consumers buy a laptop because it is pink or cheap which usually ends up running windows as its the only thing at the price point. When they buy a tablet, they buy a shit no brand one running an ancient android release, realise it sucks and just go and buy a shit windows laptop. Less than ten percent of consumers are not moronic enough to buy something better the first time. The businesses buy windows because its good enough and already works for what they need and they don't want to learn it all again. I live in an expensive bit of London where people can afford i-this and that and everyone still had cheap pink laptops running windows. Phones are different but there is a definite shift towards blackberry and windows phone around me from iPhones. Most people whinge about their iPhone these days.

runako 14y ago

Lost me at "Let me make this clear, AZURE IS GOING TO WIN the cloud computing infrastructure and platform battle." without providing any further justification for this bold claim.

nemothekid 14y ago

Does anyone who actually uses Azure want to chime in? I admit that I may live in a bubble, but if Azure is going to win, and I have heard almost nothing about it that gives it the edge over the Heroku/AWS/GAE triumvirate, I would certainly like to know.

krautsourced 14y ago
I haven't used it myself, but I think in the enterprise market it actually is being used quite a bit. I have heard good things from people who used it, but am at a loss at giving you a concrete example. Maybe it's worth giving it a go, just to form an opinion...
- dasil003 14y ago
  Wasn't Apple using it for iCloud? Or was that just a rumor?
  - qntmfred 14y ago
    they were
meaty 14y ago
It's tidier than AWS and GAE, better performing and slightly more expensive. Tooling is good, support is excellent (I can get someone who knows arse from elbow on the phone in 2 minutes flat). Some of it is a little odd, but it makes sense eventually. API is a little clunky though. We have some kit in it (Linux and windows which might sound odd), but it seems to be pretty reliable. Our AD forest root servers are in it and two OpenLDAP roots for clients as is our web site (which is 3rd party PHP). It basically does everything. It's sort of GAE's app model and AWS's server + network model in one. We did have a network/vlan issue but they sorted that on the phone in literally 10 minutes.

JanezStupar 14y ago

I don't think that MS failed to ship SDK's because of some strategy. I believe that they simply weren't ready for release.

epeus 14y ago

Microsoft has a very dedicated set of devs that like .Net, and for them Azure is lovely. I doubt if any of them are on Hacker News though. These will be the people this chap is talking to, so he won't see the existential threat of Cloud to microsoft.

junto 14y ago
Cough... here.
jongalloway2 14y ago
Why do you doubt we're on Hacker News?
- marcocampos 14y ago
  If you're using any Microsoft technology people around here assume that you are a boring programmer that's a slave to the evil Redmond overloards and are not in anyway interested in fancy tech news that are posted in Hacker News. Keep up the good work, you guys in the ASP.NET team are doing great :)
seejc 14y ago
Here also.
thaiphan 14y ago
There are also official SDKs for Windows Azure in Java, Python, JavaScript and PHP. You don't need to be a .NET developer to think it's a swell platform to develop for.
- SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
  And node.js http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/ http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/
SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
I work in a smallish company, with about 30 coders. I would not say that "Microsoft has" us, but C# and .Net is our primary software development environment. We all read hacker news. If you divide coders into two distinct categories - ".Net devs" and "hacker news readers", then you are mixing up at least 2 different things that aren't that strongly related.

krautsourced 14y ago

I'm not entirely agreeing with everything here - there was a lot of communication going on through the Windows developer blogs, with (at times ridiculously long) postings on the state of Win8 development. The problem was however that this was a total one-way communication. The hundreds of comments (some angry, some reasonable) below were ignored. I don't think there was a single positive response to ditching the start button over the metro interface. Yet still they did it (and it's shit, as expected (imho)). Granted, there was a lot of whining about dropping the Glass look as well, and I have to admit that the new win8 theme looks quite nice now that I see it in real life. The fact however that the first thing I do is put a shortcut to a shutdown batch file on my desktop, so I don't have to jump through hoops to find that menu, says it all. I ditched win8 within days.

vellum 14y ago

So according to the author: 1.) Successful platforms keep devs in the loop, 2.) Azure keeps devs in the loop, 3.) ∴ “AZURE IS GOING TO WIN” I’d like to see some data to back up his claims that Azure “has the Big Mo” and that it’s displacing Amazon + Salesforce.

dasil003 14y ago
The piece isn't really about that though. Despite being an extreme claim, it's really just a tangential opinion. I think the piece can stand pretty well even if you disagree with this, but I would certainly be interested in a separate article on the topic.

mythz 14y ago

Agreed with a lot of the article up until: "AZURE IS GOING TO WIN". This is likely the result of spending too much time inside a Microsoft cocoon and has no idea that most of the outside world isn't built on Azure, or even windows servers. The only thing Azure is going to win at is being the default/preferred cloud provider for Microsoft MVPs and other VS.NET devs primarily based on a Microsoft tech stack.

meaty 14y ago
Perhaps us .Net devs are the silent majority? Windows pays the bills for a lot of people. One of our clients has 17,000 windows desktops, 3,500 windows laptops, 500 windows servers and a team of 80 people looking after it all. None of this is connected to the internet or is tongue-wagged about profusely. There are thousands of companies that size hiding that no one hears about here be use they are not clever, vc funded or bleeding edge. The world is built on lots of things, but a chunk of it certainly is built on windows, possibly more than you can see with the naked eye.
- mythz 14y ago
  No not silent majority, not even close. Naming a single instance is not representative of the real-world at all. Unfortunately Amazon/Azure are coy with their numbers but I expect there is likely an order of magnitude more instances deployed on Amazon than Azure. Some rough numbers to provide some meaningful context of Microsoft's overall server market share: Microsoft only has 11.62% of the total web server market share of active sites, 12.86% activity from the top 100M busiest sites: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/03/01/march-2013-web-server-survey.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/03/01/march-2013-web-... Only a fraction of the top internet sites are deployed on a Microsoft platform: http://www.seomoz.org/top500 http://www.seomoz.org/top500 C# (the most popular .NET language) is the 12th most popular language on GitHub: https://github.com/languages/C%23 https://github.com/languages/C%23
  - gjulianm 14y ago
    That's not a meaningful context. That web server market share doesn't include all the on-premises servers for Intranets, mail, shared folders... Neither the Github percentage is representative. In fact, when your parent was referring to with 'silent majority' is that those C# projects are not on GitHub, not open source, just internal tools. I don't say that .NET is a majority, or minority, or whatever. I sincerely don't have the data. But those numbers you gave don't prove anything.

skc 14y ago

There are many of us here I think. But lets be honest for a minute, HN isn't exactly the right place to speak up about cool stuff you're doing with Microsoft tech.

clark-kent 14y ago

Is there anyone using Azure with no Microsoft Technology on their stack? I'm really curious about this. I know there maybe some former .Net devs that are doing node.js on Azure. But is there any pure Linux/LAMP/php/python/ruby devs choosing Azure over AWS and others.