14 ms·

ex-VS person here (from 5 years ago though). It is never an either-or. It is always a complex mix of what customers ask for, what the strategic priorities/mark

by sriramk 13y ago

ex-VS person here (from 5 years ago though). It is never an either-or. It is always a complex mix of what customers ask for, what the strategic priorities/market realities are. Often the problem with these queries is that there are not enough devs complaining to MSFT. No PM/engg manager is going to ignore a bug/problem if it shows up high in customer requests. On promotions - I think it's the reverse problem. People only get promoted for working on something that's perceived to be hard.

ajross 13y ago
> Often the problem with these queries is that there are not enough devs complaining to MSFT. No PM/engg manager is going to ignore a bug/problem if it shows up high in customer requests. Note that you switch between "devs" and "customer" there. I argue that the real problem is that for VS those demographics are different. Devs in "Microsoft shops" don't go out and decide on a complier, they use VS because that's all there is. And the decision to purchase that compiler is made for them by the suited management class who frankly don't care about C++11 support beyond what they see in a line item checklist. But you're right, that clearly the "devs" have preferences. The problem with your mechanism is that they don't express them to you in customer service requests. They just job-hop to another environment, doing Javascript work, or Linux, or Ruby. And you never hear from them. Basically, the way feedback works in this world is with feet, not bug reports. If you build it they will come. If you don't they will leave.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  > ... they use VS because that's all there is On Windows there are lots of compilers to choose from.
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    There are other words around those words. ajross is describing a corporate environment where the choice is sometimes made for you.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      I understood Microsoft shops as Windows ISVs, if he meant companies 100% committed to Microsoft tooling then you are right and I made an hasty comment.
      - rbanffy 13y ago
        For every Windows ISV there are a hundred companies where the software development toolchain is chosen by someone with nothing more than a thin grasp of the concepts involved. They read in magazines the new shiny IDE has better team support and integrates seamlessly with Exchange and the SharePoint intranet deployed last year. But let's be realistic here. Most of those shops will never hire someone to write C++ code. In all likelihood, they are still porting VB3 apps to VB.net.
        pjmlp 13y ago
        Or they get someone like us that moves code from C++ to Java and .NET, because C++ is legacy. The last time I managed to do a full greenfield C++ project at work was around 2005. The enterprise has moved away from it long time ago and incoherence talk of Microsoft about going native does not help. If they are serious about that I would expect proper C++11 support and improve ngen to the point I could use it as a real native code compiler. Not dumb UI changes.
- FactoryFactory 13y ago
  >But you're right, that clearly the "devs" have preferences. The problem with your mechanism is that they don't express them to you in customer service requests. They just job-hop to another environment, doing Javascript work, or Linux, or Ruby. And you never hear from them. >Basically, the way feedback works in this world is with feet, not bug reports. If you build it they will come. If you don't they will leave. Is there any quantifiable metric to measure this so called exodus beyond anecdotes and the ".NET is dying" posts on here? If there was an IDE for .NET on par with VS, it will definitely see uptake regardless of suits.
  - ajross 13y ago
    Well, just to address the first point there is undeniably an "exodus" from Visual Studio. Just look at all the code shipped to run in browsers, or iOS, or Android, or on node or rails. A decade and a half ago a far (far!) greater fraction of that was spend in a Microsoft IDE. But that's really not the point. The upstream discussion was much narrower, and focused specifically on C/C++ support, which frankly sucks in the windows world compared to the renaissance we're seeing in Unix with our dueling multi-architecture full-support C++11 implementations. I'm not nearly expert enough to comment on how good or innovative the .NET support in VS is, but I'm perfectly willing to believe it's great.
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      Just look at all the code shipped to run in browsers... I use Visual Studio ship code to run in browsers every day.
    - rpgmaker 13y ago
      And HN is hardly representative of the software industry at large.
    - jf22 13y ago
      Undeniably? Not quite. Your reasoning is really faulty because you aren't accounting for overall growth in the industry. If the world Irish population increases by 20% does this mean that the Asian population shrunk? Of course not. Consider that Tablet and Smartphone platforms are in addition to flat PC sales. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/01/tablets-crossing-point-pcs http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/01/tablets-cro... http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/edelcompeduc/ch1/handhelds/mobile-sales_business-insider.jpg http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/edelcompeduc/ch1/handhelds/... Same goes for the world wide web in general. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-web-sites-are-are-there-2012-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-web-sites-are-are-th... You can't say logically that because there are more rails sites there are less Microsoft ones. C# is pretty popular here: http://langpop.corger.nl/ http://langpop.corger.nl/ here as well: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... And that doesn't count non-C# .net ecosystem languages. Could there be an exodus? Sure, but your reasoning is just wrong here.
cpeterso 13y ago
Mozilla has been fighting the MSVC linker's 3GB virtual address space limit for years. Mozilla has asked Microsoft for a 64-bit linker that can produce 32-bit code, but Microsoft apparently has no plans for such a configuration. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/wLHTg_moymM https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mozilla.d...
- dthunt 13y ago
  What I want to know is how someone can see that their software project has become unlinkable on a 32-bit OS and somehow think that this is purely a compiler problem.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Keep in mind that this is the group that thinks de-prioritizing 64-bit windows builds is a-okay while at the same time they need 64-bit windows machines running 32-bit linkers to build their 32-bit windows binaries. ...phew, what a mouthfull. Mozilla has never struck me as the most... forward looking.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      For one thing, I don't think their JIT produces code that properly follows the Windows x64 ABI yet. It really should be disabled in 64-bit builds until they do.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Their stated reason for de-prioritizing 64-bit builds wasn't technical; rather they say they don't have the manpower to do both. Perhaps the manpower issue is that they don't have enough people to work on the JIT issues on x64 and do everything else, but I do not believe they specified.
      - terrymah 13y ago
        Following the ABI is only an issue at module boundaries. If you control every callsite of a function, you can invent whatever calling convention you want.
ximeng 13y ago
Top voted on SQL Server Connect is a relatively simple issue (on the face of it) that's been outstanding for 8 years in two separate tickets, with no meaningful response from MS. https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Feedback https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Feedback I think devs don't complain because there's not much point.
- pointyhats 13y ago
  Very true. It took me 9 months and 45 calls to support to get a relatively simple regression in IE9/ClickOnce fixed and all we got was a fucking registry fix that we now have to ship to 2000 clients. Basically they broke ClickOnce in IE9 for launching via scripts due to the new download prompting stuff. Neither the framework team or IE team wanted to take responsibility leaving my poor support rep to reverse engineer both products.
dlitz 13y ago
> Often the problem with these queries is that there are not enough devs complaining to MSFT. No. "Customer complaints" are not a substitute for product design sense. Any survey of your customers is inherently biased: Your customers, by definition, are people who were willing to buy the product. You're rarely going to discover your biggest problems by counting the number of customers who report them, because your biggest problems are the ones that make people unwilling to become your customers in the first place.

by sriramk 13y ago

ajross 13y ago

> Often the problem with these queries is that there are not enough devs complaining to MSFT. No PM/engg manager is going to ignore a bug/problem if it shows up high in customer requests. Note that you switch between "devs" and "customer" there. I argue that the real problem is that for VS those demographics are different. Devs in "Microsoft shops" don't go out and decide on a complier, they use VS because that's all there is. And the decision to purchase that compiler is made for them by the suited management class who frankly don't care about C++11 support beyond what they see in a line item checklist. But you're right, that clearly the "devs" have preferences. The problem with your mechanism is that they don't express them to you in customer service requests. They just job-hop to another environment, doing Javascript work, or Linux, or Ruby. And you never hear from them. Basically, the way feedback works in this world is with feet, not bug reports. If you build it they will come. If you don't they will leave.

pjmlp 13y ago
> ... they use VS because that's all there is On Windows there are lots of compilers to choose from.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  There are other words around those words. ajross is describing a corporate environment where the choice is sometimes made for you.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    I understood Microsoft shops as Windows ISVs, if he meant companies 100% committed to Microsoft tooling then you are right and I made an hasty comment.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      For every Windows ISV there are a hundred companies where the software development toolchain is chosen by someone with nothing more than a thin grasp of the concepts involved. They read in magazines the new shiny IDE has better team support and integrates seamlessly with Exchange and the SharePoint intranet deployed last year. But let's be realistic here. Most of those shops will never hire someone to write C++ code. In all likelihood, they are still porting VB3 apps to VB.net.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        Or they get someone like us that moves code from C++ to Java and .NET, because C++ is legacy. The last time I managed to do a full greenfield C++ project at work was around 2005. The enterprise has moved away from it long time ago and incoherence talk of Microsoft about going native does not help. If they are serious about that I would expect proper C++11 support and improve ngen to the point I could use it as a real native code compiler. Not dumb UI changes.
FactoryFactory 13y ago
>But you're right, that clearly the "devs" have preferences. The problem with your mechanism is that they don't express them to you in customer service requests. They just job-hop to another environment, doing Javascript work, or Linux, or Ruby. And you never hear from them. >Basically, the way feedback works in this world is with feet, not bug reports. If you build it they will come. If you don't they will leave. Is there any quantifiable metric to measure this so called exodus beyond anecdotes and the ".NET is dying" posts on here? If there was an IDE for .NET on par with VS, it will definitely see uptake regardless of suits.
- ajross 13y ago
  Well, just to address the first point there is undeniably an "exodus" from Visual Studio. Just look at all the code shipped to run in browsers, or iOS, or Android, or on node or rails. A decade and a half ago a far (far!) greater fraction of that was spend in a Microsoft IDE. But that's really not the point. The upstream discussion was much narrower, and focused specifically on C/C++ support, which frankly sucks in the windows world compared to the renaissance we're seeing in Unix with our dueling multi-architecture full-support C++11 implementations. I'm not nearly expert enough to comment on how good or innovative the .NET support in VS is, but I'm perfectly willing to believe it's great.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Just look at all the code shipped to run in browsers... I use Visual Studio ship code to run in browsers every day.
  - rpgmaker 13y ago
    And HN is hardly representative of the software industry at large.
  - jf22 13y ago
    Undeniably? Not quite. Your reasoning is really faulty because you aren't accounting for overall growth in the industry. If the world Irish population increases by 20% does this mean that the Asian population shrunk? Of course not. Consider that Tablet and Smartphone platforms are in addition to flat PC sales. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/01/tablets-crossing-point-pcs http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/01/tablets-cro... http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/edelcompeduc/ch1/handhelds/mobile-sales_business-insider.jpg http://www.wcu.edu/ceap/houghton/edelcompeduc/ch1/handhelds/... Same goes for the world wide web in general. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-web-sites-are-are-there-2012-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-web-sites-are-are-th... You can't say logically that because there are more rails sites there are less Microsoft ones. C# is pretty popular here: http://langpop.corger.nl/ http://langpop.corger.nl/ here as well: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.... And that doesn't count non-C# .net ecosystem languages. Could there be an exodus? Sure, but your reasoning is just wrong here.

cpeterso 13y ago

Mozilla has been fighting the MSVC linker's 3GB virtual address space limit for years. Mozilla has asked Microsoft for a 64-bit linker that can produce 32-bit code, but Microsoft apparently has no plans for such a configuration. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/wLHTg_moymM https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mozilla.d...

dthunt 13y ago
What I want to know is how someone can see that their software project has become unlinkable on a 32-bit OS and somehow think that this is purely a compiler problem.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Keep in mind that this is the group that thinks de-prioritizing 64-bit windows builds is a-okay while at the same time they need 64-bit windows machines running 32-bit linkers to build their 32-bit windows binaries. ...phew, what a mouthfull. Mozilla has never struck me as the most... forward looking.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    For one thing, I don't think their JIT produces code that properly follows the Windows x64 ABI yet. It really should be disabled in 64-bit builds until they do.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Their stated reason for de-prioritizing 64-bit builds wasn't technical; rather they say they don't have the manpower to do both. Perhaps the manpower issue is that they don't have enough people to work on the JIT issues on x64 and do everything else, but I do not believe they specified.
    - terrymah 13y ago
      Following the ABI is only an issue at module boundaries. If you control every callsite of a function, you can invent whatever calling convention you want.

ximeng 13y ago

Top voted on SQL Server Connect is a relatively simple issue (on the face of it) that's been outstanding for 8 years in two separate tickets, with no meaningful response from MS. https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Feedback https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Feedback I think devs don't complain because there's not much point.

pointyhats 13y ago
Very true. It took me 9 months and 45 calls to support to get a relatively simple regression in IE9/ClickOnce fixed and all we got was a fucking registry fix that we now have to ship to 2000 clients. Basically they broke ClickOnce in IE9 for launching via scripts due to the new download prompting stuff. Neither the framework team or IE team wanted to take responsibility leaving my poor support rep to reverse engineer both products.

dlitz 13y ago

> Often the problem with these queries is that there are not enough devs complaining to MSFT. No. "Customer complaints" are not a substitute for product design sense. Any survey of your customers is inherently biased: Your customers, by definition, are people who were willing to buy the product. You're rarely going to discover your biggest problems by counting the number of customers who report them, because your biggest problems are the ones that make people unwilling to become your customers in the first place.