4 ms·

Ex-MSFT here. Even more than API churn, the organization is indeed the crux of the problem. As the OP alluded to, the way Microsoft is built today it has a fa

Ex-MSFT here. Even more than API churn, the organization is indeed the crux of the problem. As the OP alluded to, the way Microsoft is built today it has a fatal organizational flaw that prevents creating the next great Windows platform. The platform/dev tools team and the OS team are in completely different business groups within the company. The platform team develops the wonderful .NET platform for small/medium applications and server apps while the OS team keeps crudging along with Win32. Managed languages have their place, but they have yet to gain traction for any top shelf large-scale windows client application vendors (Adobe, even Microsoft Office itself, etc.) Major client application development still relies on unmanaged APIs, and IMHO the Windows unmanaged APIs are arguably the worst (viable) development platform available today. What Windows needs is a new subsystem/development platform to break with Win32, providing simplified, extensible unmanaged application development, with modern easy-to-use abstractions for hardware services such as graphics, data, audio and networking. What Apple offers is not some revolutionary OS architecture, but their Cocoa and Carbon APIs, and their Core libraries which are for the most part, well thought out and have survived multiple architectural transitions (PPC -> Intel -> ARM, desktop -> mobile). Something similar is starting to come to fruition with WinRT, but the inertia in large scale apps is unbelievable.

zaphar 13y ago
It's somewhat ironic that your reply to an article about how M$ needs to pick a technology stack and stick with it is a comment about how is "What Windows needs is a new subsystem/development platform to break with Win32, providing simplified, extensible unmanaged application development, with modern easy-to-use abstractions for hardware services such as graphics, data, audio and networking."
- lstamour 13y ago
  Well, the point really is -- Microsoft has to eat its own dogfood. If you're developing tools, use em to build Windows! The pain you feel will be the pain other devs feel, and you'll write tools to compensate for that. But the large teams are too big to fail, so they rarely experiment, leaving third-party devs or small projects at risk instead.

zaphar 13y ago

It's somewhat ironic that your reply to an article about how M$ needs to pick a technology stack and stick with it is a comment about how is "What Windows needs is a new subsystem/development platform to break with Win32, providing simplified, extensible unmanaged application development, with modern easy-to-use abstractions for hardware services such as graphics, data, audio and networking."

lstamour 13y ago
Well, the point really is -- Microsoft has to eat its own dogfood. If you're developing tools, use em to build Windows! The pain you feel will be the pain other devs feel, and you'll write tools to compensate for that. But the large teams are too big to fail, so they rarely experiment, leaving third-party devs or small projects at risk instead.