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It's worth noting that under Satya (in my org, Cloud and Enterprise) we open sourced ASP.NET, use 50+ OSS libraries in Visual Studio, have all the Azure cloud S

It's worth noting that under Satya (in my org, Cloud and Enterprise) we open sourced ASP.NET, use 50+ OSS libraries in Visual Studio, have all the Azure cloud SDKs on GitHub, and on and on. We made Portable Libraries happen and now share code between iOS, Android, and Windows. This is not your grandfather's MSFT, and now the dude who helped us (Azure) change things in a fundamentally non-MSFT and totally awesome way is in charge. I'm stoked - big things coming, I think. Disclaimer: I work in Azure.

dave1619 13y ago
It's great to hear from somebody who worked in Satya's division at Microsoft. Are people at Microsoft generally upbeat about Satya's CEO appointment?
- shanselman 13y ago
  Totally. He's super nice, wicked smart, very approachable, listens more than he talks. He has the Enterprise and Tech chops.
- outside1234 13y ago
  He promptly promoted Scott Guthrie in his first official move (that I know about), so things are off to a great start in my book!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
BlackDeath3 13y ago
Seems like it may be an interesting place to work in the coming years!
- amaks 13y ago
  We'll see, Gates and Ballmer are going to stay on Microsoft board. I'm wondering how much freedom Nadella is going to have in making decisions.
spiderPig 13y ago
And I'm totally stoked to learn that Scott Guthrie has been promoted to take Satya's place. Both of you guys are awesome! Now when are you going to open up C#, CLR and buy Xamarin ;)?
- shanselman 13y ago
  Things are pretty open now, but we're going to open things up as much as we can. As for buying them, why mess up a good thing?
  - spiderPig 13y ago
    Ah just so they have access to the vast resources and become 1st party libraries. Mono is not known in most of the linux world and Microsoft support would be a significant boost. Businesses would also be hesitant to support it adopt it unless Microsoft is backing the platform.
    - Demiurge 13y ago
      Microsoft supporting Mono would not be a good boost in the eyes of most Linux people, as far as I can tell. In fact, Miguel de Icaza connections to Microsoft have been cited as an argument against Mono.
    - girvo 13y ago
      The fact that Mono is a reimplementation of something Microsoft did actually went against it for a lot of *nix people. Which is dumb and stupid, but hey, after Embrace Extend Extinguish, everyone got kinda jumpy. So, Microsoft purchasing it would be a hard sell, IMO.
  - porker 13y ago
    Because we'd love to use C# across more platforms, and the 2nd class citizen status of Mono in the *nix world makes us sad :(
KFaz 13y ago
Would love to see Windows Phone open up for hobbyist devs. Love the Windows Phone experience out of the box, but having to jump through hoops to write apps for my own personal use pushed me to android.
Touche 13y ago
I suggest open sourcing Windows. Put it on GitHub with a permissive license and accept pull requests. The internet will blow up, you'll instantly win back all of the developer mindshare that has been lost over the years.
- machbio 13y ago
  That would be the most awesome thing that could ever happen, when they can just keep offering the windows 8 for the customers in boxed but allowing developers to contribute to the project.. I cannot think of percentage of people who will be lost customers, it will not matter when everyone in another 10 years will have their own linux systems on cloud..
  - abhipatti 13y ago
    Would it not be a major security problem .. Since so many people use windows and hackers would know loop more easily and attack
    - andrewflnr 13y ago
      To roughly the same extent as Linux and *BSD, yes.
      - mjolk 13y ago
        Linux and BSD have the security advantage of having their ugliness shown to the world for decades. When you push a change that everyone can see, you don't have the option of hiding your ugliness behind a compiler.
  - CmonDev 13y ago
    Is next decade finally going to be the decade of Linux?
    - scholia 13y ago
      The next decade will be the decade of Linux, and always will be ;-)
curiousfiddler 13y ago
Also: You guys contribute a lot of good work to Hadoop and related projects. Disclaimer: I contribute to some ASF projects.
nyg_hakeem 13y ago
scott, what about the operating system engineering group? Do you see it will lean towards open source under Satya's leadership? also, what do you see MSFT to do to regain talent from Facebook and Google?
CmonDev 13y ago
OSS is nice, but why do you guys keep pushing the shitty HTML5? It is totally crap for enterprise. Also EF is always trying to catch up with NHibernate, why not simply contribute to the latter?
- eric-hu 13y ago
  What's your suggested alternative to html5?
  - CmonDev 13y ago
    WPF
    - beagle3 13y ago
      You forgot the sarcasm tags, I see. Or you don't have much experience with WPF. It might be nice in theory, but I've had to work around enough bugs marked "wontfix" that I recommend everyone stay away.
      - JRobertson 13y ago
        I have years of experience with WPF & Silverlight and agree that it has high learning curve, but once you know it there really isn't much of anything you can't to simpler, faster, and more elegantly than in HTML5, if you have a back end you need to interact with.
        beagle3 13y ago
        Except ... Some things only work in Silverlight, some only in WPF, and mixing both at the same time is a royal pain. There are a LOT of bugs and regressions in WPF4 that are "wontfix", were supposed to be fixed in 4.5 or 5.0, but that's never going to happen. (Google "wpf 3.5 4.0 bug wontfix" to see a very incomplete list of regressions. I've met some of these myself, and some that are not on the first two pages). And lastly, unlike Silverlight (Mac or Win, no Android, no iOS, no Linux), HTML5 is much more widely available (and with an easier graceful degradation path). The only place where using WPF or Silverlight makes sense today is when your target audience is using a locked down system - e.g. an enterprise with tightly controlled client machines. Otherwise, it's a no-go just from this perspective. I didn't find the learning curve intimidating, FWIW. But the experience with using and deploying me scarred me.

dave1619 13y ago

It's great to hear from somebody who worked in Satya's division at Microsoft. Are people at Microsoft generally upbeat about Satya's CEO appointment?

shanselman 13y ago
Totally. He's super nice, wicked smart, very approachable, listens more than he talks. He has the Enterprise and Tech chops.
outside1234 13y ago
He promptly promoted Scott Guthrie in his first official move (that I know about), so things are off to a great start in my book!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

BlackDeath3 13y ago

Seems like it may be an interesting place to work in the coming years!

amaks 13y ago
We'll see, Gates and Ballmer are going to stay on Microsoft board. I'm wondering how much freedom Nadella is going to have in making decisions.

spiderPig 13y ago

And I'm totally stoked to learn that Scott Guthrie has been promoted to take Satya's place. Both of you guys are awesome! Now when are you going to open up C#, CLR and buy Xamarin ;)?

shanselman 13y ago
Things are pretty open now, but we're going to open things up as much as we can. As for buying them, why mess up a good thing?
- spiderPig 13y ago
  Ah just so they have access to the vast resources and become 1st party libraries. Mono is not known in most of the linux world and Microsoft support would be a significant boost. Businesses would also be hesitant to support it adopt it unless Microsoft is backing the platform.
  - Demiurge 13y ago
    Microsoft supporting Mono would not be a good boost in the eyes of most Linux people, as far as I can tell. In fact, Miguel de Icaza connections to Microsoft have been cited as an argument against Mono.
  - girvo 13y ago
    The fact that Mono is a reimplementation of something Microsoft did actually went against it for a lot of *nix people. Which is dumb and stupid, but hey, after Embrace Extend Extinguish, everyone got kinda jumpy. So, Microsoft purchasing it would be a hard sell, IMO.
- porker 13y ago
  Because we'd love to use C# across more platforms, and the 2nd class citizen status of Mono in the *nix world makes us sad :(

KFaz 13y ago

Would love to see Windows Phone open up for hobbyist devs. Love the Windows Phone experience out of the box, but having to jump through hoops to write apps for my own personal use pushed me to android.

Touche 13y ago

I suggest open sourcing Windows. Put it on GitHub with a permissive license and accept pull requests. The internet will blow up, you'll instantly win back all of the developer mindshare that has been lost over the years.

machbio 13y ago
That would be the most awesome thing that could ever happen, when they can just keep offering the windows 8 for the customers in boxed but allowing developers to contribute to the project.. I cannot think of percentage of people who will be lost customers, it will not matter when everyone in another 10 years will have their own linux systems on cloud..
- abhipatti 13y ago
  Would it not be a major security problem .. Since so many people use windows and hackers would know loop more easily and attack
  - andrewflnr 13y ago
    To roughly the same extent as Linux and *BSD, yes.
    - mjolk 13y ago
      Linux and BSD have the security advantage of having their ugliness shown to the world for decades. When you push a change that everyone can see, you don't have the option of hiding your ugliness behind a compiler.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  Is next decade finally going to be the decade of Linux?
  - scholia 13y ago
    The next decade will be the decade of Linux, and always will be ;-)

curiousfiddler 13y ago

Also: You guys contribute a lot of good work to Hadoop and related projects. Disclaimer: I contribute to some ASF projects.

nyg_hakeem 13y ago

scott, what about the operating system engineering group? Do you see it will lean towards open source under Satya's leadership? also, what do you see MSFT to do to regain talent from Facebook and Google?

CmonDev 13y ago

OSS is nice, but why do you guys keep pushing the shitty HTML5? It is totally crap for enterprise. Also EF is always trying to catch up with NHibernate, why not simply contribute to the latter?

eric-hu 13y ago
What's your suggested alternative to html5?
- CmonDev 13y ago
  WPF
  - beagle3 13y ago
    You forgot the sarcasm tags, I see. Or you don't have much experience with WPF. It might be nice in theory, but I've had to work around enough bugs marked "wontfix" that I recommend everyone stay away.
    - JRobertson 13y ago
      I have years of experience with WPF & Silverlight and agree that it has high learning curve, but once you know it there really isn't much of anything you can't to simpler, faster, and more elegantly than in HTML5, if you have a back end you need to interact with.
      - beagle3 13y ago
        Except ... Some things only work in Silverlight, some only in WPF, and mixing both at the same time is a royal pain. There are a LOT of bugs and regressions in WPF4 that are "wontfix", were supposed to be fixed in 4.5 or 5.0, but that's never going to happen. (Google "wpf 3.5 4.0 bug wontfix" to see a very incomplete list of regressions. I've met some of these myself, and some that are not on the first two pages). And lastly, unlike Silverlight (Mac or Win, no Android, no iOS, no Linux), HTML5 is much more widely available (and with an easier graceful degradation path). The only place where using WPF or Silverlight makes sense today is when your target audience is using a locked down system - e.g. an enterprise with tightly controlled client machines. Otherwise, it's a no-go just from this perspective. I didn't find the learning curve intimidating, FWIW. But the experience with using and deploying me scarred me.