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I was recently commissioned by a mid-size company to port their web-based issue manager app from Microsoft Silverlight to plain HTML + a server side language.

by toni 13y ago

I was recently commissioned by a mid-size company to port their web-based issue manager app from Microsoft Silverlight to plain HTML + a server side language. Their reasoning was that as Microsoft is pulling the plug on Silverlight, the company did not want to implement new features in their issue manager app inside a dying platform. So they decided to first port their app to a vanilla thing and from then on continue developing their app further. Am I comparing Silverlight with WinJS? No. But will this company rush to invest time and money into yet another pumped-up Microsoft product? No either.

j_s 13y ago
Microsoft's earnings are tightly coupled to the tech churn they themselves instigate; it is impossible to count on their new technologies until each gains self-perpetuating inertia. "Trust, Users and the Developer Division" discussion 2 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Like any other commercial vendor.
  - ErikRogneby 13y ago
    I had a conversation the other day on my commute about rough (or failed) SAP migrations/implementations and it was clear that the buyers and other supply chain folks fallback to emailing excel spreadsheets when things hit the fan. This ubiquity of their products and it being the lowest common denominator means they will never go out of business. Like it or not Microsoft products are the glue that holds the business world together.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Like any other commercial vendor. Like any commercial vendor optimized around selling software licenses. A commercial vendor optimized around selling software-backed services and complete solutions has different incentives, since they end up eating the costs of churn. Unsurprisingly, lots of companies that do the latter are built around (and often sponsor) open source software.
    - jabits 13y ago
      Perhaps. Service providers ensure the services they provide are often needed to get the job done in a timely manner. More subtle, but effective. All companies have to make money.
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        Sure, and that can be problematic -- see Intuit's intensive lobbying to keep tax filing onerous to protect TurboTax's niche -- but that's a different specific issue than promoting software churn (well, except in Intuit's specific case, where while they demonstrate the problem that can exist with solution providers, they are also a licensed-software provider that can also be seen as promoting software churn at the same time.)

by toni 13y ago

j_s 13y ago

Microsoft's earnings are tightly coupled to the tech churn they themselves instigate; it is impossible to count on their new technologies until each gains self-perpetuating inertia. "Trust, Users and the Developer Division" discussion 2 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7107544

pjmlp 13y ago
Like any other commercial vendor.
- ErikRogneby 13y ago
  I had a conversation the other day on my commute about rough (or failed) SAP migrations/implementations and it was clear that the buyers and other supply chain folks fallback to emailing excel spreadsheets when things hit the fan. This ubiquity of their products and it being the lowest common denominator means they will never go out of business. Like it or not Microsoft products are the glue that holds the business world together.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Like any other commercial vendor. Like any commercial vendor optimized around selling software licenses. A commercial vendor optimized around selling software-backed services and complete solutions has different incentives, since they end up eating the costs of churn. Unsurprisingly, lots of companies that do the latter are built around (and often sponsor) open source software.
  - jabits 13y ago
    Perhaps. Service providers ensure the services they provide are often needed to get the job done in a timely manner. More subtle, but effective. All companies have to make money.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      Sure, and that can be problematic -- see Intuit's intensive lobbying to keep tax filing onerous to protect TurboTax's niche -- but that's a different specific issue than promoting software churn (well, except in Intuit's specific case, where while they demonstrate the problem that can exist with solution providers, they are also a licensed-software provider that can also be seen as promoting software churn at the same time.)