4 ms·

To me seems that no one is happy with MS. Those used to make c++ and COM/win32 as their main platform think MS has definitively abandoned them and will soon or

by yulaow 13y ago

To me seems that no one is happy with MS. Those used to make c++ and COM/win32 as their main platform think MS has definitively abandoned them and will soon or late drop its support and bet everything on managed languages. Those that now are trying to use javascript think that MS is using it just as a fourth class citizen and will soon or late drop it without much emotions and/or that anyway the documentation support is very poor intentionally. Those of C# think that MS is making fun of them constantly switching from a framework to another and, anyway, that MS is surely betting all again on c++ and javascript. Those of F# think that MS is investing nothing in it and that it is considered just a bastard son of C# and tries to never speak about it. So if you hear all the voices it seems that MS is investing in nothing and making all unhappy. OR, maybe, the grass is always greener on the other side.

tracker1 13y ago
I think that given MS's own history of creating dead ends, then dropping them you can't fault them too much. MS does simply respond to market demand more or less than anything. And sometimes there's internal developer demand. MS invested quite a bit into NodeJS and libuv for windows. That said, they did little to actually get a tooling option for making native modules easier. I would think that this was to first and foremost get node.js into a place where it is an Azure option. Not to mention that it seems some of their own tooling in this space is using it. After MS announced the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) with managed JScript as it's debut language of choice, I was rather excited. When they brought in IronPython and IronRuby, I was happier still. A unifying platform for many dynamic languages seemed pretty awesome. Then JScript fell to the side, and before long MS support for IronPython, IronRuby and the runtime itself fell to the side. MS can't support everyone 100%, and backing nothing but .Net has certainly cost them mind share. It's also not like MS is a single hive mind. There are lots of people that have come and gone over the years. I think MS does what its' paying customers (and potentially paying customers) asks of it. The irony is a lot of this effort has been into a platform (Azure), whose sales and marketing tactics were the biggest driver of me to look away from .Net in the first place. For many years every .Net presentation from MS was pretty much an Azure demo.. and only in the past year or so has Azure actually become a platform worth considering. That said, I hate a hard sell. I think MS sees the writing on the wall, and knows they'll remain a first class citizen for many developer desktops, and an also ran for the mobile space. That means going hard into both tools, and support. They need Azure, and they need Visual Studio to be a best of breed platform. They've done a decent job at both. If they can get your code to run in Azure, you're a potential customer.. so they'll work to support that.

by yulaow 13y ago

tracker1 13y ago

I think that given MS's own history of creating dead ends, then dropping them you can't fault them too much. MS does simply respond to market demand more or less than anything. And sometimes there's internal developer demand. MS invested quite a bit into NodeJS and libuv for windows. That said, they did little to actually get a tooling option for making native modules easier. I would think that this was to first and foremost get node.js into a place where it is an Azure option. Not to mention that it seems some of their own tooling in this space is using it. After MS announced the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) with managed JScript as it's debut language of choice, I was rather excited. When they brought in IronPython and IronRuby, I was happier still. A unifying platform for many dynamic languages seemed pretty awesome. Then JScript fell to the side, and before long MS support for IronPython, IronRuby and the runtime itself fell to the side. MS can't support everyone 100%, and backing nothing but .Net has certainly cost them mind share. It's also not like MS is a single hive mind. There are lots of people that have come and gone over the years. I think MS does what its' paying customers (and potentially paying customers) asks of it. The irony is a lot of this effort has been into a platform (Azure), whose sales and marketing tactics were the biggest driver of me to look away from .Net in the first place. For many years every .Net presentation from MS was pretty much an Azure demo.. and only in the past year or so has Azure actually become a platform worth considering. That said, I hate a hard sell. I think MS sees the writing on the wall, and knows they'll remain a first class citizen for many developer desktops, and an also ran for the mobile space. That means going hard into both tools, and support. They need Azure, and they need Visual Studio to be a best of breed platform. They've done a decent job at both. If they can get your code to run in Azure, you're a potential customer.. so they'll work to support that.