6 ms·

IMO Microsoft has made progress, but has clearly not turned the corner. Nadella made a good start, it just isn't enough. Let's keep the hate aside and forget M

by jeswin 12y ago

IMO Microsoft has made progress, but has clearly not turned the corner. Nadella made a good start, it just isn't enough. Let's keep the hate aside and forget MS's past. The biggest problem facing MS now is the loss of mind share on the Windows platform. The brightest minds aren't programming on Microsoft platforms if you look at colleges and conferences worldwide. This cannot be reversed; Open Source products are now technically superior, the community is very well organized, and it is free. Interesting research, frameworks, libraries and programming languages spawn on Open Source before they show up (if ever) on Windows. Windows engines have run out; though they will keep going for a while. MS had a great run for over twenty years because the entire world ran on DOS and then Windows. That gave them enormous influence and power, power to make mistakes, fail over and over, and yet succeed. The real challenge will be in adapting to a future in which Windows is irrelevant. The long-term future of Azure, Windows Phone, Windows Desktop, Windows Server and their overpriced Office Tools looks bleak to me.

pavlov 12y ago
Office is overpriced? The personal edition is $6.99 / month, or $9.99 for a household (5 licences). SaaS doesn't get much cheaper than that.
- jeswin 12y ago
  There are plenty of free Office alternatives already that work for 90% of the people. The Web, Android and iOS has made such tools far more accessible for non-technical users. On the computer, use Google docs, on the tablet use QuickOffice. MS has had to react to this, Office on tablets and phones are now free. For general purpose software like document editing and presentations, people might pay $4.99 max, for lifetime. There'll be another 5-10% of users who need advanced features. That will not sustain the multi-billion revenue coming from Office products.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I don't think I've ever seen a large organization that doesn't have a critical dependency on Excel - usually with Excel plugged directly into their core financial/ERP/CRM. Replacing Excel in most large organizations would be like trying to give a human being a skeleton transplant.
    - Luc 12y ago
      Sure, but that's not relevant to individual and family licenses, though.
      - arethuza 12y ago
        85% of the Microsoft Business division that is responsible for Microsoft Office comes, not unsurprisingly, from businesses: http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-2013/ http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-20... Edit: The point I was trying to make is that I wonder how important personal use of Office is to Microsoft. Arguably people either want to use what they use at work or they use something other product (in the past one of the competing office suites, probably one of the online offerings these days) - I wonder if the size of the latter category has actually changed over the years?
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    There is a clever saying about MS Office. 90% of its users use only 1% of its capabilities. But they all use a different 1%. At this point in time, MS Office may well be more a RAD than a traditional office suite.
- bachmeier 12y ago
  Google's offerings are free. For a lot of users, it's more than enough.
  - sz4kerto 12y ago
    Well, Google Docs is free -- and Office Online is free. The subscription is for the desktop software (that Google doesn't have) and 5x unlimited OneDrive storage and some Skype minutes -- for the same price, you get 10TB storage at Google and no desktop software. I can see the reasons why one would go for the Google suite -- just wanted to point out that MS is not more expensive, it's actually cheaper.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    Fortunately for both Google and Microsoft, most businesses are willing to pay as you typically can't get decent support for a free product or service.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Google's offerings are worth exactly what they charge for them. Whether they're "enough" for "a lot of users" depends on how you define the market--by number of users or by potential revenue? They're enough for grandma writing a letter or similar informal communications, but I imagine that's a niche wholly usurped by e-mail.
Touche 12y ago
I don't understand your point, Open Source programming is what it's always been. It's just that proprietary programming has switched from Windows to iOS now.
- blub 12y ago
  Exactly. Apple took a chunk of Microsoft's market when it comes to developers. Now this has some benefits for open source, as a more balanced market will discourage predatory behavior, but otherwise it's more of the same.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    Apple has also been historically far more closed than Microsoft, in part because they also designed the hardware for their systems.
    - kragniz 12y ago
      I'm no apple fan, but Apple does contribute a fair amount of resources to open source. If you're running a typical GNU/Linux distro, go to http://localhost:631/ http://localhost:631/ for fun.
      - guardian5x 12y ago
        Yes they do, but so does Microsoft. https://github.com/Microsoft https://github.com/Microsoft
cjcartlidge 12y ago
I don't think Microsoft are going anywhere soon, if at all. They are too established in the corporate world and while there are still I.T managers that have the philosophy of 'I won't get fired for buying IBM' then there will be a requirement for developers to make software for them. What they have done last week is a massive step, but its just one step and many more need to be taken to catch up on lost ground.
beagle3 12y ago
Google, Facebook, Amazon and just about every big internet company (with the possible exceptions of EBay and, well, Microsoft) are NOT using windows in the backend and never have. They could probably afford Windows server licensing, database licensing, etc NOW, but they would not have been able to while growing. Now, if you start a company and you think you might grow ... which stack will you use?
- outworlder 12y ago
  Not much of an issue with programs such as BizSpark. You have 3 years to 'grow' and afterwards you have to fork over a couple thousand bucks, depending on what you use. The thing is, Unix systems (OSX included) are much more developer friendly. Windows doesn't even have a decent terminal emulator yet, you have to resort to things such as conemu. Now, if Windows can be 'unixified', then I believe the trend may be reversed. As is is, you can't compete with the amount of utilities and server software for all unix flavors.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    >Now, if Windows can be 'unixified' It can. It has, actually, but Microsoft doesn't want Windows to be a generic unix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
    - tres 12y ago
      Yes, one has been able to graft nix to Windows since NT; however, it's still like a third arm dangling off of C:\whatever. If Microsoft can make a POSIX layer like OS X did -- one that ships with the OS and feels like it is part of the OS -- I'd be very, very interested. I've been on OS X since Apple was nearly dead (still have my 10.0.6 CD somewhere around here). Before jumping on, I bounced from the promise of Linux distro to FreeBSD, to OpenBSD -- trying to find something that worked as a desktop environment. Once OS X was released, I knew I found what I had been looking for. It definitely wasn't because it was from Apple (back then, using Apple was being counterculture, if not somewhat risky as the business wasn't doing so well); it was because there was finally a desktop OS that had a POSIX layer and a GUI that didn't feel like a third arm grafted on to /usr/local/whatever. I'm hoping that MS catches the drift that DOS is dead & can kill that sacred cow; I'd love to get a Surface tablet & develop for Windows Phone, but having to deal with DOS is like moving out of a house and trying to live in a tent. My experiences with Powershell haven't been all that much better. It's definitely not got the same problems as DOS, but in my experience it didn't implement the paradigm of a pipeable set of simple tools to accomplish singular tasks. I'd love to see a POSIX compliant Microsoft OS. And to me, these recent changes bode well -- it seems that Microsoft realizes it must be a part of a larger ecosystem. The is the kind of OS I want to work with has this kind of thinking at its core.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
I'm not a fan of windows either, but this is pure ideology.
wfjackson 12y ago
>The brightest minds aren't programming on Microsoft platforms if you look at colleges and conferences worldwide. This cannot be reversed; Open Source products are now technically superior, the community is very well organized, and it is free. All I see at colleges and conferences worldwide are Macbooks. How is OS X Open Source? It actually seems to be worse, since it's legally tied to expensive hardware. Also, Open Source products aren't really technically superior for a number of categories. I am sorry but Photoshop, Office, Exchange etc. are definitely technically superior. Software like Windows Server and SQL Server are competing with free products and still doing very well. Imagine how much marketshare they would have if they were free of cost and MySQL/PostgresSQL and Linux cost the same as SQL Server and Windows Server now. How many would buy them instead of the free MS products? How many would pay the same as Office costs now for OpenOffice if Office was free? How is this technically superior? Also, Azure runs Linux and other open source products quite well.
- cabalamat 12y ago
  > How is OS X Open Source? It isn't, but a lot of people develop on open source environments running on OS X. E.g. Python/Django. Because OS X is a Unix, moving between it and Linux for web development is easy. > Azure runs Linux and other open source products quite well This may be the case, but there is the perception (possibly an unfounded one; I've never used Azure) that Linux will always be a second-class citizen on Azure.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    Not easy enough apparently, as there seems to be a concerted effort to clone OSX on top of Linux these days...
- eyko 12y ago
  OS X provides a user friendly interface on top of a unix like system. It's easy to develop for linux and unix-like systems in general on OS X. Not so much on Windows. Also, we like bash/zsh, and PowerShell doesn't appeal to many of us. Many of us also don't see much of a difference between running a Linux distribution and running OS X, other than the desktop user interface. The differences in the underlying layer get blurry. With Windows, no.
higherpurpose 12y ago
> Let's keep the hate aside and forget MS's past. Even if that past is very much part of Microsoft's present? Such as threatening companies with patent lawsuits at a rate that has never been seen before in Microsoft's history, or its continuous collaboration with the NSA [1]? (especially after it bought Skype, and built lawful intercept technology for Skype [2] - before actually buying it). I'm almost certain Microsoft keeps some vulnerabilities on purpose to the help the NSA, and only patches them when other parties report those bugs. In fact, I think the recent "WinShock" or whatever they're calling it, with the remote execution for its TLS library was known by Microsoft. This sort of thing is so much easier to use as an "effective backdoor", than something nefarious NSA would have to implant into Windows such as a key escrow or whatever (not saying those don't/won't exist in TPMs). [1] - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2mWqX0CQAAqKxP.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2mWqX0CQAAqKxP.png:large [2] - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2509604/data-privacy/microsoft-seeks-patent-for-spy-tech-for-skype.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2509604/data-privacy/mi...
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  "...or its continuous collaboration with the NSA" Oh, you mean like Google [1]? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614933
elorant 12y ago
Open Source products are now technically superior Name one open source IDE which is superior to Visual Studio. Or an open source database that is better than SQL Server. Not to mention C# which imho is the best language out there (arguably .NET though isn’t that good). I won’t argue that there are aspects of the ecosystem that can’t hold a candle to open source solutions especially in the administration tools area. As for community, have you bothered to take a look at MSDN? There is an insane amount of free information online for their APIs. In terms of documentation MS is light years ahead of everyone. Lastly, the “Windows/Microsoft is irrelevant” argument is very prevalent amongst our ranks but only there. MS might be irrelevant in our industry but in the enterprise, where by the way the big bucks are, they’re dominant.
- cabalamat 12y ago
  > Name an open source database that is better than SQL Server. OK I'll name two: SQLite and MongoDB. I suspect that both of these are better than SQL Server on criteria I care about: ease of deployment on Linux systems, lack of issues around licensing.
  - ohyesyodo 12y ago
    If you dont care about robustness, not losing data, etc there are a lot of great databases out there.
  - sz4kerto 12y ago
    > ease of deployment on Linux systems, lack of issues around licensing Midnight Commander or Emacs is better than SQL Server if those are the criteria you care about.
  - krzyk 12y ago
    PostgreSQL? I'm probably working in different environment than you, because I have never seen SQL Server used, when we want something with support we use Oracle.
  - 10098 12y ago
    > MongoDB Have you ever used SQL server and do you know what type of problems it aims to solve?
bgarbiak 12y ago
Speaking of programming: I have recently tried the free version of Visual Studio - Community 2013. To my surprise (I had tried Visual Studio Express before and wasn't exactly impressed) it is hands down the best IDE for Cordova/PhoneGap environment I ever worked on. The killer feature: DOM inspector and JS debugger/console inside the IDE. But the funny thing is: even in a Microsoft product it's way easier to debug Android than Windows Phone. Nonetheless, I agree that Nadella made a good start, and that (despite the good impression) it's certainly not enough for now, but - unlike you - I don't think it's a lost cause. Not yet.
danielweber 12y ago
> Interesting research, frameworks, libraries and programming languages spawn on Open Source before they show up (if ever) on Windows You might not realize it hanging around on HN, but a huge portion -- dare I say a majority -- of developers don't give a hoot about this. New languages don't matter. They've already seen a bunch. Their employers aren't interested. New frameworks especially don't matter. If they ignore the new frameworks, 90% of them will be gone in three years, and most of what's left that's useful will be pulled into .NET or Java.
melling 12y ago
Doesn't Windows still have around 90% desktop market share? The open-source community simply refuses to do the work necessary to harm Microsoft on the desktop. Developers would rather fork another version of open office, create a new Linux distribution, or start a new window manager. The only way the Microsoft monopoly will be harmed is if Google turns Chrome OZs/Android into a real competitor.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  So what, though? The vast majority of people running Windows are using it to run 2 things: web browsers and Office. IE no longer has a dominant share of browsers, and Office is available across many platforms besides Windows.
  - melling 12y ago
    Yes, IE still is the dominant desktop browser. http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0 http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... Microsoft still gets paid for its 90% market share. Developers still target it, and often release the best versions of their apps for Windows. Office isn't available for Linux. Adobe products? AutoCAD? Games? Nope! Microsoft makes a lot more money than it did five years ago. The only real difference is that Apple and Google have grown a market and Microsoft has been unable to gain traction. Give them long enough and I'm sure they will. After all, the can afford to because Windows and Office are huge cash cows, and they've got the money to burn.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      58% of desktops is not dominant browser share. IE does not today, in any way, set a standard that web-based companies feel that they need to meet. That's the thing with Microsoft: I doubt they will go out of business or anything; in fact I think they will continue to have lots of success. But they don't dictate anything to the rest of the computer industry anymore. And that's a big transition because for decades, their business model and culture were built around their ability to do that.

by jeswin 12y ago

pavlov 12y ago

Office is overpriced? The personal edition is $6.99 / month, or $9.99 for a household (5 licences). SaaS doesn't get much cheaper than that.

jeswin 12y ago
There are plenty of free Office alternatives already that work for 90% of the people. The Web, Android and iOS has made such tools far more accessible for non-technical users. On the computer, use Google docs, on the tablet use QuickOffice. MS has had to react to this, Office on tablets and phones are now free. For general purpose software like document editing and presentations, people might pay $4.99 max, for lifetime. There'll be another 5-10% of users who need advanced features. That will not sustain the multi-billion revenue coming from Office products.
- arethuza 12y ago
  I don't think I've ever seen a large organization that doesn't have a critical dependency on Excel - usually with Excel plugged directly into their core financial/ERP/CRM. Replacing Excel in most large organizations would be like trying to give a human being a skeleton transplant.
  - Luc 12y ago
    Sure, but that's not relevant to individual and family licenses, though.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      85% of the Microsoft Business division that is responsible for Microsoft Office comes, not unsurprisingly, from businesses: http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-2013/ http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-20... Edit: The point I was trying to make is that I wonder how important personal use of Office is to Microsoft. Arguably people either want to use what they use at work or they use something other product (in the past one of the competing office suites, probably one of the online offerings these days) - I wonder if the size of the latter category has actually changed over the years?
- digi_owl 12y ago
  There is a clever saying about MS Office. 90% of its users use only 1% of its capabilities. But they all use a different 1%. At this point in time, MS Office may well be more a RAD than a traditional office suite.
bachmeier 12y ago
Google's offerings are free. For a lot of users, it's more than enough.
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  Well, Google Docs is free -- and Office Online is free. The subscription is for the desktop software (that Google doesn't have) and 5x unlimited OneDrive storage and some Skype minutes -- for the same price, you get 10TB storage at Google and no desktop software. I can see the reasons why one would go for the Google suite -- just wanted to point out that MS is not more expensive, it's actually cheaper.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Fortunately for both Google and Microsoft, most businesses are willing to pay as you typically can't get decent support for a free product or service.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Google's offerings are worth exactly what they charge for them. Whether they're "enough" for "a lot of users" depends on how you define the market--by number of users or by potential revenue? They're enough for grandma writing a letter or similar informal communications, but I imagine that's a niche wholly usurped by e-mail.

Touche 12y ago

I don't understand your point, Open Source programming is what it's always been. It's just that proprietary programming has switched from Windows to iOS now.

blub 12y ago
Exactly. Apple took a chunk of Microsoft's market when it comes to developers. Now this has some benefits for open source, as a more balanced market will discourage predatory behavior, but otherwise it's more of the same.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Apple has also been historically far more closed than Microsoft, in part because they also designed the hardware for their systems.
  - kragniz 12y ago
    I'm no apple fan, but Apple does contribute a fair amount of resources to open source. If you're running a typical GNU/Linux distro, go to http://localhost:631/ http://localhost:631/ for fun.
    - guardian5x 12y ago
      Yes they do, but so does Microsoft. https://github.com/Microsoft https://github.com/Microsoft

cjcartlidge 12y ago

I don't think Microsoft are going anywhere soon, if at all. They are too established in the corporate world and while there are still I.T managers that have the philosophy of 'I won't get fired for buying IBM' then there will be a requirement for developers to make software for them. What they have done last week is a massive step, but its just one step and many more need to be taken to catch up on lost ground.

beagle3 12y ago

Google, Facebook, Amazon and just about every big internet company (with the possible exceptions of EBay and, well, Microsoft) are NOT using windows in the backend and never have. They could probably afford Windows server licensing, database licensing, etc NOW, but they would not have been able to while growing. Now, if you start a company and you think you might grow ... which stack will you use?

outworlder 12y ago
Not much of an issue with programs such as BizSpark. You have 3 years to 'grow' and afterwards you have to fork over a couple thousand bucks, depending on what you use. The thing is, Unix systems (OSX included) are much more developer friendly. Windows doesn't even have a decent terminal emulator yet, you have to resort to things such as conemu. Now, if Windows can be 'unixified', then I believe the trend may be reversed. As is is, you can't compete with the amount of utilities and server software for all unix flavors.
- tormeh 12y ago
  >Now, if Windows can be 'unixified' It can. It has, actually, but Microsoft doesn't want Windows to be a generic unix: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
  - tres 12y ago
    Yes, one has been able to graft nix to Windows since NT; however, it's still like a third arm dangling off of C:\whatever. If Microsoft can make a POSIX layer like OS X did -- one that ships with the OS and feels like it is part of the OS -- I'd be very, very interested. I've been on OS X since Apple was nearly dead (still have my 10.0.6 CD somewhere around here). Before jumping on, I bounced from the promise of Linux distro to FreeBSD, to OpenBSD -- trying to find something that worked as a desktop environment. Once OS X was released, I knew I found what I had been looking for. It definitely wasn't because it was from Apple (back then, using Apple was being counterculture, if not somewhat risky as the business wasn't doing so well); it was because there was finally a desktop OS that had a POSIX layer and a GUI that didn't feel like a third arm grafted on to /usr/local/whatever. I'm hoping that MS catches the drift that DOS is dead & can kill that sacred cow; I'd love to get a Surface tablet & develop for Windows Phone, but having to deal with DOS is like moving out of a house and trying to live in a tent. My experiences with Powershell haven't been all that much better. It's definitely not got the same problems as DOS, but in my experience it didn't implement the paradigm of a pipeable set of simple tools to accomplish singular tasks. I'd love to see a POSIX compliant Microsoft OS. And to me, these recent changes bode well -- it seems that Microsoft realizes it must be a part of a larger ecosystem. The is the kind of OS I want to work with has this kind of thinking at its core.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

I'm not a fan of windows either, but this is pure ideology.

wfjackson 12y ago

>The brightest minds aren't programming on Microsoft platforms if you look at colleges and conferences worldwide. This cannot be reversed; Open Source products are now technically superior, the community is very well organized, and it is free. All I see at colleges and conferences worldwide are Macbooks. How is OS X Open Source? It actually seems to be worse, since it's legally tied to expensive hardware. Also, Open Source products aren't really technically superior for a number of categories. I am sorry but Photoshop, Office, Exchange etc. are definitely technically superior. Software like Windows Server and SQL Server are competing with free products and still doing very well. Imagine how much marketshare they would have if they were free of cost and MySQL/PostgresSQL and Linux cost the same as SQL Server and Windows Server now. How many would buy them instead of the free MS products? How many would pay the same as Office costs now for OpenOffice if Office was free? How is this technically superior? Also, Azure runs Linux and other open source products quite well.

cabalamat 12y ago
> How is OS X Open Source? It isn't, but a lot of people develop on open source environments running on OS X. E.g. Python/Django. Because OS X is a Unix, moving between it and Linux for web development is easy. > Azure runs Linux and other open source products quite well This may be the case, but there is the perception (possibly an unfounded one; I've never used Azure) that Linux will always be a second-class citizen on Azure.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Not easy enough apparently, as there seems to be a concerted effort to clone OSX on top of Linux these days...
eyko 12y ago
OS X provides a user friendly interface on top of a unix like system. It's easy to develop for linux and unix-like systems in general on OS X. Not so much on Windows. Also, we like bash/zsh, and PowerShell doesn't appeal to many of us. Many of us also don't see much of a difference between running a Linux distribution and running OS X, other than the desktop user interface. The differences in the underlying layer get blurry. With Windows, no.

higherpurpose 12y ago

> Let's keep the hate aside and forget MS's past. Even if that past is very much part of Microsoft's present? Such as threatening companies with patent lawsuits at a rate that has never been seen before in Microsoft's history, or its continuous collaboration with the NSA [1]? (especially after it bought Skype, and built lawful intercept technology for Skype [2] - before actually buying it). I'm almost certain Microsoft keeps some vulnerabilities on purpose to the help the NSA, and only patches them when other parties report those bugs. In fact, I think the recent "WinShock" or whatever they're calling it, with the remote execution for its TLS library was known by Microsoft. This sort of thing is so much easier to use as an "effective backdoor", than something nefarious NSA would have to implant into Windows such as a key escrow or whatever (not saying those don't/won't exist in TPMs). [1] - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2mWqX0CQAAqKxP.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2mWqX0CQAAqKxP.png:large [2] - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2509604/data-privacy/microsoft-seeks-patent-for-spy-tech-for-skype.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2509604/data-privacy/mi...

Spearchucker 12y ago
"...or its continuous collaboration with the NSA" Oh, you mean like Google [1]? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614933

elorant 12y ago

Open Source products are now technically superior Name one open source IDE which is superior to Visual Studio. Or an open source database that is better than SQL Server. Not to mention C# which imho is the best language out there (arguably .NET though isn’t that good). I won’t argue that there are aspects of the ecosystem that can’t hold a candle to open source solutions especially in the administration tools area. As for community, have you bothered to take a look at MSDN? There is an insane amount of free information online for their APIs. In terms of documentation MS is light years ahead of everyone. Lastly, the “Windows/Microsoft is irrelevant” argument is very prevalent amongst our ranks but only there. MS might be irrelevant in our industry but in the enterprise, where by the way the big bucks are, they’re dominant.

cabalamat 12y ago
> Name an open source database that is better than SQL Server. OK I'll name two: SQLite and MongoDB. I suspect that both of these are better than SQL Server on criteria I care about: ease of deployment on Linux systems, lack of issues around licensing.
- ohyesyodo 12y ago
  If you dont care about robustness, not losing data, etc there are a lot of great databases out there.
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  > ease of deployment on Linux systems, lack of issues around licensing Midnight Commander or Emacs is better than SQL Server if those are the criteria you care about.
- krzyk 12y ago
  PostgreSQL? I'm probably working in different environment than you, because I have never seen SQL Server used, when we want something with support we use Oracle.
- 10098 12y ago
  > MongoDB Have you ever used SQL server and do you know what type of problems it aims to solve?

bgarbiak 12y ago

Speaking of programming: I have recently tried the free version of Visual Studio - Community 2013. To my surprise (I had tried Visual Studio Express before and wasn't exactly impressed) it is hands down the best IDE for Cordova/PhoneGap environment I ever worked on. The killer feature: DOM inspector and JS debugger/console inside the IDE. But the funny thing is: even in a Microsoft product it's way easier to debug Android than Windows Phone. Nonetheless, I agree that Nadella made a good start, and that (despite the good impression) it's certainly not enough for now, but - unlike you - I don't think it's a lost cause. Not yet.

danielweber 12y ago

> Interesting research, frameworks, libraries and programming languages spawn on Open Source before they show up (if ever) on Windows You might not realize it hanging around on HN, but a huge portion -- dare I say a majority -- of developers don't give a hoot about this. New languages don't matter. They've already seen a bunch. Their employers aren't interested. New frameworks especially don't matter. If they ignore the new frameworks, 90% of them will be gone in three years, and most of what's left that's useful will be pulled into .NET or Java.

melling 12y ago

Doesn't Windows still have around 90% desktop market share? The open-source community simply refuses to do the work necessary to harm Microsoft on the desktop. Developers would rather fork another version of open office, create a new Linux distribution, or start a new window manager. The only way the Microsoft monopoly will be harmed is if Google turns Chrome OZs/Android into a real competitor.

snowwrestler 12y ago
So what, though? The vast majority of people running Windows are using it to run 2 things: web browsers and Office. IE no longer has a dominant share of browsers, and Office is available across many platforms besides Windows.
- melling 12y ago
  Yes, IE still is the dominant desktop browser. http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0 http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... Microsoft still gets paid for its 90% market share. Developers still target it, and often release the best versions of their apps for Windows. Office isn't available for Linux. Adobe products? AutoCAD? Games? Nope! Microsoft makes a lot more money than it did five years ago. The only real difference is that Apple and Google have grown a market and Microsoft has been unable to gain traction. Give them long enough and I'm sure they will. After all, the can afford to because Windows and Office are huge cash cows, and they've got the money to burn.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    58% of desktops is not dominant browser share. IE does not today, in any way, set a standard that web-based companies feel that they need to meet. That's the thing with Microsoft: I doubt they will go out of business or anything; in fact I think they will continue to have lots of success. But they don't dictate anything to the rest of the computer industry anymore. And that's a big transition because for decades, their business model and culture were built around their ability to do that.