21 ms·

Ever since Nadella took over at Microsoft, such news items are becoming more and more frequent. Ten years ago, my first reaction at such a headline would have b

by krylon 12y ago

Ever since Nadella took over at Microsoft, such news items are becoming more and more frequent. Ten years ago, my first reaction at such a headline would have been to check my calendar if it's April 1st. Microsoft has come a long way from the company that everybody loved to hate. IMHO, they still have a long way ahead of them, but it's nice to see they seem to be serious about it. With Ballmer at the helm, I had the impression he didn't really know how to handle the rise of mobile devices and cloud services. Nadella seems determined to really change Microsoft from the old Windows-and-Office monopoly to something new.

aceperry 12y ago
I fully agree with you there. "Microsoft has come a long way from the company that everybody loved to hate" Although, during the last few years, MS seemed to be the company that everyone ignored. But there is still a lot of built up animus against MS, due to their past business practices.
- marssaxman 12y ago
  Yes, I observe that they are taking good steps and that this is clearly a positive change, but I am too old, it has been too many years, and I can't imagine that I will ever really be able to trust them. Perhaps a younger generation can get some value out of their products, though, which would be nice for all the people who work there.
sirseal 12y ago
Definitely. It's because, fundamentally, Ballmer was not a technology person. He simply didn't get it.
- jliptzin 12y ago
  Indeed Ballmer would have been great at selling toilet paper or soda but he was just not the software visionary that Microsoft needed.
sqeaky 12y ago
I must agree with even though I don't want to. Microsoft seems to legitimately changing its behavior. Personally, I still want more. An open source editor would have been nice. Many good text editors are open source Vim, Emacs, Atom, Notepad++ entering this area with less community seems like an unneeded difficulty.
- jordz 12y ago
  This editor is built on Atom.
  - Scarbutt 12y ago
    Looks like it just uses Electron.
  - AdamTReineke 12y ago
    From their docs: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs Architecturally, Visual Studio Code combines the best of web, native, and language-specific technologies. Using the GitHub Electron Shell, Code combines web technologies such as JavaScript and Node.js with the speed and flexibility of native apps. Code uses a newer, faster version of the same industrial-strength HTML-based editor that has powered the “Monaco” cloud editor, Internet Explorer's F12 Tools, and other projects. And Code uses a tools service architecture that enables it to use many of the same technologies that power Visual Studio, including Roslyn for .NET, TypeScript, the Visual Studio debugging engine, and more. In future previews, as we continue to evolve and refine this architecture, Visual Studio Code will include a public extensibility model that lets developers build and use plug-ins, and richly customize their edit-build-debug experience.
    - MCRed 12y ago
      The Electron Shell was previously known as the Atom Shell. So part of it is Atom work.
      - tlianza 12y ago
yueq 12y ago
Those products were under development in Ballmer's time but it seems Satya took the credits.
- stephenr 12y ago
  You're suggesting that the same guy, who told his own kids "no you can't have an iPhone, iPod or iPad, you have to use a windows/zune/whatever device", and then after leaving Microsoft, bought a basketball team, and told them they could no longer use their existing Apple products, would have OK'd the release of a cross platform development tool...
- chc 12y ago
  Ballmer was CEO for over 14 years, during which very little of this happened. While some of this was obviously being worked on under him, I find it hard to buy the idea that Ballmer did all the work and Nadella just swooped in and took the credit.
- brettkc 12y ago
  Perhaps he was involved, if not leading many of the developments while Ballmer was running the show?
- aceperry 12y ago
  They may have been under development during Ballmer's time, but it's hard to believe that they would've seen the light of day under Ballmer's leadership. And if Ballmer released any open sourced products, I get the feeling that there would be major strings attached. And it would have a switch and bait sort of feel to it. Kind of like Oracle with Java and other technologies from Sun. The fact is, Nadella has made open source a lot more palatable from Microsoft.
WDCDev 12y ago
The push to open source started under Ballmer and has been gaining momentum the past few years. You saw some of the very early open source work debut when Scott Guthrie open sourced ASP.NET MVC 2 in 2010. He (Guthrie) blogged a few times about evangelizing open source in Microsoft, and given today's news, he gained quite a bit of traction over the years. It also helped that ASP.NET MVC is a pretty sold web framework too.
- aceperry 12y ago
  Funny thing is most MS devs seem to think that asp.net is on its way out.
  - DougWebb 12y ago
    There's ASP.Net and there's ASP.Net MVC. They're very different beasts, even though the latter is/was built upon the former. ASP.Net probably is on the way out, but MVC is not.
    - mreiland 12y ago
      ASP.Net is going nowhere, the abomination known as Web Controls is on the way out (and good riddance). It will never go away, there's too much code and money involved, but it won't be used for new projects.
      - aceperry 12y ago
        "but it won't be used for new projects" I would interpret that statement as: it's on the way out.
        mreiland 12y ago
        ASP.Net is not going anywhere, perhaps you should read a little closer before you respond.
    - manigandham 12y ago
frik 12y ago
Sorry to nick pick but the following download statement is "not optimal": When this tool crashes, we automatically collect crash dumps so we can figure out what went wrong. If you don’t want to send your crash dumps to Microsoft, don't install this tool. So no check box to deactivate this phone-home feature that used to be standard in Microsoft products like Visual Studio, Office and Windows. That's a regression. (Source - bottom grey text: https://code.visualstudio.com//#alt-downloads https://code.visualstudio.com//#alt-downloads ) Edit: there is only a small "preview" symbol on the top left, beside that no text or screenshot mentions it: https://code.visualstudio.com/ https://code.visualstudio.com/
- rinon 12y ago
  I'm hoping this is only while it's in development/beta?
  - tomaskafka 12y ago
    Yep, that's what all Microsoft public betas and previews do. That's why they release them, to get data.
- dmamills 12y ago
  Free tool comes with strings attached, so?
  - rylee 12y ago
    Free BETA program comes with a clause that you must submit crash data. Sounds fine to me.
- frik 12y ago
  Visual Studio Online "Monaco" code editor from November 14, 2013 seems to be the predecessor: http://weblogs.asp.net/jongalloway/a-quick-look-at-the-new-visual-studio-online-quot-monaco-quot-code-editor http://weblogs.asp.net/jongalloway/a-quick-look-at-the-new-v... (scroll half way down for many screenshots and videos) "This is the Monaco editor component from Erich Gamma's group out of Zurich. It was originally written in JavaScript but gradually rewritten in TypeScript. When Anders speaks about teams within Microsoft building large TypeScript systems, this is one he is talking about" as one comment mentioned on a related article "It's also used in VisualStudio and IE11's new F12 tools.": http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ARichNewJavaScriptCodeEditorSpreadingToSeveralMicrosoftWebSites.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ARichNewJavaScriptCodeEditorSp... "Code uses a newer, faster version of the same industrial-strength HTML-based editor that has powered the “Monaco” cloud editor, Internet Explorer's F12 Tools, and other projects.": https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs
brudgers 12y ago
By design, Nadella is getting credit by design for 'overnight changes' many years in the making. Windows 10 reflects the strategic decisions embodied in Vista. Ballmer owned enough stock that along with Gates' backing Microsoft could produce a largely incompatible new version of the Windows OS and Wall Street could like it or lump it. Gates and Ballmer have been divesting Microsoft shares and the new company is beholden to the "What did you do this quarter?" analyst's mindset. Before he left, Ballmer set the course and ensured there was a tick tock product development cycle. Ballmer wasn't an idiot. It's not as if he didn't see the changing landscape. He left the company in a position to shape the future.
- hyperliner 12y ago
  Your comment is spot on. People don't look under the covers to realize this kind of change simply cannot happen over night or "because there is a new captain." More specifically, your "By design" start is common in these kinds of managed transitions: you want the new leader to come in with tail wind.
- vorg 12y ago
  > Windows 10 reflects the strategic decisions embodied in Vista Hope you mean "embodied in Windows 8". I still remember the day I replaced my Vista PC with one running Windows 7, and wondering why the OS was booting so fast. I doubt "Vista" was strategic in any way, more incompetent management, but would agree "Windows 8" had strategic considerations behind it.
  - brudgers 12y ago
    Vista broke with DOS and 16bit code. It elevated security. It required better hardware. It moved x64 toward the mainstream. The architecture of the OS was brought forward a decade. Tick. Windows 7 was a refinement of Vista. Tock. Windows 8 was a new interface and a step toward multi platform, e.g. ARM. Tick. Windows 10 is a full on multiplatform assault. Tock. Running a big company is nontrivial. Microsoft's management has never been incompetent. The company has always been very profitable.
hipsterrific 12y ago
Ballmer was good at sales but horrible at running a company. He was perfect before the internet came to be and before the rise of mobile devices. Ballmer, is in fact, what sunk Microsoft for a better part of a decade or more. Nadella is doing MS good. For one, he understands market dynamics better than Ballmer did and is willing to gamble. As a C# developer of 10 years, this is the first time Microsoft actually "spiced up" their product line. Offering up robust tooling like Visual Studio Community (which is just a free version of Professional) shows me Microsoft is committed to the platform. Now, with Visual Studio Code, it will make my work better since I'm 99% on a Mac these days. The next few months will be interesting. :)
- hackuser 12y ago
  > Ballmer was good at sales but horrible at running a company From Wikipedia: Under Ballmer's tenure as CEO, Microsoft's annual revenue surged from $25 billion to $70 billion, while its net income increased 215 percent to $23 billion May all companies suffer equally incompetent CEOs.
  - Turing_Machine 12y ago
    Over the same period Apple was going from $8 billion to $182 billion in revenue and Google was going from $3 billion to $66 billion in revenue.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      Google is a completely unfair comparison as that was their prime growth stage.
    - jliptzin 12y ago
      You could say the pie was just getting a lot bigger. Why should one company be expected to eat it all?
- soup10 12y ago
  No doubt Microsoft under ballmer launched quite a few failed products, but they've maintained their monopolies and have made record profits in the process. Posted from my Zune
istvan__ 12y ago
MS realized that the closed source, only running on Win32 platform battle is lost. Their only chance to get a grip of the future if they open up and go for supporting multiple platforms like Java did.
ryanmarsh 12y ago
Some HN'ers may not recall Microsoft's "sleeping giant awakes" moment with the Internet in the 90's. Speaking of tidal waves, hang on to your surfboards, it's going to be big and fast. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/07/internet-tidal-wave.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/07/internet-tidal-wave.htm...
- notsony 12y ago
  Tim Cook's too busy with Jonathan Ive and Angela Ahrendts, turning Apple into a luxury goods company, to even know what just hit him. Slowly but surely the best developers are going to leave the Mac platform leaving only consulting body-shops and corporates on iOS. Developing for the Mac and iOS is miserable. It wasn't always that way, but it is now. Developers* are sick of proprietary stacks, from the language (Swift), to the APIs (Cocoa/CoreX/iOS), to the conditions attached (iCloud SDK only available for Mac Apps sold through the Mac Store), to the penny-pinching (pay your $99 fee and 30% even though we're raising $billion in debt to buy-back shares and hand out dividends because we're too tight-fisted to repatriate overseas funds and pay taxes on it) to the still broken XCode which only runs on a Mac, which must run Yosemite which feels like a Fisher-Price toy rather than a workstation for developers. *Well, ok, I'm sick of it, but I'm sure a few people reading this are feeling the same way.
  - hockeybias 12y ago
    Honestly, I find that XCode is exceedingly painful, almost laughable to work with relative to Visual Studio.
  - pasta_2 12y ago
    2/10 troll
  - karpodiem 12y ago
    thank you for pointing out the money part, I share the same sentiment as you do on this. I've been itching for someone to stick it to Apple since they're really being tight with money in some places (annual developer fee as you mentioned), and wasting it on share repurchases. It's time for someone to really compress Apple's margins.
shmerl 12y ago
Nadela makes some good changes. Let's see if it will continue into abolishing MS historic crooked practices like vendor lock-in, standards hijacking and patents abuse. When Nadela will do that, I'll agree that MS has really seriously changed for the better.
graycat 12y ago
My take is that in the most central sense, what Nadella and Microsoft are doing with the code editor, .NET, their free IDE, etc. is following a standard, powerful, old script: If have something popular, e.g., .NET, then make it open and promote it as a standard. Then come out with enhancements every few months. Part of the script is what Ballmer once said in his uniquely understated way -- "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Then initially many developers will adopt and use the standard because it's open and, thus, close to universal, at least pretty good, and free. Then, later, as Microsoft makes improvements each few months, it will be next to impossible for anyone else to make a fork that is competitive so that Microsoft will, then, continue to own the standard. Or, if a developer wants some new feature X, then they will likely just wait for the next version of the standard and hope. So, thusly owning the standard, Microsoft controls a major part of computing which can be very powerful for Microsoft and a farm where only Microsoft plows, seeds, and harvests. E.g., nearly all the developers would be on .NET, etc., but Microsoft and only Microsoft knows where the .NET standard will be in version n + 1, n + 2, ... out several years into the future. Then the rest of Microsoft can start development now that exploits the standard, say, two years from now while everyone else has to wait two years even to start. Bingo. Presto. The parts of Microsoft that exploit the standard get a two year head start. Or, maybe at one time a computer company, say, HAL, designed, manufactured, and sold hardware, operating system software, middle ware software, and applications software. Then they had hardware enhancements right along, say, each year or so. Well, the hardware specification about had to be in the manual Principles of Operation and, thus, essentially open. So, some plug compatible manufacturer, say, GA, could get the manual and build a cheaper version of the hardware. Well, the HAL software people knew what good, new functionality was coming to their hardware some years before GA or anyone else did and could have a head start of those years. One heck of an advantage. Net, thusly owning an open standard can be very valuable.
- frik 12y ago
  > Net, thusly owning an open standard can be very valuable. Microsoft would like that more developers are locked in to their dotNet languages. And they try to influence the development of the next Javascript version (ES6 & ES7) by showcasing C# syntax ideas in their TypeScript language which then influenced ES6 - which is heavily used in Sharepoint/Office-Server365, Visual Studio Code/Online, etc. Don't get me wrong, Google, Adobe, Oracle, Mozilla, Opera, etc are trying to influence the Javascript/ES6&7 development - everyone with different business cases behind them. But Microsoft is well know for what the parent poster wrote, and several newer evil things like the locked EFI on new PCs (instead of the open BIOS) that make it hard to install anything but Windows are still there, more there https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459890 .

by krylon 12y ago

aceperry 12y ago

I fully agree with you there. "Microsoft has come a long way from the company that everybody loved to hate" Although, during the last few years, MS seemed to be the company that everyone ignored. But there is still a lot of built up animus against MS, due to their past business practices.

marssaxman 12y ago
Yes, I observe that they are taking good steps and that this is clearly a positive change, but I am too old, it has been too many years, and I can't imagine that I will ever really be able to trust them. Perhaps a younger generation can get some value out of their products, though, which would be nice for all the people who work there.

sirseal 12y ago

Definitely. It's because, fundamentally, Ballmer was not a technology person. He simply didn't get it.

jliptzin 12y ago
Indeed Ballmer would have been great at selling toilet paper or soda but he was just not the software visionary that Microsoft needed.

sqeaky 12y ago

I must agree with even though I don't want to. Microsoft seems to legitimately changing its behavior. Personally, I still want more. An open source editor would have been nice. Many good text editors are open source Vim, Emacs, Atom, Notepad++ entering this area with less community seems like an unneeded difficulty.

jordz 12y ago
This editor is built on Atom.
- Scarbutt 12y ago
  Looks like it just uses Electron.
- AdamTReineke 12y ago
  From their docs: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs Architecturally, Visual Studio Code combines the best of web, native, and language-specific technologies. Using the GitHub Electron Shell, Code combines web technologies such as JavaScript and Node.js with the speed and flexibility of native apps. Code uses a newer, faster version of the same industrial-strength HTML-based editor that has powered the “Monaco” cloud editor, Internet Explorer's F12 Tools, and other projects. And Code uses a tools service architecture that enables it to use many of the same technologies that power Visual Studio, including Roslyn for .NET, TypeScript, the Visual Studio debugging engine, and more. In future previews, as we continue to evolve and refine this architecture, Visual Studio Code will include a public extensibility model that lets developers build and use plug-ins, and richly customize their edit-build-debug experience.
  - MCRed 12y ago
    The Electron Shell was previously known as the Atom Shell. So part of it is Atom work.
    - tlianza 12y ago

yueq 12y ago

Those products were under development in Ballmer's time but it seems Satya took the credits.

stephenr 12y ago
You're suggesting that the same guy, who told his own kids "no you can't have an iPhone, iPod or iPad, you have to use a windows/zune/whatever device", and then after leaving Microsoft, bought a basketball team, and told them they could no longer use their existing Apple products, would have OK'd the release of a cross platform development tool...
chc 12y ago
Ballmer was CEO for over 14 years, during which very little of this happened. While some of this was obviously being worked on under him, I find it hard to buy the idea that Ballmer did all the work and Nadella just swooped in and took the credit.
brettkc 12y ago
Perhaps he was involved, if not leading many of the developments while Ballmer was running the show?
aceperry 12y ago
They may have been under development during Ballmer's time, but it's hard to believe that they would've seen the light of day under Ballmer's leadership. And if Ballmer released any open sourced products, I get the feeling that there would be major strings attached. And it would have a switch and bait sort of feel to it. Kind of like Oracle with Java and other technologies from Sun. The fact is, Nadella has made open source a lot more palatable from Microsoft.

WDCDev 12y ago

The push to open source started under Ballmer and has been gaining momentum the past few years. You saw some of the very early open source work debut when Scott Guthrie open sourced ASP.NET MVC 2 in 2010. He (Guthrie) blogged a few times about evangelizing open source in Microsoft, and given today's news, he gained quite a bit of traction over the years. It also helped that ASP.NET MVC is a pretty sold web framework too.

aceperry 12y ago
Funny thing is most MS devs seem to think that asp.net is on its way out.
- DougWebb 12y ago
  There's ASP.Net and there's ASP.Net MVC. They're very different beasts, even though the latter is/was built upon the former. ASP.Net probably is on the way out, but MVC is not.
  - mreiland 12y ago
    ASP.Net is going nowhere, the abomination known as Web Controls is on the way out (and good riddance). It will never go away, there's too much code and money involved, but it won't be used for new projects.
    - aceperry 12y ago
      "but it won't be used for new projects" I would interpret that statement as: it's on the way out.
      - mreiland 12y ago
        ASP.Net is not going anywhere, perhaps you should read a little closer before you respond.
  - manigandham 12y ago

frik 12y ago

Sorry to nick pick but the following download statement is "not optimal": When this tool crashes, we automatically collect crash dumps so we can figure out what went wrong. If you don’t want to send your crash dumps to Microsoft, don't install this tool. So no check box to deactivate this phone-home feature that used to be standard in Microsoft products like Visual Studio, Office and Windows. That's a regression. (Source - bottom grey text: https://code.visualstudio.com//#alt-downloads https://code.visualstudio.com//#alt-downloads ) Edit: there is only a small "preview" symbol on the top left, beside that no text or screenshot mentions it: https://code.visualstudio.com/ https://code.visualstudio.com/

rinon 12y ago
I'm hoping this is only while it's in development/beta?
- tomaskafka 12y ago
  Yep, that's what all Microsoft public betas and previews do. That's why they release them, to get data.
dmamills 12y ago
Free tool comes with strings attached, so?
- rylee 12y ago
  Free BETA program comes with a clause that you must submit crash data. Sounds fine to me.
frik 12y ago
Visual Studio Online "Monaco" code editor from November 14, 2013 seems to be the predecessor: http://weblogs.asp.net/jongalloway/a-quick-look-at-the-new-visual-studio-online-quot-monaco-quot-code-editor http://weblogs.asp.net/jongalloway/a-quick-look-at-the-new-v... (scroll half way down for many screenshots and videos) "This is the Monaco editor component from Erich Gamma's group out of Zurich. It was originally written in JavaScript but gradually rewritten in TypeScript. When Anders speaks about teams within Microsoft building large TypeScript systems, this is one he is talking about" as one comment mentioned on a related article "It's also used in VisualStudio and IE11's new F12 tools.": http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ARichNewJavaScriptCodeEditorSpreadingToSeveralMicrosoftWebSites.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ARichNewJavaScriptCodeEditorSp... "Code uses a newer, faster version of the same industrial-strength HTML-based editor that has powered the “Monaco” cloud editor, Internet Explorer's F12 Tools, and other projects.": https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs

brudgers 12y ago

By design, Nadella is getting credit by design for 'overnight changes' many years in the making. Windows 10 reflects the strategic decisions embodied in Vista. Ballmer owned enough stock that along with Gates' backing Microsoft could produce a largely incompatible new version of the Windows OS and Wall Street could like it or lump it. Gates and Ballmer have been divesting Microsoft shares and the new company is beholden to the "What did you do this quarter?" analyst's mindset. Before he left, Ballmer set the course and ensured there was a tick tock product development cycle. Ballmer wasn't an idiot. It's not as if he didn't see the changing landscape. He left the company in a position to shape the future.

hyperliner 12y ago
Your comment is spot on. People don't look under the covers to realize this kind of change simply cannot happen over night or "because there is a new captain." More specifically, your "By design" start is common in these kinds of managed transitions: you want the new leader to come in with tail wind.
vorg 12y ago
> Windows 10 reflects the strategic decisions embodied in Vista Hope you mean "embodied in Windows 8". I still remember the day I replaced my Vista PC with one running Windows 7, and wondering why the OS was booting so fast. I doubt "Vista" was strategic in any way, more incompetent management, but would agree "Windows 8" had strategic considerations behind it.
- brudgers 12y ago
  Vista broke with DOS and 16bit code. It elevated security. It required better hardware. It moved x64 toward the mainstream. The architecture of the OS was brought forward a decade. Tick. Windows 7 was a refinement of Vista. Tock. Windows 8 was a new interface and a step toward multi platform, e.g. ARM. Tick. Windows 10 is a full on multiplatform assault. Tock. Running a big company is nontrivial. Microsoft's management has never been incompetent. The company has always been very profitable.

hipsterrific 12y ago

Ballmer was good at sales but horrible at running a company. He was perfect before the internet came to be and before the rise of mobile devices. Ballmer, is in fact, what sunk Microsoft for a better part of a decade or more. Nadella is doing MS good. For one, he understands market dynamics better than Ballmer did and is willing to gamble. As a C# developer of 10 years, this is the first time Microsoft actually "spiced up" their product line. Offering up robust tooling like Visual Studio Community (which is just a free version of Professional) shows me Microsoft is committed to the platform. Now, with Visual Studio Code, it will make my work better since I'm 99% on a Mac these days. The next few months will be interesting. :)

hackuser 12y ago
> Ballmer was good at sales but horrible at running a company From Wikipedia: Under Ballmer's tenure as CEO, Microsoft's annual revenue surged from $25 billion to $70 billion, while its net income increased 215 percent to $23 billion May all companies suffer equally incompetent CEOs.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Over the same period Apple was going from $8 billion to $182 billion in revenue and Google was going from $3 billion to $66 billion in revenue.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Google is a completely unfair comparison as that was their prime growth stage.
  - jliptzin 12y ago
    You could say the pie was just getting a lot bigger. Why should one company be expected to eat it all?
soup10 12y ago
No doubt Microsoft under ballmer launched quite a few failed products, but they've maintained their monopolies and have made record profits in the process. Posted from my Zune

istvan__ 12y ago

MS realized that the closed source, only running on Win32 platform battle is lost. Their only chance to get a grip of the future if they open up and go for supporting multiple platforms like Java did.

ryanmarsh 12y ago

Some HN'ers may not recall Microsoft's "sleeping giant awakes" moment with the Internet in the 90's. Speaking of tidal waves, hang on to your surfboards, it's going to be big and fast. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/07/internet-tidal-wave.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/07/internet-tidal-wave.htm...

notsony 12y ago
Tim Cook's too busy with Jonathan Ive and Angela Ahrendts, turning Apple into a luxury goods company, to even know what just hit him. Slowly but surely the best developers are going to leave the Mac platform leaving only consulting body-shops and corporates on iOS. Developing for the Mac and iOS is miserable. It wasn't always that way, but it is now. Developers* are sick of proprietary stacks, from the language (Swift), to the APIs (Cocoa/CoreX/iOS), to the conditions attached (iCloud SDK only available for Mac Apps sold through the Mac Store), to the penny-pinching (pay your $99 fee and 30% even though we're raising $billion in debt to buy-back shares and hand out dividends because we're too tight-fisted to repatriate overseas funds and pay taxes on it) to the still broken XCode which only runs on a Mac, which must run Yosemite which feels like a Fisher-Price toy rather than a workstation for developers. *Well, ok, I'm sick of it, but I'm sure a few people reading this are feeling the same way.
- hockeybias 12y ago
  Honestly, I find that XCode is exceedingly painful, almost laughable to work with relative to Visual Studio.
- pasta_2 12y ago
  2/10 troll
- karpodiem 12y ago
  thank you for pointing out the money part, I share the same sentiment as you do on this. I've been itching for someone to stick it to Apple since they're really being tight with money in some places (annual developer fee as you mentioned), and wasting it on share repurchases. It's time for someone to really compress Apple's margins.

shmerl 12y ago

Nadela makes some good changes. Let's see if it will continue into abolishing MS historic crooked practices like vendor lock-in, standards hijacking and patents abuse. When Nadela will do that, I'll agree that MS has really seriously changed for the better.

graycat 12y ago

My take is that in the most central sense, what Nadella and Microsoft are doing with the code editor, .NET, their free IDE, etc. is following a standard, powerful, old script: If have something popular, e.g., .NET, then make it open and promote it as a standard. Then come out with enhancements every few months. Part of the script is what Ballmer once said in his uniquely understated way -- "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Then initially many developers will adopt and use the standard because it's open and, thus, close to universal, at least pretty good, and free. Then, later, as Microsoft makes improvements each few months, it will be next to impossible for anyone else to make a fork that is competitive so that Microsoft will, then, continue to own the standard. Or, if a developer wants some new feature X, then they will likely just wait for the next version of the standard and hope. So, thusly owning the standard, Microsoft controls a major part of computing which can be very powerful for Microsoft and a farm where only Microsoft plows, seeds, and harvests. E.g., nearly all the developers would be on .NET, etc., but Microsoft and only Microsoft knows where the .NET standard will be in version n + 1, n + 2, ... out several years into the future. Then the rest of Microsoft can start development now that exploits the standard, say, two years from now while everyone else has to wait two years even to start. Bingo. Presto. The parts of Microsoft that exploit the standard get a two year head start. Or, maybe at one time a computer company, say, HAL, designed, manufactured, and sold hardware, operating system software, middle ware software, and applications software. Then they had hardware enhancements right along, say, each year or so. Well, the hardware specification about had to be in the manual Principles of Operation and, thus, essentially open. So, some plug compatible manufacturer, say, GA, could get the manual and build a cheaper version of the hardware. Well, the HAL software people knew what good, new functionality was coming to their hardware some years before GA or anyone else did and could have a head start of those years. One heck of an advantage. Net, thusly owning an open standard can be very valuable.

frik 12y ago
> Net, thusly owning an open standard can be very valuable. Microsoft would like that more developers are locked in to their dotNet languages. And they try to influence the development of the next Javascript version (ES6 & ES7) by showcasing C# syntax ideas in their TypeScript language which then influenced ES6 - which is heavily used in Sharepoint/Office-Server365, Visual Studio Code/Online, etc. Don't get me wrong, Google, Adobe, Oracle, Mozilla, Opera, etc are trying to influence the Javascript/ES6&7 development - everyone with different business cases behind them. But Microsoft is well know for what the parent poster wrote, and several newer evil things like the locked EFI on new PCs (instead of the open BIOS) that make it hard to install anything but Windows are still there, more there https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459890 .