6 ms·

I worked with Anders for years (he was on my interview loop, still no idea how I got in), and no, he's not the father of the CLR. That project (Project 42, COM

I worked with Anders for years (he was on my interview loop, still no idea how I got in), and no, he's not the father of the CLR. That project (Project 42, COM+, NGWS, among other names) I think even pre-dated his arrival at MS. Anders was pretty focused on C#, which _was_ a direct consequence of the dust-up with Sun over Java. The MS Java libraries (WFC, etc), COM+, and C# sort of all converged to become what is considered CLR+.NET today. When VJ++ was killed via the Sun suit, the CLR was already in existance, but still pretty rough. It was a solid (fun, but painful) 3 years between when that happened and when .NET 1.0/VS 2002 shipped. The "father" of the CLR is probably Mike Tougtangi, or Chris Brumme. I'm not exactly sure who was on that original team.

frik 11y ago
Who killed VB6 and thought VB.Net would be a good idea? I remember a long gone Channel 9 video where the VB guys had arguments for .Net and showed a demo of the third part transition tool, that ship as Lite-version with Visual Studio 2002/3.
- shawnb576 11y ago
  The idea was that a converged, single, multi-language runtime and framework was the way to go. This is the way the culture works in Redmond - that's considered "strategic thinking", which is only exists in that bubble. It wasn't that the plan was bad, it's that it was unrealistic to think that the users of a very mature, very scenario-focused product would be happy with a V1 generalized product that was sorta-kinda the same thing. This was obviously false, and I actually fought against the porting tool because I didn't think it would work (it didn't), and just piss people off (it did). To keep VB6 alive until VB.net matured is anthetical to the way the place runs. Newer is _always_ better, even if it's not, and there lacked any incentive in the comp system for people to take care of the existing userbase. So, that's what happened.
  - sukilot 11y ago
    This really puts into focus the meaning of "strategic thinking": abandoning current customers in favor of potential future customers.
  - pron 11y ago
    > there lacked any incentive in the comp system for people to take care of the existing userbase Can you explain that? Are there incentives to do other stuff?
    - shawnb576 11y ago
      The basic system - no. As of 2012 when I left, comp was about what your management was interested in. Maybe "take care of existing users" is on your review commitments, but what's really on there if you want to get ahead is: ship features, drive future business, etc. As such people wanted to work on the next new thing, it was relatively bad for careers to be on existing old things. Massive variations between groups, but basically that was the culture.
      - frik 11y ago
        Thanks for sharing your experience, it helps to understand some of the business decisions.
- cm2187 11y ago
  Honestly there were a lot of bad design decisions in VB6 that needed breaking backward compatibility. Requiring to use "SET" to assign objects, parameters being BYREF by default, inconsistent base (1 or 0) for various collections. VB.net isn't that difficult to migrate to and when one gets used to it, it's hard to have much nostalgia for VB6.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Where you there when generics got brought in? What was that like from MS's side?
- shawnb576 11y ago
  Yeah - this is where Anders shines. Generics were brought in primarily to avoid boxing/unboxing costs of value types, but really are incredibly powerful when used properly. And I'll say that generics in C#/.NET are done very well. Every time I use Java, I want to use generics until I remember Java's generics are confusing and almost useless. I really miss having them when doing work in other languages, even with some of the covariance gotchas, they're just amazingly good.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    I thought the CLR team had no plan/way to ship genetics in the CLR, and C# would have had to gone with erasure, like Java. That the first C# with generics came from across the Atlantic. Isn't that so?

frik 11y ago

Who killed VB6 and thought VB.Net would be a good idea? I remember a long gone Channel 9 video where the VB guys had arguments for .Net and showed a demo of the third part transition tool, that ship as Lite-version with Visual Studio 2002/3.

shawnb576 11y ago
The idea was that a converged, single, multi-language runtime and framework was the way to go. This is the way the culture works in Redmond - that's considered "strategic thinking", which is only exists in that bubble. It wasn't that the plan was bad, it's that it was unrealistic to think that the users of a very mature, very scenario-focused product would be happy with a V1 generalized product that was sorta-kinda the same thing. This was obviously false, and I actually fought against the porting tool because I didn't think it would work (it didn't), and just piss people off (it did). To keep VB6 alive until VB.net matured is anthetical to the way the place runs. Newer is _always_ better, even if it's not, and there lacked any incentive in the comp system for people to take care of the existing userbase. So, that's what happened.
- sukilot 11y ago
  This really puts into focus the meaning of "strategic thinking": abandoning current customers in favor of potential future customers.
- pron 11y ago
  > there lacked any incentive in the comp system for people to take care of the existing userbase Can you explain that? Are there incentives to do other stuff?
  - shawnb576 11y ago
    The basic system - no. As of 2012 when I left, comp was about what your management was interested in. Maybe "take care of existing users" is on your review commitments, but what's really on there if you want to get ahead is: ship features, drive future business, etc. As such people wanted to work on the next new thing, it was relatively bad for careers to be on existing old things. Massive variations between groups, but basically that was the culture.
    - frik 11y ago
      Thanks for sharing your experience, it helps to understand some of the business decisions.
cm2187 11y ago
Honestly there were a lot of bad design decisions in VB6 that needed breaking backward compatibility. Requiring to use "SET" to assign objects, parameters being BYREF by default, inconsistent base (1 or 0) for various collections. VB.net isn't that difficult to migrate to and when one gets used to it, it's hard to have much nostalgia for VB6.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Where you there when generics got brought in? What was that like from MS's side?

shawnb576 11y ago
Yeah - this is where Anders shines. Generics were brought in primarily to avoid boxing/unboxing costs of value types, but really are incredibly powerful when used properly. And I'll say that generics in C#/.NET are done very well. Every time I use Java, I want to use generics until I remember Java's generics are confusing and almost useless. I really miss having them when doing work in other languages, even with some of the covariance gotchas, they're just amazingly good.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  I thought the CLR team had no plan/way to ship genetics in the CLR, and C# would have had to gone with erasure, like Java. That the first C# with generics came from across the Atlantic. Isn't that so?