8 ms·

When I see tools like this, that allow children and adults to make things, using the same platform, I can only think Microsoft is it literally investing in the

When I see tools like this, that allow children and adults to make things, using the same platform, I can only think Microsoft is it literally investing in the future. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what a tech company can produce now, or in a year that often times people forget about creating awesome tools. Tools last a lot longer than platforms or devices. While Minecraft is a slightly different example, its core success is simply that it is a creativity tool for all ages and skill levels. When I look at something like TouchDevelop, I see similarities. It's a tool that can let people create awesome things, easily. Something that oversimplifies things at first, but encourages and gives you the ability to push it farther if you desire. Tech politics aside, kudos to you Microsoft.

rifung 11y ago
Seems like this was made by Microsoft Research. I'd argue Microsoft Research's very existence shows Microsoft is heavily invested in the future, more so than any other tech company as far as I know. Maybe besides IBM I dont know any other company that still funds research which isn't expected to have some relationship to the business side of things.
- YorkianTones 11y ago
  Microsoft Research is strongly expected to have an impact on the business side of things. It just so happens that Microsoft is willing to incubate projects like Midori* that have long runways (decade+) and may completely fail. The hope is that some new emerging tech long plays will become huge business boons (Cortana, Kinect, ..). There's lots of investment in NLP, vision, and OS research over at MSR. As far as other tech companies with large R&D budgets, look at Google. However, Google's R&D investment areas are different than MSFT's (apparently they don't do OS research): http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/20/technology/mobile/apple-rd-spend/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/20/technology/mobile/apple-rd-s... * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)
  - rifung 11y ago
    Is it? I suppose I just assumed it wasn't expected to have any impact on the business side of things as they are the only company (again besides IBM) that does research in theoretical computer science. Not only that but they publish all their results in public. I know that Google also does a lot of R&D but from what I can tell, it's usually directly related to what they are doing.
    - turingbook 11y ago
      Peter Norvig wrote an article "Google's Hybrid Approach to Research" http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/38149.pdf http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/38149.pdf
- infinitone 11y ago
  Any company worth its salt and isn't cash strapped would have an rnd/skunkworks arm, this has been the case since the 1900s.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Microsoft Research is full of very cool projects like Singularity, Drawbridge, Midori, Barrelfish, Bascule, M#, F#, F*. Also sponsoring Haskell and OCaml. And these are only the subjects I personally care about. .NET compilation to native code via MDIL (Windows 8) and .NET Native, F#, Windows containers are some examples of work that started at Microsoft Research.
- frik 11y ago
  It might be an evolution of Microsoft Small Basic - an easy programming language for beginners with a simple IDE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic
- amelius 11y ago
  They do so because all serious researchers will want to publish, as part of their career building process. Therefore I can't understand what type of researcher would want to work for a more closed company like e.g. Apple.
  - detaro 11y ago
    One who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of publishing. If you don't intend on returning to academia/other places that care about it it isn't necessary for career building.
  - GuiA 11y ago
    The ones who care about building stuff in an environment that's more or less the only one of its kind, and where the definition of a successful research project isn't "we published a paper" but rather "we enabled a product that hundreds of millions of people will use more so than any other object in their life".
morganvachon 11y ago
TouchDevelop has been around for quite a while; I remember first installing it on my WP7 phone back in 2012. I'm very happy to see the editor open-sourced. I think this is a great example of Microsoft's new-found desire to promote learning and openness, rather than fight against it as they did in the past. My opinion of them over the past few years has slowly been swinging towards positive, and even though I'll likely never give up on Slackware and OpenBSD on the desktop and the server, I'm happy to see this new vision bearing fruit.
- soup10 11y ago
  All that glitters isn't gold. Wake me up when Microsoft makes a serious effort to make Visual Studio a cross platform development suite. We all know the only reason this exists is because Microsoft has little traction in the smartphone market and app developers won't target their hardware. If Microsoft phones were the market leader they would not give two fucks about portability.
  - YorkianTones 11y ago
    https://dev.windows.com/en-US/uwp-bridges/ https://dev.windows.com/en-US/uwp-bridges/ Sounds like a serious effort to allow you to develop native iOS apps in VS instead of xcode. You're right the motivation is heavily to minimize the cost of porting/releasing iOS apps to WP/Windows.
  - molesy 11y ago
    https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads I mean it's not everything, give them a little time though.
  - jakejake 11y ago
    At the rate Microsoft has been releasing open source code and porting .NET over, I wouldn't be too surprised to see Visual Studio geared towards cross-platform development. They did already launch "Code" which, admittedly, doesn't hold a candle to VS. It looks to me like they're slowly releasing more and more framework tools so that VS running on OSX could actually be a possibility.

rifung 11y ago

Seems like this was made by Microsoft Research. I'd argue Microsoft Research's very existence shows Microsoft is heavily invested in the future, more so than any other tech company as far as I know. Maybe besides IBM I dont know any other company that still funds research which isn't expected to have some relationship to the business side of things.

YorkianTones 11y ago
Microsoft Research is strongly expected to have an impact on the business side of things. It just so happens that Microsoft is willing to incubate projects like Midori* that have long runways (decade+) and may completely fail. The hope is that some new emerging tech long plays will become huge business boons (Cortana, Kinect, ..). There's lots of investment in NLP, vision, and OS research over at MSR. As far as other tech companies with large R&D budgets, look at Google. However, Google's R&D investment areas are different than MSFT's (apparently they don't do OS research): http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/20/technology/mobile/apple-rd-spend/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/20/technology/mobile/apple-rd-s... * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)
- rifung 11y ago
  Is it? I suppose I just assumed it wasn't expected to have any impact on the business side of things as they are the only company (again besides IBM) that does research in theoretical computer science. Not only that but they publish all their results in public. I know that Google also does a lot of R&D but from what I can tell, it's usually directly related to what they are doing.
  - turingbook 11y ago
    Peter Norvig wrote an article "Google's Hybrid Approach to Research" http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/38149.pdf http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/38149.pdf
infinitone 11y ago
Any company worth its salt and isn't cash strapped would have an rnd/skunkworks arm, this has been the case since the 1900s.
pjmlp 11y ago
Microsoft Research is full of very cool projects like Singularity, Drawbridge, Midori, Barrelfish, Bascule, M#, F#, F*. Also sponsoring Haskell and OCaml. And these are only the subjects I personally care about. .NET compilation to native code via MDIL (Windows 8) and .NET Native, F#, Windows containers are some examples of work that started at Microsoft Research.
frik 11y ago
It might be an evolution of Microsoft Small Basic - an easy programming language for beginners with a simple IDE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Small_Basic
amelius 11y ago
They do so because all serious researchers will want to publish, as part of their career building process. Therefore I can't understand what type of researcher would want to work for a more closed company like e.g. Apple.
- detaro 11y ago
  One who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of publishing. If you don't intend on returning to academia/other places that care about it it isn't necessary for career building.
- GuiA 11y ago
  The ones who care about building stuff in an environment that's more or less the only one of its kind, and where the definition of a successful research project isn't "we published a paper" but rather "we enabled a product that hundreds of millions of people will use more so than any other object in their life".

morganvachon 11y ago

TouchDevelop has been around for quite a while; I remember first installing it on my WP7 phone back in 2012. I'm very happy to see the editor open-sourced. I think this is a great example of Microsoft's new-found desire to promote learning and openness, rather than fight against it as they did in the past. My opinion of them over the past few years has slowly been swinging towards positive, and even though I'll likely never give up on Slackware and OpenBSD on the desktop and the server, I'm happy to see this new vision bearing fruit.

soup10 11y ago
All that glitters isn't gold. Wake me up when Microsoft makes a serious effort to make Visual Studio a cross platform development suite. We all know the only reason this exists is because Microsoft has little traction in the smartphone market and app developers won't target their hardware. If Microsoft phones were the market leader they would not give two fucks about portability.
- YorkianTones 11y ago
  https://dev.windows.com/en-US/uwp-bridges/ https://dev.windows.com/en-US/uwp-bridges/ Sounds like a serious effort to allow you to develop native iOS apps in VS instead of xcode. You're right the motivation is heavily to minimize the cost of porting/releasing iOS apps to WP/Windows.
- molesy 11y ago
  https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads I mean it's not everything, give them a little time though.
- jakejake 11y ago
  At the rate Microsoft has been releasing open source code and porting .NET over, I wouldn't be too surprised to see Visual Studio geared towards cross-platform development. They did already launch "Code" which, admittedly, doesn't hold a candle to VS. It looks to me like they're slowly releasing more and more framework tools so that VS running on OSX could actually be a possibility.