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Microsoft’s Very Good Day

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Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#121

Post by ygra »

harkyns_castle wrote: post #76
gecko wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people with this attitude would be really pleasantly surprised by PowerShell and Cmder. Windows makes a very bad UNIX, but it has a great command-line story these days if you'll play with it on its own turf.

Pleasantly surprised by powershell? I don't know what to say. I have to essentially copy and paste fragments of things that work, it's so arcane. Its like writing 90's Java on a command line. Its revolting. Still to this day I can't even fscking grep.

> I have to essentially copy and paste fragments of things that work, it's so arcane.

I have about the same problem when it comes to bash. While bash may very well be described as "arcane" I believe this is mostly a problem of unwillingness to learn something new or different.

Understanding how PowerShell works takes a bit of time and re-thinking. It doesn't help that there's so much downright bad PowerShell code out there that was mindlessly converted from VBScript. Still, it's not that hard and the language is quite consistent and, well, powerful. They made quite a large effort to make sure that the underlying concepts are orthogonal and pervasive throughout. So learning just a few concepts actually make a very large part of the shell and language approachable and easy to understand.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#122

Post by 3pt14159 »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #112

Godwin's Law warning I find more ridiculous the statement "we will never forgive Microsoft" than saying "we will never forgive Germany". They're a company, not a charity, they're in the business of making money, and if making money implies using "dirty tactics" such as saying phone manufacturers "bundle Office in your phones or we will use our patents against you" it will certainly happen regardless of which company…

Part of their survival is depending on consumer perception of their brand.

Microsoft sold us out to the NSA for a big fat cheque. Apple and Google have been fighting doing so every step of the way.

Companies that act like uncompetitive dicks should be shunned and regulated, especially when they do things like abuse the patent system.

There is a real world outside of the Realism bubble. A real world where people struggle for justice, and justice, even at the expense of wasting time talking on the internet, will certainly happen.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#123

Post by kabdib »

kailuowang wrote: post #61
delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

You dont necessarily need to. I still use MS Windows from time to time and my perception is that fundamentally they still dont know how to write software properly: in windows 10, opening a folder full of large video files takes a painful long time, while all it needs to do is to list some file names. I understand that it must be trying to extract some extra "useful" information from those large files, but the keys is…

"Microsoft doesn't know how to..." is an unfounded disparagement.

Microsoft definitely knows how to write software, okay? They're really good at it. They ship a lot of it. There are many people there who are brighter than you and I and they know their stuff cold.

Microsoft is full of

- legacy stuff that is really hard to change (many, many reasons for this, few of them pleasant but all of them real)

- conflicting priorities (which bugs do we fix? will we destabilize the product if we fix them? are there more important things to do?)

- political bullshit, in the atmosphere of which it is hard to do the right thing

I left Microsoft three years ago, having spent 11 years there. I saw some howlingly bad software written (little of which shipped), and there are definitely groups there that are stronger than others, but I would never apply the phrase "fundamentally they don't know how to write software".

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#124

Post by octref »

Microsoft feels like the new Apple to me.

I haven't used Apple's product in Jobs' era, but I've heard a lot of good stories about how solid and easy-to-use their software was. Now I'm on Yosemite, experiencing annoying bugs and unexpected quits/freezes on a daily basis. I don't even dare to update to El Capitan. Yesterday I upgraded to XCode 7.0.1, and all my swift projects failed to compile. If it's not for the touchpad and screen I'd rather go back to my Arch Linux laptop.

Apple isn't bringing any more surprise or delight to me hardware-wise. And their software quality is declining day-by-day. Development wise, just take a look at XCode's newest reviews to learn how bad the dev experience is. Developers are what makes a platform succeed, and Apple doesn't seem to realize that.

However, MS has been amazing since Nadella. My favorite news is open sourcing .NET and making it available for Linux. VSCode is also solid and even feels more polished than Atom to me. Hololens looks cool. Surface definitely lives up to its hype.

Last week I interviewed with MS. At the end I asked about the interviewer's opinion on MS's change and attitude to Open Source, and in his response he had this line: "Because Open Source is the future". I can hardly imagine a MS staff in pre-Nadella era would have such opinions. MS has changed. I think people should put down their prejudice about MS's past and admit that. Going to Redmond next Wed for an onsite. Wish myself good luck.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#125

Post by 7952 »

tdkl wrote: post #80
7952 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years the hackers/pundits were telling MS to adopt a more inviting buisness plan with free versions etc. It is possible that this approach could be detrimental even if they hace good products. It is ironic that as consumer Windows has become a more polished product they have removed the premium pricing in favour of app stores and subscriptions.

Which control panel do I need to open to get that "polished" feature you're mentioning, the Metro or the old one ?

Oh yes I agree that it doesn't come close to achieveing polish, but that is surely the aspiration.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#126

Post by togusa »

pmelendez wrote: post #114
togusa wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. Thanks to them, I paid mortgage off in under a decade. No other reason.

Are you an independent developer? or working in a software shop? I am curious about your experience because I am trying (or just starting) to do independent things and your feedback sounds like a nice story to hear.

I'm a contractor/independent currently contracted to a financial company and a telecoms company concurrently. I have about 18 years' experience in total and have been on the contract market for 12 years.

The things that matter when you're starting to work independently (which I screwed up I will add) are building contacts and getting out of the agency system as soon as possible. Also I'm a bad accountant but YMMV if that interests you. If you can, don't work on their site; remote work is far nicer.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#127

Post by lghh »

ino wrote: post #31
mrmondo wrote: post #16

Clickbate marketing article name with little valuable substance. I tried Windows 10 in tablet mode and I found the whole experience to be disjointed. It felt out of touch with recent UX trends / advancements, the same old thing with a new skin and even more tiles. Everything I wanted to do took more 'clicks' that I was happy with and there's little-to-no consideration to power users. Am I the only one that doesn't se…

They are marketing really hard where the tech nerds and devs are, astroturfing comment sections and sponsored articles everywhere. Things like Microsoft is changing and giving fuzzy feelings (really?), but the general audience is harder to get. I've seen huge billboards with surface 3 ads, special sections in stores, but I've never seen one in the wild.

They are pretty prevalent in school. At least in the Math and CS departments where I spend the majority of my time.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#128

Post by cwyers »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #17
delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

To cool down some of the optimism in this comment section: Microsoft is still accepting cash for practically every Android phone made because of their patent threats, or did they change their ways in this regard as well? (I am genuinely curious whether this continues; I tried to google "microsoft android patent threats" but found only news articles from 2013/2014 about the practice.)

I don't exactly understand the objection to this. Microsoft has the patents (and they don't seem to be spurious patents). Google used techniques covered by the patents in Android without paying Microsoft or indemnifying their OEMs. Microsoft is actively competing with Android. They should let the Android OEMs by because... why? Even assuming for a moment that patents are inherently wrong (rather than our current patent system being flawed in execution) and that Microsoft believes it to be wrong... it exists. They gain nothing by unilaterally disarming. Why should they let the Android OEMs use these patents for free?

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#129

Post by pmelendez »

pjc50 wrote: post #104
pmelendez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable" But it was technically unremovable, in those days you could open a windows explorer and type an URL and then you suddenly have internet explorer right into your window. It was an awful design flaw that costed them lagging apart after the post IE6 era. The other thing is that wou…

The intent was to "cut off Netscape's air supply": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro... Had they succeeded with the IE strategy, ActiveX controls would have the same endemic status as Flash does now, but unimplementable on any browser other than IE.

I am not saying that wasn't the intent. What I am saying is the only real guilty one in the Netscape fail was Netscape.

The situation was still there when Firefox and Chrome came to play (and I suspect also the intent) and it didn't prevent IE to step aside.

The same goes to Flash... it is still there because there still are stuff you can't do in HTML 5 (streaming live video for instance) and without a real alternative we would have to live with it (hopefully that will change soon)

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#130

Post by cwyers »

jacalata wrote: post #116
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (I can't install my legally purchased copy of OS X on my Intel machine? Really?) I thought the only way to legally purchase OS X was to buy it preinstalled on a mac.

It's for sale directly from Apple - http://www.apple.com/au/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-os-x-106-s...

That's an upgrade.
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