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Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

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Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#31

Post by bargl »

Microsoft has done some very good things and some very bad things. I'll let everyone else point out the bad things because there seems to be plenty of that.

I personally like the:

  Surface products,
  Typescript, 
  C#/F#,
  .NET Core,
  Visual Studio Code, and
  the Hololens.
These are all recently new developments for Microsoft that are really awesome. The fact that a lot of this has become open source is even better. You have to give Microsoft credit for one thing, they've shifted the company so much and that is impressive for a large company.

I enjoy Azure but I understand some people's frustration with it so I exclude it from the list above, I get that it's contentious so I'm leaving it off.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#32

Post by justinlaster »

morgante wrote: post #29
justinlaster wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how anyone could possible claim GAE or similar offerings from Google compete anywhere close to what Microsoft or Amazon is providing. My take on it between Amazon and Microsoft: Microsoft has less functionality but with an easier UI. Amazon is light years ahead of anyone but their UI scheme (from naming things to where they position features and options) is pretty lack luster.

> I don't see how anyone could possible claim GAE or similar offerings from Google compete anywhere close to what Microsoft or Amazon is providing. I think your information is quite out of date. GCP is competitive with AWS for many use cases and certainly is better than Azure. The days of GAE even being the primary offering are long gone. There's a reason that if you look at DevOps tools they all support AWS, most al…

It most likely is out of date, but I've continued to see the same sentiments echo'd from other people recently, so haven't bothered to fully revinvestigate. I got the impression from my time with Google's offerings that their culture of "we're consumer focused, not devop focused" (anything from API's to reporting) completely plastered their offerings in the cloud space.

>most also support GCP, but very few support Azure.

This might be a case of different tech stacks, but nearly everything I work with supports Azure. Sorry to ask this, because it might be easier for you to provide an example or two what you specifically know doesn't work with Azure versus me providing everything that does (and of course, these should be semi-popular tools in whatever "stack").

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#33

Post by UK-AL »

marricks wrote: post #15

I was going to rag on this article for touting the the same non-specific garbage we've seen the past couple days like, "more mac users switching to surface than ever!" without any hard numbers, did is go from 20 to 25? But this article is actually pretty interesting. It focuses on how Satya Nadella has respected the leaders of Companies he's bought out and invited them to key meetings. Using their insight not only fo…

Microsoft used to have a really good reputation for developers. Used to one of the few companies where each developer had their own office.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#34

Post by cannonpr »

ctvo wrote: post #19
cylo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is an accurate view at all. How can you say they aren't innovating when you've got Microsoft Research still going strong with the fruits of its labor becoming visible in commercial applications such as speech, augmented reality, etc. Not to mention the open source efforts they've put forth with .NET -- which admittedly is still in rough shape but certainly seems to have a future. I don't think it's…

Agree, even when Microsoft was unpopular and declining in relevancy MS Research was putting out the best information out of any tech company. Please browse https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/ and try to find a comparable resource from anyone else.

These are just as respectable: https://research.fb.com/publications/ https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html

I have a fair bit of respect for Microsoft research lab's and it has also done a fair bit of interesting work in hardware, I was talking about Microsoft as a company in it's totality.

I always viewed Microsoft research labs as a spot of bright light in an otherwise relatively dark company, perhaps that is slightly schizophrenic of me.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#35

Post by scholia »

cmdrfred wrote: post #9
anon987 wrote: post #5

Microsoft continues to try to convince us that they are great with press releases and non-organic stories such as this. I, my peers, and my co-workers just don't see it. With billions in reserve it's no surprise they are trying to buy popularity.

I've been saying the same thing. My coworkers bring up the surface when I mention it, but I don't see it. Tech in general has felt low innovation lately. Its time for silicon valley 2.

Powerful 2-in-1 that works as a laptop and a tablet; runs sandboxed apps from a web store as well as traditional Windows apps; built in AI assistant; excellent pen operation; built in accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer; cloud integration with OneDrive, Office programs, email etc with the ability to continue work from different devices; face-recognition or fingerprint log-on; increased security features....

Yeah, it's hard to see any innovation compared to your granddad's laptop ;-)

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#36

Post by stinos »

cylo wrote: post #13
cannonpr wrote: post #6

Not to say that Microsoft hasn't done some good work in say Linux lately because of Azure, but I just don't see Microsoft as an innovator, it's very hard to see a company that makes 2 billion a year off android patent's as innovative... I wonder how much of Microsoft in the future will be a tech leader, versus a patents company.

I don't think this is an accurate view at all. How can you say they aren't innovating when you've got Microsoft Research still going strong with the fruits of its labor becoming visible in commercial applications such as speech, augmented reality, etc. Not to mention the open source efforts they've put forth with .NET -- which admittedly is still in rough shape but certainly seems to have a future. I don't think it's…

This. I've made comments like this more then once on HN: people see 'microsoft' and they think it is just the company selling an OS and office suite and forget or don't know there's more to it. The research for one, which has indeed been going strong for decades, but now also the hardware side which does have at least some innovation to it imo.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#38

Post by gdulli »

anon987 wrote: post #5

Microsoft continues to try to convince us that they are great with press releases and non-organic stories such as this. I, my peers, and my co-workers just don't see it. With billions in reserve it's no surprise they are trying to buy popularity.

Without being ideological about baggage from a decade and more in Microsoft's past, it's easy to see that the company it is today has a large and diverse set of products. Many are good, I'd still say some are bad. But it would be simplistic to remain suspicious and attached to an expired narrative.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#39

Post by johansch »

bargl wrote: post #31

Microsoft has done some very good things and some very bad things. I'll let everyone else point out the bad things because there seems to be plenty of that. I personally like the: Surface products, Typescript, C#/F#, .NET Core, Visual Studio Code, and the Hololens. These are all recently new developments for Microsoft that are really awesome. The fact that a lot of this has become open source is even better. You have…

Have you personally tried the Hololens? They appear to have oversold the qualities of at least the first version.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#40

Post by okreallywtf »

morgante wrote: post #11
ferentchak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you played with Azure or .Net Core? People tend to enjoy the Surface products too. In this regard I would not say they are "back" but better than Microsoft has ever been. Are they the best at everything... nah but heck the fact that I am saying many of their products are compelling is a big improvement

I've played with Azure and it's terrible. If a client wants me to use Azure instead of Google or Amazon, I literally charge a premium because it's so much more painful.

What are the problems you have the most with it? I've been working with it for a couple years now and despite a clunky interface (and the bifurcation of the two portals) the infrastructure has seemed pretty solid and has saved us (small dev shop working for small/medium companies) a ton of time and money. For most things (spinning up a new env with databases, redis caches, storage accounts etc) it is remarkably easy once you get used to the process and occasional workarounds. Granted I haven't used the other cloud services and I want to do that on my own time just to have a point of comparison.

I find myself being really suspicious whenever something being used by thousands or millions of people is just waved off by other people as being terrible. To me being "terrible" usually translates as "I started with something else and it works differently than this and its what I'm used to has its own failings and workarounds but I'm at least used to them and more productive there and I don't really feel like taking the time to get used to how things work for this other system."

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