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Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

businessinsider.com

451–460 of 567 posts

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#451
post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're on about. C# is basically a "better Java" so there's no particular reason you can't write good software in it.

That's very subjective. C# has tons of useless keywords that you just know some arrogant dev is going to use because they can, which then no junior can work with. It also has a worse ecosystem for writing server software (while obviously a better ecosystem for writing Windows applications) and is less suitable for cross-platform work.

Can you elaborate on this "keyword" statement? I find the statement very confusing especially when comparing it to C, modern C++, modern Java or any functional "magic" languages.

The second part is true. .NET does not share the same wide ecosystem as Java.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#453
post #439
post #6

Really hope these talks fall through and nothing comes of it. Too many bad experiences with Microsoft buying something out, mismanaging it, and it goes down the drain. As much as I love GitHub, I won't be using a Microsoft-owned GitHub for any of my company's work.

GitHub clearly needs change of management. I havent seen much inmovation from them compared to GitLab. Microsoft is very strong on innovation since change of management.

GitHub is easy to use, and I’ve found the important features work really well.

I’m all for improvements, but I’m not even sure what I would want. At this point, I’m more worried any attempt at innovation would break the things I like about GitHub now, than I am excited for something new.

I use gitlab for all my private projects and don’t find it to be remarkably better in any way, and the UI always confuses me.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow with their resources.

> To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow with their resources. I'm not sure if LinkedIn could be any less "screwed up" than it was when Microsoft bought it.

Can somebody explain to me why LinkedIn is screwed up? I am genuinely asking ;)

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#455
Considering that software powers most of the modern economy, it's pretty sad how small the market is for quality software development tools. Programmers get paid high six figures, but balk at paying for quality debugging tools. Visual Studio, despite being a strong debugger and exceptional piece of technology in its own right, is not a real revenue driver for MS, it's just an exceptionally sophisticated way to nudge programmers to Microsoft's libraries and platforms.

Github has generally been platform agnostic (except for git itself), and it would sadden me to see Github start to compromise those values and start favoring one platform or another. (One could easily see Github / Visual Studio plugins, enabled by default, with built-in subtle nudges towards the MS Cloud platform).

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#456
post #28

Seems like the view here is pretty negative. I feel like most people here haven't worked with Microsoft dev products recently. They're getting better. I guess the crowd here isn't typically in the .NET world.

I think that's the point. I'm personally worried Microsoft may have a very narrow view of what GitHub is. A lot of tech hosted there doesn't even run on Windows, or isn't even related to software. (legal, political, docs, guides, etc.)

Azure team gives a shit about "not invented here". They are exclusively interested in your cpu cycles and bytes in memory. Who organizes the cycles and bytes, they do not care.

Surely, there are preferred stacks (e.g. in the high level PaaS areas), but this includes node, python and .NET.

PS: one save bet: Java will never be on their support list :). But only for legal reasons :)

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#457

I can't help but be insanely sceptical. Microsoft has a massive legacy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I don't want the GitHub ecosystem to suffer from the same reoccurring pattern. Call me jaded by Microsoft's past behaviour, but I just cannot forget the numerous times Microsoft has absolutely ruined thriving ecosystems by using the same tricks.

Microsoft wouldn't benefit from killing GitHub. Heck Microsoft killed their own competitor TFS and pushed people to migrate to Git, and uses GitHub themselves for hosting several products. Microsoft also has full Git support in Visual Studio Online (their enterprise competitor to GitHub), Visual Studio, and VS Code. Microsoft would likely use GitHub to advertise their development products, tools, and services like Az…

TFS is not dead. And the TFS native source management (one small pilar in TFS) is just quite unpopular right now :). But not dead.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#458
post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow with their resources. I'm not sure if LinkedIn could be any less "screwed up" than it was when Microsoft bought it.

Can somebody explain to me why LinkedIn is screwed up? I am genuinely asking ;)

It doesn't provide any value to the regular user; most people I know receive lots of emails mostly from body shops but rarely get a job from LinkedIn. The UI is designed to make it hard to configure privacy, and to make you casually spill your contact list. They are always trying to sell premium accounts. To be fair it should provide some value to a junior dev who doesnt have a Network yet but LinkedIn doesn't even try to hide the fact that you are the product (unlike say fb).

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#459
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Google. At least Oracle would keep its dead corpse alive while it was still producing revenue.

Until Oracle starts opening up lawsuits against people/companies that have high traffic open source projects

Oracle will declare it their code and start sueing :)

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#460
post #450
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if MS is getting better lately. The fact it's getting better is obviously a positive thing, but will it stay that way in the future? no one knows. I like the fact Github is independent of all the big players. I really, really, really hope it stays a neutral ground. Also, if acquired by MS, I'm not that afraid for github itself. However, what is at risk in my opinion is all the integrations around github.…

I am not worried about the ecosystem. See VS Code.

If the acquisition goes through, VS Code is probably going to kill Atom, which is my go-to editor for many tasks. VS Code may be better overall, but it's not for me, and I'll have to change my workflow.
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