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Hello, GitHub

natfriedman.github.io

531–540 of 671 posts

Re: Hello, GitHub

#531
post #279

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Not entirely true. Microsoft puts (almost? Yet to find anything that isn't) all our code on VSTS which is accessible remotely, without VPN. I've checked in a (very very minor docs) fix to the Windows code base from my Android phone over LTE.

Yeah, which is hosted on Azure, a data center that Microsoft owns and employs guards for, and secured behind our standard corporate authentication. :) (Source: I work at Microsoft, near the VSTS team.)

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Re: Hello, GitHub

#532
post #484
post #7

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition. 2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) 3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. This, ove…

Ask some of the Gnome developers who were around when Nat and Miguel did mono as the open source C# vm and tightly integrated it into gnome over a lot of disquiet what happened next. Nat is a great PR guy, no doubt about that. You may have no issue with his previous behaviour at Gnome when founding Ximian with respect to open source commitments etc. - but you should know about it and decide for yourself.

One of the things I like about HN is that we don't traffic in innuendo. And I don't think this is the right time to begin. If there is something you want to say b/c it's relevant, then say it; if you are afraid to, then share links to the controversy. But to say we should know about something that you can only allude to is not the right way to do this.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#533
post #478
post #440

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RE> I believe Flex is either the second or third most successful project at Apache in terms of downloads. How can that be given that Adobe is killing the flash runtime?

The team has created a ActionScript to JavaScript compiler so it will have a future without the Flash runtime. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLEX/Flex+JS

I talked to the flex team a couple of years ago - and they did not think this was possible. I wonder how complete it is. At the time they said though Actionscript claims to be ECMAScript it is far from Javascript in very fundamental concepts they are based on such as inheritance and encapsulation (AS) and closures (JS).

Re: Hello, GitHub

#534
post #430

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I agree, my biggest concerns are: 1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "t…

I had the impression VSCode had the technical superior plugin system and I found it much more performant. Atom had more plugins for some time, but they had mediocre quality.

> I found it much more performant

Sincere question: Does "more performant" simply mean "faster"?

Re: Hello, GitHub

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. Is everyone here a teenager? Microsoft in the 80s might bot be a valid comparison today, but something that happened 6 years ago is barely yesterday. Institutions do not change that much that quickly. Microsoft 15 minutes ago isn't the Microsoft of today is just as true a statement and one just as vacuous.

I'm closer to 50 and certainly not a teenager. Yes, Steve was the issue and his style was old fashion. There is no going back once you open up the shed. Why do people continue to want to punish a company for their past when their present has been so good? To keep punishing them and not rewarding them for their good deeds? P.S. I thought the whole anti-OpenSUSE movement was also plain old stupid.

On my evil list Micrisoft is better than Google and Facebook. But worse than Github. If I heard Microsoft was buying Oracle I'd be dancing in the streets.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#537

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Yes same here. I’m really surprised by all the Microsoft hate as if we were still in the 80-90’s. MS is one of the biggest open source contributors nowadays. It's also really weird how people idealize GitHub. Did they forget GitHub was not a non-profit association, they were losing money, they deleted users repositories on their own, they had management issues, and people have been waiting some features for very long…

Once bitten, twice shy. Moreover, although I agree Microsoft is making efforts to change [1], pro-Microsoft partisans make it clear much of this is due to the new CEO. What one CEO does, another can undo. GitHub's bus factor is now 1. I would much rather have seen them go public. They were losing money, but not, last I saw, at a rate that was absurd for building a SaaS business. Is there some reason to think they cou…

> Once bitten, twice shy.

With Microsoft, the bites have been numerous and some are ongoing.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen many acquisitions commit to 2) only to slowly walk back from that “in the interests of operational efficiencies”. And next thing you know you have to change over to using a Microsoft account to log in...

I actually just made a bet with a friend on whether or not they'd switch GitHub over to Microsoft logins. My strong bet (that I put money behind) is that they won't. They're specifically acquiring this to win over developers and community, and they should hopefully know from the Skype transition how much negative perception that granted them. Their absolute best bet is to sit on GitHub, feed it money, offer the paid…

> I actually just made a bet with a friend on whether or not they'd switch GitHub over to Microsoft logins

Did your bet stipulate a time frame? I think the odds of this go up considerably after a honeymoon period of 2-4 years.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#539
post #267
post #7

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition. 2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) 3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. This, ove…

I don't fully understand point 2. Is just making GitHub better worth $7.5 billion dollars for Microsoft? It will stay independent for this pile of cash? Why they bought it? For prestige? For me the answer is that it can't be independent for long as it was (with VCs on its back was it ever?). It will gain Live login, maybe they will integrate it so you could login with your GitHub credentials to your computer if you s…

Within my finance circle, there is big discussion on why Microsoft did an all-stock deal and the substantiated rumour through the grapevine is that the $7.5billion acquisition was Microsoft's way of releasing a chunk of stock without having to go through the public market. Read what you will of it but interesting viewpoint nevertheless.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#540
post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Atom I could be wrong but my perception is that Atom is losing market share to VSCode all on its own– new devs are much more likely to adopt vscode & no growth ~= decline for an editor. Couple that with the fact that no one pays for Atom... IMO They don't need to "kill" atom, they just need to wait a couple years, at which point it will just Yet Another Editor down the list with TextWrangler et al., if the next Ato…

Anything that came out after vi is just another editor.

I picked up emacs in 1993 when I first got my hands on a unix system, and it was the only thing there that made remotely any sense. Fast forward to 2018, I'm still using emacs, and the upside is I haven't had to learn anything new in the intervening 25 years.
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