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Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

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Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#441

Post by qntty »

chandmk wrote: post #283

As a side note, Microsoft login echo system sucks big time in the context of office. You have no idea which URL to use to login to office 365. Between login/logout/timeout/other office apps/personal accounts/business accounts/forgot password workflows browser redirects to various URLs at least a dozen times. And you keep seeing new URLs I am wondering how less tech savvy people are coping with their authentication wo…

Recently got caught in a loop of trying to create an Office 365 account and being told that my email is already in use, then trying to say that I forgot my password and was told that my email is not associated with an account.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#442

Post by antpls »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #388
LarryDarrell wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rewrote a 3000 line VBA function into C# earlier this year for a Oil/Gas company. It was surprisingly easy. Sometimes tedious, but easy. It runs faster, it's easier to maintain and now they can slap whatever front-end they want on it. Is it money, fear or gatekeeping that keeps these VBA programs untouchable?

Probably all three. I used to be in the Medical Devices field. A couple years ago, I was told to add a feature to a massive VBA app hosted in Excel that we (S/W development) inherited from another department. It was hands down the worst code I have ever seen. Everything was a global variable. I flat out told my boss that it barely worked, didn't come close to meeting the weakest of our development standards, and sinc…

> Since I left, I heard ownership of it was transferred to Corporate IT and they were making it into a web app to run on their intranet. Heaven help those guys.

At my last job, I developed automated processes. Some software companies sell tools to automate clicks and keypresses. The idea is then to reuse that Excel macro no one understands inside a VM on a server, and adding a friendly webservice on top of it. Users of the web services don't know an actual screen is running and and an Excel file is being clicked for them.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#443

Post by golergka »

kumarharsh wrote: post #425
jorams wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. YAML is a superset of JSON, but you wouldn't call a YAML document a JSON document. The set of all colors is a superset of the set containing only orange, but calling every color orange makes no sense.

All colours don't boil down to "orange" in Human eyes, so calling all colours orange really would be pointless. Typescript does compile down to JS, without which it can't even run. So yeah, when you're talking about the runtime or performance, Typescript === Javascript.

> Typescript does compile down to JS, without which it can't even run. So yeah, when you're talking about the runtime or performance, Typescript === Javascript.

By this kind of logic, C++ === machine code. It compiles down to it, right?

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#444

Post by gspetr »

Sylos wrote: post #436
hellofunk wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not from the ecosystem at large, but from Microsoft, on something like Outlook, sure you can expect efficiency.

I am not aware of a single piece of software written by Microsoft that I would call efficient, apart from maybe Notepad or MSPaint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysinternals

Very efficient, though technically MS acquihired Mark Russinovich.

He still works on them even though he's Azure CTO.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#445

Post by [deleted] »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #434
contextfree wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience most people in Microsoft have only a vague idea of what other teams are doing, even when none of it is really secret. If Office is starting to adopt React Native for some of its new UI components, and meanwhile there's a lot of work happening on the Office 365 web portal and Office web apps, internal telephone rumor circulation can morph that into "all of Office is being rewritten in javascript"

Nobody who truly participated in or contributed to the "complete" rewriting of Office in JS would be capable of expressing the positive emotions the subject of OP does...their soul would have been drained of the capacity to express joy long before the project would be completed. The tone smacks of the delusional cluelessness that MSFT's culture seems to uniquely foster.

[deleted]

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#446

Post by contextfree »

exikyut wrote: post #422
contextfree wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience most people in Microsoft have only a vague idea of what other teams are doing, even when none of it is really secret. If Office is starting to adopt React Native for some of its new UI components, and meanwhile there's a lot of work happening on the Office 365 web portal and Office web apps, internal telephone rumor circulation can morph that into "all of Office is being rewritten in javascript"

Hmm. Whoever makes the first neural model capable of returning interesting insights after being installed in the telephone switchboard/backbone is going to have a most unique life. Edit: Just realized ISPs have probably been trying to do this for years. I'm talking about the first individual . It'll probably happen routinely in 20 years or so.

I was referring to the metaphorical game of "telephone", not literal telephones.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#447

Post by crooked-v »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #356
chengmau wrote: post #311

I know the architecture too good, more than I need as I was leaving MS recently. This tweet is not likely to happen. Talking about desktop apps, this doesn't make any sense. Office apps have millions of lines in code and many years of lost knowledge between the classes. Just too many screens, checkboxes and features. A complete bloatware. Buy MS doesn't take any feature off the app- if you have 1B users, most likely…

The way I see it, even saying that this is the goal is bad news. It's basically an official admission that Microsoft intends to abandon the Desktop OS entirely. Windows 10's bullshit isn't just some bump in the road that would eventually be recognized as the bad idea that it is, it's a deliberate move to push people off of Windows Desktop and on to Windows tablets, smartphones, and a desktop web kiosk. Windows as a p…

Microsoft already has one extremely successful JS/Electron-based desktop app in VS Code.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#448

Post by amorphid »

privacypoller wrote: post #318
chandmk wrote: post #283

As a side note, Microsoft login echo system sucks big time in the context of office. You have no idea which URL to use to login to office 365. Between login/logout/timeout/other office apps/personal accounts/business accounts/forgot password workflows browser redirects to various URLs at least a dozen times. And you keep seeing new URLs I am wondering how less tech savvy people are coping with their authentication wo…

When you have multiple accounts it's even worse - especially if you've got a work account with domain authentication, a private one with 2-factor, a sub-account email under another... I'm usually pretty savvy about typing information into a rando web form, but with windows logins it's a major chore to figure out what exactly I'm looking at. I hope they staff up to meet the 18-month rewrite cycle for modern JS apps. I…

This reality bit me when my Skype account was rolled into Microsoft's Live/Outlook/something system. Both accounts had the same email address, and suddenly my Skype account was no longer accessible. I finally figured out how to delete the non-Skype account, but it was a major pain and I had to wait 60 days for it to finally go away.

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#449

Post by Nullabillity »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #343
chandmk wrote: post #283

As a side note, Microsoft login echo system sucks big time in the context of office. You have no idea which URL to use to login to office 365. Between login/logout/timeout/other office apps/personal accounts/business accounts/forgot password workflows browser redirects to various URLs at least a dozen times. And you keep seeing new URLs I am wondering how less tech savvy people are coping with their authentication wo…

All public facing URLs should go through Marketing. On macOS, when an Apple app contacts an Apple service and my firewall shows me the domain/host, it almost always looks very thoughtful and pretty. Compare that to MS Office on macOS. So many different requested domains with no thought and coherence behind them.

Have you ever looked at a WebObjects/iTunes URL?

Re: Office 365 is being completely rewritten in JavaScript

#450

Post by nameiscubanpete »

jorams wrote: post #410
nameiscubanpete wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd almost guarantee that it's Typescript. But being a superset of Javascript, it's still correct to call it Javascript.

It's really not. YAML is a superset of JSON, but you wouldn't call a YAML document a JSON document. The set of all colors is a superset of the set containing only orange, but calling every color orange makes no sense.

It's really kinda both, but context sensitive.
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