Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

Microsoft has done a lot of harm in the last 20 years. They succeeded through a strategy of continually expanding into new areas (operating systems, office software, web browsers, email, programming languages, etc) and producing products that often worked poorly and only with the rest of their platform. They succeeded at this for a time, creating a monstrous shambling behemoth of software that was powered entirely by its own momentum. But it wasn't very good, and everyone knew it.

I assume that others, like me, were very frustrated during that time. We knew this wasn't the right way. Software folks tend to see the world through software eyes, and we know that an incompatible proprietary mess only comes back to haunt you. But what could we do? They had the money and the influence. To misquote PG, we bought it with misgivings. We made our sites work with IE, we made our code compile under VC++, we gave our servers and clients special_microsoft_spec_exception flags. And we bitched on Slashdot and spelled Microsoft with a dollar sign and dreamed of a day when we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore.

Well, now we don't. Apple's eating Microsoft's lunch from the hardware up, while Google chows on it from the web down. They have way too much money to fail fast, or maybe to even fail at all. But they have to play ball now. Why do programmers hate Microsoft? Justice, I suppose. They certainly didn't treat us well when they were in charge. Programmers have long memories.

We have a new 800 pound gorilla intent on screwing us over. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?d=v1&s=AAPL,MSFT

"I think a big reason why people don't like Microsoft, is the anti-competitive behavior they used to get to the size they are today."

That's completely nonsensical. Microsoft didn't act anti-competitively to become big, they did it AFTER becoming big. You can't abuse power you don't have, and when Microsoft won the OS contract with IBM, it was a tiny company, and Apple was by comparison huge.

Microsoft got big by taking advantage of the fact that the guy that wrote DOS didn't think it was worth anything, so he was happy with the $50k (or whatever) that Bill gave him for it, and IBM didn't think that the PC market would go anywhere, so they didn't think anything of giving MS money for every PC sold.

When Bill started licensing DOS to every company that wanted to make a PC, Microsoft became big.

THAT is how Microsoft acquired the power to abuse that they then proceeded to abuse.

I suspect that it's related to history, because there is a reason that the term "Microserf" exists. Microsoft used to operate like amazon does today -- burn the developers out and who gives a $# about turnout, because EVERYONE wants to work here...

... which was true, but it was for the money; Microsoft stock options were making people rich.

The proof?

The year that MS stock values dropped for the first time, MS started having trouble hiring people.

They treat their own developers a LOT better than they used to, in fact almost as well as Google does.

But it's hard to live that Microserf thing down... partly because that sweatshop method, replacing process with extra hours, leads to terrible, bug-ridden code.

What irks me more than people irrationally disliking Microsoft is people who spout about how bad Microsoft's code is, and how asinine their processes are, while making exactly the same mistakes that even Microsoft learned from and has been fixing.

Excellent - thanks.

Oh, hang on, I'd still need to use Windows, which is a rare event for me. Still, nice to know I can use a Windows machine to read Windows files.

Oh, hang on, I also need the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats. I'll put that on the list too.

And actually, this still isn't the point. There are still the "embrace and extend" issues I need to deal with, and the "interesting" interpretations they put on the standards, and the inter-operability issues raised.

Microsoft is no longer the company they once were, but I've had so much grief and so much pain from dealing with their systems I just avoid them. I can't bring myself to care, or to waste the time.

Which is why I won't bother replying further to this thread. I've answered the question, I've provided information, and explained my circumstances, and now I'm moving on to get stuff done. Without Microsoft.