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Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

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Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#51

Post by contextfree »

jdietrich wrote: post #34
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

I don't know who Buchheit is, but Microsoft Research has employed three Turing Award winners (Tony Hoare, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker) for a decade or so. I doubt they'd have stayed if they felt mistreated.

In general I wouldn't put much stock in media anecdotes, as the media (or maybe just humanity in general, sadly) seems to love reinforcing preconceived narratives.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#52

Post by nollidge »

bvge wrote: post #44
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. You are obviously not referring to Visual Studio 2005 here. It is a half-baked unstable mess, that I still have to use every day. It's the Vista of IDEs. Microsoft also has a tendency to release frameworks before they are stable, or well thought through.…

What sort of development are you doing in 2005? I never had much of a stability problem until doing stuff with WPF under VS2008.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#53

Post by jeroen »

bvge wrote: post #44
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. You are obviously not referring to Visual Studio 2005 here. It is a half-baked unstable mess, that I still have to use every day. It's the Vista of IDEs. Microsoft also has a tendency to release frameworks before they are stable, or well thought through.…

What's keeping you from upgrading to VS2008 or VS2010 and targeting the 2.0 framework?

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#54

Post by gaius »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #50
gaius wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? If you want developer tools, they're a free download on microsoft.com http://www.microsoft.com/express/ Microsoft can't win here, if they shipped all that with the base OS there'd be haters hatin' on them for "bloat".

I wish I'd never answered. It's a religious war - no one will win. Lots of people will end up bloodied. I should've known better. Still, I did reply, so let me tell you of my personal experience, and then I'll leave. My experience is that working in a Microsoft environment as I have in the past, everything seemed bloody awkward and more annoying. Working in a Linux environment I've had far fewer hassles, and the syst…

Nah, I use both platforms, I have no axe to grind. Just correcting a factual error. If you are on Windows and want to (learn to) code, the tools are readily available (and barely more hassle to install than apt-get).

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#55

Post by zackola »

1) Internet Explorer 6

2) Internet Explorer 7

3) Price/quality of Visual Studio compared to other offerings - we can talk about memory footprint, MSDN subscriptions, odd versioning conflicts when trying to develop for SharePoint - oh wait.

4) SharePoint

5) http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/fake-steve-ballmer.jpg Honestly, this man disgusts me. His attitude and public reactions as the figurehead of Microsoft make me want to have nothing to do with Microsoft

6) Lack of POSIX compliant shell.

7) In small companies (and most families), programmers end up being IT staff. When was the last time any of you had to reformat or spend hours of your life cleaning a Mac or Linux machine because of malware? I'm not ignorant enough to think the gilded age of Mac and Linux being virtually malware free will last forever, but hey, enjoy it while it lasts.

8) http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare Which one is right for you? Fuck you! It's a desktop or a server. The consumer should have one choice, appropriately priced that lets them do everything they can.

9) The ridiculous price of MS Office Suite.

10) Webforms, VIEWSTATE. Seriously, fuck you VIEWSTATE, whoever designed this dumb ass approach should have their computing license revoked.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#56

Post by elblanco »

jdietrich wrote: post #34
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

Don't forget that Ive languished for a long time at Apple until Steve talent scouted him and promoted him up after he returned.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#57

Post by beagle3 »

contextfree wrote: post #51
jdietrich wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

I don't know who Buchheit is, but Microsoft Research has employed three Turing Award winners (Tony Hoare, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker) for a decade or so. I doubt they'd have stayed if they felt mistreated. In general I wouldn't put much stock in media anecdotes, as the media (or maybe just humanity in general, sadly) seems to love reinforcing preconceived narratives.

Microsoft Research != Microsoft in general. It's not even 1% of Microsoft, and everywhere there is different. Some of the research there has practical use, but a lot of it is just PR for Microsoft.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#58

Post by beagle3 »

Because they spit into everyone's well all the time. e.g.

- OOXML and the related perversion of the ISO process

- Wilful violation of standards (web, others)

- Hurting users for hollywood (Protected media path etc.)

- Broken security (by design) that has enabled all the botnets and spam you could ever think of, and then some.

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#59

Post by jdietrich »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #40
jdietrich wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. Microsoft treat developers like cattle. You've just got to look at their corporate structure, where senior developers might be reporting to a dozen different managers. Companies that respect developers give them freedom and autonomy, they trust in their…

I think your long rant is misdirected. The parent poster was talking about third party developers, not Microsoft employees.

I Imagined that people would draw the inference themselves, but obviously not. The internal culture of any corporation dictates how it interacts with the world. The phrase "Independent Software Vendor" is an example of the weird nature of the Microsoft ecosystem - the only explanation I ever get for what "Independent" means is "not Microsoft". The Microsoft monoculture leaches out into everything to do with the Windows platform. The obvious example would be something like Team Foundation Server - it's as if Microsoft as an entity can't imagine software being developed outside of a complex corporate structure that requires "lifecycle management". The fact that Microsoft are so deeply engaged with their developer community only strengthens the effect of this monoculture. There are an astonishing number of professional programmers whose entire knowledge of practical software development comes from the MSDN - after all, it provides everything you need to know, so why go elsewhere? The number of developers who have never heard of github is quite astounding.

The best analogy I can give is an anecdote from James Meek -

"One day in 1992, just after the USSR collapsed, I met a mid-ranking officer from the old Soviet interior ministry on a train heading to southern Ukraine. He'd lived in the Soviet system since he was born half a century earlier and knew no other way of doing things. We got talking. He was astounded when I told him that in Britain we had no ID cards or system of residence permits to keep track of who lived where. I saw a look of panicked incomprehension forming on his face and waited for a question such as, "How do you keep tabs on people, then?" What he actually asked was, "How do you know how much bread to make?""

Re: Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

#60

Post by aerique »

bvge wrote: post #44
keithwarren wrote: post #7

Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole. Lots of web developers, especially those who were not professional developers in the 90s see and hear this horror story of a big mean monopolist who…

It is sad really, because Microsoft is years ahead of any other company in the way they treat developers. If you havent used Visual Studio you wont understand that. You are obviously not referring to Visual Studio 2005 here. It is a half-baked unstable mess, that I still have to use every day. It's the Vista of IDEs. Microsoft also has a tendency to release frameworks before they are stable, or well thought through.…

Not only that, once they finally get it right it'll get phased out for their latest framework so you can keep on paying the Microsoft tax.

My biggest beef with them is that they chose to make money not through technical excellence but usually through more subversive means.

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