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Changing My Mind On Microsoft

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Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#41

Post by huggyface »

cs702 wrote: post #15
huggyface wrote: post #3

All internal computer now run as virtual machines (not desktops) running on two mondo-powerful Linux servers. The virtualization platform is Citrix. Nobody has a functional box under their desk any more. ... The company has got rid of the desktop computers entirely (sorry Dell and HP) What? How are they accessing these virtual machines? Mind meld? In most cases where companies use VDIs the desktop machines are the st…

How are they accessing these virtual machines? Probably with Citrix-compatible thin clients. There are a ton of those out there. ...it is very difficult to find candidates who know anything but Microsoft tools. That may be true in the US and some parts of Western Europe, such as the UK, but what about the rest of the world? The author of the blog post, John Hempton, is a hedge fund manager who works out of Australia…

Probably with Citrix-compatible thin clients. There are a ton of those out there.

Why would you post this reply when I specifically address that in the next two sentences?

That may be true in the US and some parts of Western Europe, such as the UK, but what about the rest of the world?

India is overwhelmingly Microsoft-centric. Eastern Europe is overwhelmingly Microsoft-centric. Much of Russia is very Microsoft-centric.

But nonetheless your oddly defensive argument (know the author?) sounds suspiciously like the "oh yeah, they're big in Germany" retort. But anyways what I am replying to is what I see as a immediately ridiculous claim that people under 30 don't know Microsoft, when the overwhelming proof says otherwise.

The author of the blog post, John Hempton, is a hedge fund manager who works out of Australia but invests worldwide, and he often thinks and writes in terms of global trends

This is one of the stranger appeals to authority that I've yet read. When I think "technology trends expert" I don't think "hedge fund manager". That someone invests money gives them zero authority on technology trends. I should add to notice that my business is hedge fund technology, so the circle is kind of complete here.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#42

Post by evo_9 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #27
cs702 wrote: post #21

Whether one agrees or not with the facts and reasoning of the author (a successful hedge-fund manager with a widely followed blog), this blog post is important in and of itself because of what it represents: a tectonic shift in the business community's perception of Microsoft. The business community is now openly doubting the future relevance of the Windows platform!

No, this is historically very typical for Microsoft. Windows ME sucked. Windows XP was great. Windows Vista sucked. Windows 7 was great. At least that was the perception. Reality is more nuanced, of course. And business is very conservative, they never upgrade immediately. For business, the alternative to Windows 8 is Windows 7 or Windows XP. It isn't OS X or Linux or Android. Microsoft does better if they switch to…

There were no serious threats to their dominance before; now they have iOS, Android and even OS-X is starting to gain more marketshare than I'd be comfortable with if I were ballmer.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#43

Post by kitsune_ »

fingerprinter wrote: post #24

> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools unless they are demented or brain-dead. I see most people saying he is wrong here, though I can't think why. Are there people who thing A. writing software for windows? B. are targeting the windows phone? C. deploying to a cloud (private or public) using Windows servers? If you are targeting a phone, it is most def either iOS or Android, prob…

The corporate market is much larger than the start up market. Many corporate web sites, intranets and web applications run on either Java or .NET. This isn't exactly a secret.

That's only one part of the cake however. Think of all the companies out there. From engineering to banking to manufacturers of Q-Tips.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#44

Post by IanDrake »

tiernano wrote: post #10

> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools unless they are demented or brain-dead. Hmmm.... i am 29, i write C# and .NET for a living... there are a few lads in the office that are .NET Dev, under 30... I must be in a black hole then...

Or making better money compared to your peers.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#45

Post by huggyface »

127001brewer wrote: post #38
huggyface wrote: post #3

All internal computer now run as virtual machines (not desktops) running on two mondo-powerful Linux servers. The virtualization platform is Citrix. Nobody has a functional box under their desk any more. ... The company has got rid of the desktop computers entirely (sorry Dell and HP) What? How are they accessing these virtual machines? Mind meld? In most cases where companies use VDIs the desktop machines are the st…

... it is very difficult to find candidates who know anything but Microsoft tools. This may depend on a variety of things, such as the job location and desired skill level, but this blanket statement is false. For example, it seems that a significant number of Hacker News participants - who are developers - develop in other languages and platforms. ... completely detached from reality. My personal opinion is that dev…

This may depend on a variety of things, such as the job location and desired skill level, but this blanket statement is false.

The blanket statement was a personal observation about our own hiring, so I can assure you with complete conviction that it is not false. Further I addressed the alternate universe of the start-up world, comprising a tiny, tiny percentage of software developers, and that is what HN caters to.

Just to be clear, I don't like that most candidates outside of the startup-sphere are so Microsoft or Java centric. In fact it is a battle that we constantly have to fight (hire somebody and then have to argue every single decision that isn't the Microsoft Way). Yet I have enough real world development experience that I found that claim so ridiculously detached from reality that the author lost any and all credibility on tech matters.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#46

Post by aggronn »

cs702 wrote: post #15
huggyface wrote: post #3

All internal computer now run as virtual machines (not desktops) running on two mondo-powerful Linux servers. The virtualization platform is Citrix. Nobody has a functional box under their desk any more. ... The company has got rid of the desktop computers entirely (sorry Dell and HP) What? How are they accessing these virtual machines? Mind meld? In most cases where companies use VDIs the desktop machines are the st…

How are they accessing these virtual machines? Probably with Citrix-compatible thin clients. There are a ton of those out there. ...it is very difficult to find candidates who know anything but Microsoft tools. That may be true in the US and some parts of Western Europe, such as the UK, but what about the rest of the world? The author of the blog post, John Hempton, is a hedge fund manager who works out of Australia…

Where else is there? Development in India is more ingrained in Microsoft than anywhere else on earth. Looking for blog posts on silverlight will lead to a poorly written guide by a developer in India. ALL LARGE IT CONSULTING FIRMS have major operations in India, and the majority of them use ASP.NET or WPF. Many are now moving over to open technologies like rails, but only in small US specific shops targeting US customers. I haven't heard or interacted with many Chinese developers who aren't in the US. You mentioned western Europe specifically--from working with some Microsoft platform lately, it seems like most silverlight 'vendors' in Europe of are in eastern Europe (most notably, i think, Telerik).

Australia may be the exception to the rule, though I doubt that a quarter of Australian CS majors go on to work somewhere using python, rails, or PHP. A good number probably go to java, a compiled language, or iOS dev, but if they're going into web, i'd be hard pressed to believe that a majority aren't going into an ASP.NET operation.

Claiming that most developers under 30 don't use microsoft platforms is just pish-posh. They just don't learn it in class, and don't do it in their free time. That doesn't mean their first job isn't going to be a DB analyst on some 10 year old VB.net application.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#47

Post by kenjackson »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #36

The "nobody under 30 writes MS" statement is obviously false at it's core but perhaps it means something slightly different? I imagine most of the under-30 devs working on MS software are being hired by established companies to work on enterprise type software or for consultancies building websites using ASP.net etc. What about people under 30 who are starting their own businesses from scratch? For example startups,…

What about people under 30 who are starting their own businesses from scratch? For example startups, they tend to be using stuff like Ruby/Python/JS etc.

As someone who was under 30 during Microsoft's heyday (90s) I can say that most developers under 30 then also didn't use MS tools. Borland tools ruled the roost until VC6 and VB6 (around '98). And most young developers out of school back then knew Unix, not Windows.

My point is that it's a myth that there existed some time when all young developers used MS tools. In fact I'd argue that in terms of mindshare MS devtools are near their all-time high in popularity now -- it's that the Windows OS isn't as popular as it once was among the under-30 crowd.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#48

Post by aggronn »

mtgx wrote: post #37
bryanlarsen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is historically very typical for Microsoft. Windows ME sucked. Windows XP was great. Windows Vista sucked. Windows 7 was great. At least that was the perception. Reality is more nuanced, of course. And business is very conservative, they never upgrade immediately. For business, the alternative to Windows 8 is Windows 7 or Windows XP. It isn't OS X or Linux or Android. Microsoft does better if they switch to…

There are 2 main differences this time, though: 1) Windows 8 is changing Windows in pretty fundamental ways (being touch first, leaving the "PC" behind), and I can't foresee anything but minor changes in Windows 9 to this direction. I doubt they will try to go back to making Windows 9 a true successor of Windows 7. That seems very unlikely to me now. Microsoft is all-in with this tile-based version of Windows. Even t…

> Windows 8 is changing Windows in pretty fundamental ways (being touch first, leaving the "PC" behind),

I just don't see how someone can say this if they've used windows 8 for any amount of time. I'm never in metro. I don't get it. I don't have any touch devices, and I wouldn't even know that that was an option except for the advertising.

> Microsoft is all-in with this tile-based version of Windows. Even their logo has changed to reflect that. So businesses who don't want to stay on Windows 7 forever, should take into account alternatives.

There is a usability consideration because of interface changes--if the only thing keeping you with windows is the interface, then this makes sense. If a company needs software to work on a platform they're generally familiar with and have support in place for, they're not going to seriously consider switching from windows by the time windows 9 comes around.

You're second point is pretty good though.

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#49

Post by jiggy2011 »

brador wrote: post #23
cs702 wrote: post #21

Whether one agrees or not with the facts and reasoning of the author (a successful hedge-fund manager with a widely followed blog), this blog post is important in and of itself because of what it represents: a tectonic shift in the business community's perception of Microsoft. The business community is now openly doubting the future relevance of the Windows platform!

What else can run those business softwares? Not just Excel, but the legacy stuff. So long as they need it they'll pay. And, unfortunately, business needs whatever is backwards compatible with Windows XP.

I wonder what would happen if some company decided to throw a lot of money at the Wine Project and release some enterprise platform based on Linux that boasted full compatibility with old Windows desktop software?

Re: Changing My Mind On Microsoft

#50

Post by skrebbel »

fingerprinter wrote: post #24

> Nowadays nobody under thirty writes anything on Microsoft developer tools unless they are demented or brain-dead. I see most people saying he is wrong here, though I can't think why. Are there people who thing A. writing software for windows? B. are targeting the windows phone? C. deploying to a cloud (private or public) using Windows servers? If you are targeting a phone, it is most def either iOS or Android, prob…

I agree with much of your reasoning, until

> And if you are deploying to anything other than Ubuntu, you're crazy

What? Did you ever see deploying to Windows servers? There's a reason AppHarbor's documentation pages are so much smaller than Heroku's: Deploying a .NET web app is peanuts. Through Microsoft-only-means, it's done with a single buttonclick from Visual Studio. This works really great. There's a convention as to how web applications are structured that is very widespread and supported by all relevant tooling.

Really, there may be many reasons for not choosing .NET for cloud apps, but server support is not one of them.

Secondly, you're forgetting a major category for .NET developers: devices. Office multifunctional printers, cash registers, machines in factories, any mid to high tech equipment really. Windows has a massive market share here, and lock-in is only one of the reasons why this is going to remain. For example, developing a touch screen interface for an ATM using WPF is very, very easy - definitely among the best options out there. The entire world may be moving to the web, but for devices there is no strong benefit in doing so. Why make a built-in webserver and a windowlwss browser if you can just make a decent native app in half the time, using half the resources? Also, the price of a Windows Embedded license isn't very interesting if the device you're selling costs a few thousand dollars a piece.

Admittedly though, I've no idea how small or large the dev market of machines and equipment is. But it's really pretty sizeable, much bigger than the average HN world-vision warrants.

A lot of software is never seen by consumers, don't forget that. A lot of it is never seen by humans at all.

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