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Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

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Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#341

Post by ddebernardy »

microtonal wrote: post #272
fetbaffe wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Webkit was already open source before Apple started using it. ALAC was closed source until 2011. Microsoft has released open formats as well, like XPS. And Microsoft does open source today as well. That's how the industry works today. Sure flash is bad thing but if Sun had its way with the internet and Microsoft had not stopped them we be all doing Java applets by now. However that's all beside the point, the point i…

Webkit was already open source before Apple started using it. Apple created Webkit. They were using/forked KHTML for that, but it quickly diverged.

And moreover, they could have closed-source the parts that they eventually released under BSD.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#342

Post by ern »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #208
jeswin wrote: post #163

I'll tell you the story of my friend Greg. Greg has been a believer in Microsoft. He went to all the Tech-Ed conferences, attended every MSDN event he could. Conferences are grand stages that leave an impression. He drank all the cool-aid that was served at these conferences. Things were really good early on, this was the last decade. The computing scene at that time revolved around Microsoft like the many moons of J…

When I was trying to get into the developer game (I'm self-taught with no degree so couldn't follow the normal progression) the biggest market in my hometown was (and still is) for .NET developers. So, I joined a .NET user group, I installed VS, I started learning. Problem was, MS was churning out the "next great thing" faster than I could learn the last great thing. While I was getting my head around WinForms, WPF c…

It was the 'blessed' data layer stuff that threw me. When I started it was DataSets etc. Then it was LINQ-to-SQL, then it was very much not LINQ-to-SQL, but instead was Entity Framework.

As a newbie who was trying to make myself marketable, it felt like a bit of a hamster wheel, but then through the user group, I met .NET pros who felt exactly the same way.

Most .NET developers learn what they need to know for the project at hand. A year ago, I worked on a fairly cutting-edge EF Code-First n-tier project, with knockout.js on the front end, using ASP.NET MVC web API. I am currently extending a crufty ASP.NET 2.0 webforms app.

Adaptability is an important skill for developers. Also, each iteration of the Microsoft data access stack feels like an improvement over the earlier ones, so it's not an unbearable burden to learn it.

And at the end of the day, the greatest irony was that when I finally broke into the market, it was a Java-based developer role on the basis of my JavaScript. So all my years of frantically spinning the .NET wheel was for naught.

Hiring someone for a Java job, based on their JavaScript knowledge is fairly unconventional (to put it politely). Are you certain that the general programming knowledge you acquired through "spinning the wheel" wasn't a factor?

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#343

Post by smanuel »

jeswin wrote: post #163

I'll tell you the story of my friend Greg. Greg has been a believer in Microsoft. He went to all the Tech-Ed conferences, attended every MSDN event he could. Conferences are grand stages that leave an impression. He drank all the cool-aid that was served at these conferences. Things were really good early on, this was the last decade. The computing scene at that time revolved around Microsoft like the many moons of J…

> Jobs wasn't talking about aesthetics; it is true of pretty much everything from Microsoft. From UIs, to development frameworks, to tools, to shells and even APIs. Back then, having "no taste" was totally fine because people communicated far less.

I think that the main problem is the MS has always tried to make things appealing to a certain crowd known as "VB developers", "drag and drop developers", etc.

I've heard too many times "You can do this with almost no code" with our cool new "Microsoft Foundation For Next Big Bullsh Blah Blah". And this is presented as a good practice. And the whole army of evangelists starts touting and praising the next BS framework. People start adopting it, other people start building other things on top of it, until everyone realizes it's BS and such practices, proclaiming "you'll write less code" lead to a pile of bad design decisions that you will later deeply regret.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#344

Post by ghuntley »

JayEnn wrote: post #258
vinceguidry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails initial release: 2004 ASP.NET initial release: 2002 I've heard nothing but good things about RubyMine, but few people use it because a good text editor is all you need to work with most dynamic languages. C# is practically unusable without Visual Studio. I've worked with both, give me Rails any day.

xamarin studio is great to work with. Mono has a c# repl. OTOH if you said c# is practically unusable without resharper, I'd have some sympathy.

Little known fact about Xamarin Studio (MonoDevelop) is that there is a option to enable source analysis which is for some reason off by default. Flipping it on essentially enables resharper mode. Only item missing is auto namespace resolution for references.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#345

Post by mercurial »

MortenK wrote: post #328
brass9 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the survey conducted in India, by any chance?

Monster.com job listings in the US by keyword: .NET - 1000+ positions Java - 1000+ positions PHP - 454 positions Python - 295 positions Ruby - 280 positions Node.js - 55 positions Lisp, Haskell, Scheme - 0 positions

It's not just the US (or India). Denmark is also, sadly, a Microsoft stronghold.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#346

Post by seanmcdirmid »

shadowmint wrote: post #339

You know those articles on stackoverflow which are marked 'matter of opinion, not constructive'? yeah. this. That. (I fully endorse discussion about meaningful topics, but I think it's a bit stupid to have a microsoft vs. not microsoft post push up at the top of HN. Everyone, post your opinion on this topic now, instead of actually talking to each other~)

This post wouldn't have happened if that Nokia Tablet incident yesterday didn't occur, where people were stopped from talking to each other through a few anti-MS trolls throwing shill accusations around. You are free to completely ignore this post, but given the number of upvotes, I guess there are some pent up feelings about this.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#347

Post by tluyben2 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #337
tluyben2 wrote: post #331

First of all let me say that of the research I follow, MS research is definitely in my top list. And you personally (with non MSR people like Jonathan Edwards) are among the few who try to help the crap we call programming which I hope you will pursue for a long time. I follow your research and your comments on HN. On MS (mostly opinion here as most posters in this kind of thread): I used to love MS in the 80s, becau…

Thanks for the comment. I'm attending Splash next week and Jonathan will be there, I can't wait! My post was about whether Microsoft articles were getting an unfair shake due to flagging; I truly believe that people should upvote for what they want to talk about and ignore what they don't. That's it. This is not about attention or whether MS products are good or not. Its whether the Nokia tablet story deserved to be…

Cool. Wish I could be there :) No such stuff in the EU as far as I know :/

And yes I know; but this gives some background maybe of why people would hate MS so much. They have been stung too many times in the (recent) past to allow anything of theirs to rise to fame. I know quite a lot of (older) people who are like that for the reasons I detailed.

I upvoted the Nokia tablet story and of course it did not deserve to be thrown off. It looks like a nice product hardware wise. I noticed it too that high ranking MS stories suddenly disappear, but I noticed that with other stories (I found interesting) as well. I don't know exactly how that works here.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#348

Post by mercurial »

> So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by default?

Well. HN has a strong proportion of open-source people, and Microsoft's relationship with the open-source community has been historically poor, in no small part due to ethically-challenged decisions made by Microsoft management. I'd even argue that Microsoft has essentially lost all trust when it comes down to it. Embrace, extend, extinguish, etc. Much as Oracle's brand does not attract the best feelings here.

Though I'll point out that Microsoft Research as a distinct unit produces extremely valuable work, and that many folks talking about the bad quality of Microsoft products haven't touched Windows since the dawn of the century.

> Is it ethical to flag something because the article is related to a company you don't like, even if the source is generally reputable (theverge, engadget, ars)?

No, I wouldn't say that it is.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#349

Post by igravious »

skriticos2 wrote: post #295

I have to work with their system every day at work. I don't have a choice. I'd really like to go out of Microsoft's way, but they don't let me. I'd like to look for any workplace and be asked the first day: "which OS / software stack I prefer?" or give me a blank box to set up. But I usually just get a Windows box which I'd choose last (somewhere behind pen and paper). They do patent extortion (they make more money o…

You don't _have_ to do anything. My friend, be more confident. Learn the stuff you want to learn. Polish your CV. Look around for work that _you_ want to do. Bide your time and look around. There are alternatives.

At one point in my career in the mid-90s I decided that I had enough of working with MS technologies because of the way they abused their position of dominance and killed companies I liked like Borland and Netscape and because I learned about F/OSS and started getting into Linux. Then came the Halloween documents and that was it really. It did hurt my pocket, but you know what? Sometimes you have to act on principle. These days it is much easier to ignore Microsoft tech though it's annoying they bought Skype and poisoned Nokia. I do think that MS Research is a bunch of awesome though, those people rock.

Anyway. I'll say it again. Don't continue being unhappy in what you do. You don't _have_ to do anything. Take control of your own destiny. If you need help/advice just reply to this post. Take care.

Re: Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

#350

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tluyben2 wrote: post #347
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment. I'm attending Splash next week and Jonathan will be there, I can't wait! My post was about whether Microsoft articles were getting an unfair shake due to flagging; I truly believe that people should upvote for what they want to talk about and ignore what they don't. That's it. This is not about attention or whether MS products are good or not. Its whether the Nokia tablet story deserved to be…

Cool. Wish I could be there :) No such stuff in the EU as far as I know :/ And yes I know; but this gives some background maybe of why people would hate MS so much. They have been stung too many times in the (recent) past to allow anything of theirs to rise to fame. I know quite a lot of (older) people who are like that for the reasons I detailed. I upvoted the Nokia tablet story and of course it did not deserve to b…

I also look forward to chatting with Gilad Bracha, many of the Google PL people will be there that I don't get to see very often. EU has ECOOP (every) and PLDI (this) year, I also went this summer to a nice workshop in Leiden on language design.

I have good ideas on why people dislike Microsoft, but it baffles me that they hate it enough to play dirty in getting those stories revoked. Why would they even bother commenting on an article they weren't interested in anyways? It doesn't make sense, it begins to look like Slashdot all over again. Did microsoft cause so much trauma to them when they were children, or is this just some sort of bandwagon-based nerd rage?

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