21–30 of 57 posts
I'm not on the Windows platform and have no need to move there, but it's good to see some innovation coming from them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
M$? What decade are we in?
the one where non-Microsoft users (or maybe rather, Microsft-haters) still want to express how they feel about Microsoft in every single sentence they use on the subject.. It's been around for a long time, and probably will still be used for a long time. Just ignore it and hope they eventually get over their slightly childish behaviour.
Looks nice. The problem with M$ is that over the years they've always offered simple tools for creating software, and then abandoning it somewhere along the way. Access is a great example.
Access is a horrible example (they still sell it, and it still works), and you have so many better ones to choose from. WinForms, Silverlight, and..., hmm that's all that really come to mind. Maybe FoxPro, but MSFT didn't create it and everyone expected them to kill it when they bought it (they kept it around for over ten years after). And "M$"? Am I going to have to go find the link to that Penny Arcade cartoon?
XNA, WinRT, ...
I found this page most incomprehensible, so I looked around. A reasonable summary of what they're trying to build here is "HyperCard for the internet", which is actually a pretty cool idea. This article had the best short summary in my opinion: http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5227140/microsoft-project...
That sounds very much like what the VPRI people have been doing all along.
Remember: From our perspective, MS is a bunch of evil-empire joykills: lock-in, licensing, lucifier. But for most businesspeople, especially the non-startup bootstrappers, they are promethean, stealing fire from the mandarins of software engineering and bestowing it on worthy dreamers. FOSS is hard; cross-platform is hard; Siena is easy.
Personal context: I flinch instinctively when I see or hear MS' products. However, I'm responsible for ops at my job and I know damned well that there are several generations of small businesses for whom 'business management' is spelled 'A-C-C-E-S-S'. You can criticize this, you can complain about this, you can pay a bunch of bright young things to rewrite it Node or whatever, but you are never going to convince the businessowner that Access is a bad idea.
That same businessowner started one day in his garage with an empty Access database and remembers both it and those days with justified fondness. He's still just getting over not being able to 'improve' your schema on his laptop on lunch break so it 'makes more sense'.
I predict in ten years there will be a huge market for consultants getting businessses OFF this thing. But there will also be a huge pool of new businesses it helped create, so on balance, let me be the first to say: Hello World, Siena, and welcome.
This product is aimed at fledgling entrepreneurs with an interest in accruing the benefits of technology, but without the expertise or in-house resources to leverage the FOSS chain. Remember: From our perspective, MS is a bunch of evil-empire joykills: lock-in, licensing, lucifier. But for most businesspeople, especially the non-startup bootstrappers, they are promethean, stealing fire from the mandarins of software…
It's quite powerful even without the using the function reference, because common actions have dedicated UI, and all fields have great autocomplete. I also realized that a modern HyperCard is really just all I wanted, and it seems that this may be it.
That said, it really lacks on the documentation side. The function reference is a start, but without understanding the concepts, getting something real to work feels a little impossible. (Example: `Remove` removes an "item", but how is an "item" identified? Does a screen have a "current item"? How does this work?)
Still, a very nice start. I hope this gets better fast and then I'll want to be a power user.
I also hope they won't start charging Access-style prices for it.
This product is aimed at fledgling entrepreneurs with an interest in accruing the benefits of technology, but without the expertise or in-house resources to leverage the FOSS chain. Remember: From our perspective, MS is a bunch of evil-empire joykills: lock-in, licensing, lucifier. But for most businesspeople, especially the non-startup bootstrappers, they are promethean, stealing fire from the mandarins of software…
Looks nice. The problem with M$ is that over the years they've always offered simple tools for creating software, and then abandoning it somewhere along the way. Access is a great example.
I don't know why you were voted down. Had I invested heavily in learning Silverlight a couple of years ago, I would find myself with my thumb squarely secured up my own ass. I can't imagine spending so much time and effort learning how to use a framework only to have it discontinued in it's infancy. Silverlight dying was a good thing and ultimately it's a win for everybody as HTML is more open, but still - I feel for…
Looks nice. The problem with M$ is that over the years they've always offered simple tools for creating software, and then abandoning it somewhere along the way. Access is a great example.
I don't know why you were voted down. Had I invested heavily in learning Silverlight a couple of years ago, I would find myself with my thumb squarely secured up my own ass. I can't imagine spending so much time and effort learning how to use a framework only to have it discontinued in it's infancy. Silverlight dying was a good thing and ultimately it's a win for everybody as HTML is more open, but still - I feel for…
Because even if he was right, using the "M$" abbreviation is bad form when other people are trying to have meaningful conversations.