Why do programmers hate Microsoft?

Why do programmers hate Microsoft so much? A search finds hundreds of anti-Microsoft rants in source code comments, ranging from personal attacks on Bill Gates to frustration with supposedly not following standards and putting out buggy, insecure code.

Why do programmers hate Microsoft?
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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. A lot of people dream of starting a business one day (especially around here), and when a company was built by crushing start-ups/small businesses in illegitimate ways, people aren't going to be too happy about that.

Plus, they have that little paperclip thing that pops up whenever you ask for help...

I don't think Microsoft executives are losing sleep over "Microsoft Hatred" as much as they are losing sleep over "Microsoft Irrelevance". How many college students know how to program on Win32? How many even know what Win32 is? In 10 years, these college students will be the senior developers at their respective companies.

Certainly, any good engineer will choose the best tool for the job. But I find it unlikely that those that know little of MS technology will promote those tools later in their careers.

/* What is Microsoft? */

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 set out to destroy Netscape. It is funny how history chooses the more salacious of headlines, easy to forget that IE4 was a breakthrough browser that ate Navigator's lunch heads up. Certainly the OS integration made a big difference but this picture of an evil lurking monster hoisting terrible code and practices upon us is and never was true.

The other thing I think which happens is group opinions get formed. Microsoft is strongest in the enterprise, which is more apt to say - big businesses. Big business and the entreprenuerial hacker/dev dont get along, bigbiz in large part wants and fosters a need for programmers. Their hierarchical and red tape laden structure destroys creative spirit so what you get is lots of people who accept this, learn within that framework and dont really develop beyond the skills needed for their job. They latch onto Access and VB and do it badly because no one with great skills taught them any better and their bosses just need X to work and performance or elegance dont matter at all. This mindset gets associated with Microsoft people and the non-MSFT crowd begins to think anyone who does Microsoft work is some mindless noob with no skills.

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.

Web developers don't hate Microsoft because they destroyed Netscape, they hate Microsoft because their proprietary standards and er...unqiue take on w3 standards has and continues to waste a measurable percentages of people's lives and retard the progress of the web.