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Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine.
What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything?
It boggles my mind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you misunderstand- game engines are complex beasts and visual studio and/or .Net (in any of its incarnations) have the best debugging workflow I've seen. Typescript is also Microsoft. So is ONNX.
"I think you misunderstand- game engines are complex beasts and visual studio and/or .Net (in any of its incarnations) have the best debugging workflow I've seen." I think you misunderstand: the market, ie the number of people who actually care about developing game engines, is tiny. How many games developers do you know as a subset of the people you know of? OP only managed to find a niche product area for MS to shi…
No one is arguing that developing game engines specifically is common.
I still find it hard to believe that so many people and companies are prepared to use Microsoft's online/cloud services. Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine. What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything? It boggles my mind.
If you had a restaurant, would you source your produce from your trusty friend who grows vegetables as a hobby or from an established mega-farming-company?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I skimmed the article too, but didn’t see much on Trump’s policies directly impacting Microsoft. From what I gather, the bigger challenges for businesses are more about the tech ecosystem Microsoft has built. It's hard to just swap out core services like AD without huge disruptions.
> Yeah, I skimmed the article too, but didn’t see much on Trump’s policies directly impacting Microsoft. The first paragraph links to an article about how the International Criminal Court ’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email. This has caused some governments to worry. What if MS was ordered to block access to their software because the US wanted to apply pressure?
Yeah, I can see how events like that raise real concerns for foreign governments relying on US-based infrastructure. Even if Microsoft isn’t directly doing anything aggressive, the potential for state pressure is enough to make countries want more control over their tech stack
I still find it hard to believe that so many people and companies are prepared to use Microsoft's online/cloud services. Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine. What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything? It boggles my mind.
Most companies enter into a contract with Microsoft. That is infinitely better than using a 2 person startup that runs out of a garage. Contracts come with strict terms of service, SLAs, service expectations and such. If you had a restaurant, would you source your produce from your trusty friend who grows vegetables as a hobby or from an established mega-farming-company?
I still find it hard to believe that so many people and companies are prepared to use Microsoft's online/cloud services. Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine. What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything? It boggles my mind.
There's a pretty significant lower bound of size to where you can reasonably have multiple points of failure. And like oh well if you use this stack you could theoretically move at any time isn't really the same thing as being multi-homed. I've been at places where this has been a concern of the leadership but the economics of it have never really worked out compared to spending your time working on anything else related to the business.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To paint a picture: I’ve worked with Microsoft technologies almost exclusively for decades but recently I was forced to pick up some Node.js, Docker, and Linux tooling for a specific app. I can’t express in words what a giant step backwards it is from ASP.NET and Visual Studio. It’s like bashing things with open source rocks after working in a rocket manufacturing facility festooned with Kuka robots. It’s just… end-t…
I have a lot of respect for organizations that get a lot done with Microsoft technologies. I think your perspective could be thought of as the benefits of vertical integration and vendor lock in. These do help people get things done! In the academic and open source world those things are fought against because you don't want to be at the mercy of the software developer in the context of certain rights. I think for ev…
The downside is that this produces a microcosm of obscure technologies that can have... strange effects on industry. Some FAANG-like companies have a habit of hiring only recent graduates, so their entire staff is convinced that what they saw at their University is how everybody else does things.
It leads to Silicon Valley clique that has a fantastically distorted perspective of the rest of the world.
Some comments I've seen here on HN are downright hilarious to anyone from the "rest of the world", such as:
"Does anyone still use Windows Server!?" -- yes, at least 60% of all deployed servers world wide, and over 80% in many industries.
"Supports all popular directory servers such as OpenLDAP, ApacheDS, Kopano, ..." -- hello!? Active Directory! Have you heard of it!? It's something like 95% of all deployed LDAP deployments no matter how you count it! The other 5% is Oracle Directory and/or Novell eDirectory and then all of the rest put together is a rounding error.
I still find it hard to believe that so many people and companies are prepared to use Microsoft's online/cloud services. Not ony is this a single point of failure but it's one they've no control over whatsoever. Same goes for Google/Youtube etc. It's as risky as flying a passenger jet with only one engine. What are they thinking, why are they prepared to risk everything? It boggles my mind.
Most companies enter into a contract with Microsoft. That is infinitely better than using a 2 person startup that runs out of a garage. Contracts come with strict terms of service, SLAs, service expectations and such. If you had a restaurant, would you source your produce from your trusty friend who grows vegetables as a hobby or from an established mega-farming-company?
Nor would I ever use software that lives on a remote server that I've no direct control over.
Let's hope Trump does more blocking, it's the only way to wake up a lazy sleepy world.
BTW, isn't 'infinitely' somewhat of an exaggeration?
The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones. Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it. There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situation…
My take is that Microsoft consistently makes bad things and makes "good" things into "bad" things; so, I don't have much expectation or faith that anything that I currently think is "good" will stay that way.