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Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

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Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#51

Post by hga »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #50
pixl97 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Buying and updating an MS product shouldn't be a gamble. They're supposed to be the conservative and stable big brother to the industry You can tell who's young around here. In the distant past you could have put IBM or Novel in that same blank 20 years ago. It wasn't till around the release of server 2003 that anybody thought that. Next, every product is a gamble these days. If you're connected to the net, you're a…

My personal experience is that MS has been solid since Windows 2000. I have limited experience with the NT4 products but I remember those being just fine as well (i maintained two NT4 servers for my employer and used to host images for fark photoshop contests on one- shh). Exchange has been SUPER solid. Its only 2010/2013 that we're seeing so many issues with what should be a trivial update process. I think there's a…

NT was even more solid before then, at least after the first 3.1 version which I don't think I did more than kick the tires of. The drop in quality really started after SP1 of NT 3.51, the 3rd major version.

Didn't Exchange have problems in the early part of this century, or earlier, with its database being easy to bork and slow to restore?

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#52

Post by Silhouette »

kaeawc wrote: post #46
Silhouette wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you're working on software that actually matters, you're supposed to have some friction between the people building it and the people testing it. This is otherwise known by terms such as "independent testing" and "lack of bias". Moving fast and breaking stuff is OK if you're building a web service that doesn't really matter. If Facebook falls over, the productivity at a significant number of businesses probabl…

Software engineers should be able to test their own code. The faster they get feedback on their code and its impact to users, the better they understand the various cases and can strive for better quality. Having a separate QA team has a fairly long feedback cycle. Ideally you'd get both engineers writing tests for their code as well QA teams for products.

Software engineers should be able to test their own code.

Indeed, but there is also a good reason that professional editors have new writing proofread or even technically reviewed by people other than the original author.

Maybe there's some subtlety that I'm not picking up here about Microsoft's previous set-up and/or the model they've been moving to under Nadella's leadership. We seem to have some past and present Microsoft developers around these parts, so perhaps their comments will clarify this. But as reported, this looks to me like a retrograde step, an attempt to be more agile and fast-moving rather than something likely to improve the quality of the finished product.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#53

Post by widowlark »

api wrote: post #34

As things are going, I'm really pleased. This is the first time I've been excited about Microsoft since the middle 1990s.

Agreed. I feel for the first time that Microsoft is bringing something unique and even innovative to the tech industry

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#54

Post by widowlark »

joshuapants wrote: post #45
untog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java runs on Windows, but not Windows Phone, which would be the main target of Android app functionality.

Windows Phone isn't a distinct product anymore with the launch of Windows 10, is it?

No, with Windows 10 they should have this ability

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#55

Post by widowlark »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #48
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #2

The obvious thing left out is that Nadella's second year involves the release of Windows 10.

Exactly. The second year is going to be a sales high just because of Windows 10, they'd have to try pretty hard to mess that up.

Or re-release windows 8... Sales weren't so high on that release

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#56

Post by michaelcampbell »

weavie wrote: post #47
joycey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not eliminating testing. This was really bad wording. When I interviewed in Redmond with Microsoft, I was told that Microsoft used to hire SDE's (software development engineers) and SDET's (software development engineers in testing) as two distinct positions. Now, if you are hired as a "software engineer", you are responsible for writing software as well as writing tests. This was done to decrease friction b…

A developer can test their own code, but they will only test it through the paths that they are aware of and thus coded for. An independent tester needs to be there to explore different avenues and try things that a developer wouldn't have thought of. Developers do think very differently to users.

Yes, but that doesn't mean testers shouldn't also be developers.

Automation tests are as much code as the code they're testing.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#57

Post by deciplex »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #48
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #2

The obvious thing left out is that Nadella's second year involves the release of Windows 10.

Exactly. The second year is going to be a sales high just because of Windows 10, they'd have to try pretty hard to mess that up.

> they'd have to try pretty hard to mess that up

I agree, but I also think Microsoft stands ready to meet that challenge, if recent history is anything to go by.

Re: Why Nadella's Second Year as Microsoft CEO Will Be a Lot Harder

#58

Post by robwilliams »

weavie wrote: post #4

"He has changed the way engineering teams are structured, largely eliminating testers to speed software releases,... " What could possibly go wrong? Ok.. the sentence continues : "and adding data scientists and designers to the engineering teams to ensure all features are informed by rigorous testing and good design principles. " I don't quite understand, how can data scientists help to catch bugs? Automated testing?

Microsoft employee here.

Microsoft somewhat recently implemented "Unified Engineering" company-wide, combining developers and testers.

I can assure you that testing is still done extensively.

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