Likely to be a slightly heated thread, hence the back room, about Vista and Win7.
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
fat_boy wrote:
given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering?
You could also argue that "if it works and it ain't broke then why repair/fix it". Also, India has a very large population where, in many regions/provinces, abject poverty is a living reality. Education is so expensive that those in this poverty just can not afford school let alone higher education. So innovation may occur but at a very much slower pace. The caste system also plays a big role. There really is no single reason that explains their way of life.
fat_boy wrote:
And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did?
Microsoft, like so many other multi-nationals, will take advantage of lower costs wherever that may be. Although that sometimes can mean a reduction, of sorts, in perceived and actual quality, it is a reflection of the business risk model, and is an acceptable risk. EU member countries and the United States have a certain reputation for excellence, but this excellence comes at a price, and sometimes the cost of excellence is a price that can not be justified.
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
I would say that you are basing your opinions on false premises. India has got plenty of innovative companies that produce modern cars (Tata, Mahendra ), motorcycles (Hero, Puch, Bajaj ) etc and these cars are very competitively priced, and the quality is just as good as if it came from anywhere else. I don't know where you live, but here in Southern Africa we get a lot of Indian goods, and I would compare them favorably with most other compettitors. The companies you refer to produce the same items they have done for the last 30 - 40 years because they sell in the market that they were intended, not because there is no alternative.
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Christian Graus wrote:
I don't think that an ability to be good or bad at anything is a racial characteristic
So why cant the Japanese style a car properly? They are all uniformly ugly pigs. Every single one. Just compare them to a Peugeot 306 for example, and I am intentionally taking a basic car, but the lines on it, the shape of it, is really very nicely thought out. Nissan Micra? A dogs dinner. But here is the thing. Evoloution. Why hasnt India, when given the design for a Bullet 350, evolved the design over the decades, and actually produced somehting like a modern motorbike? It has to be something cultural/social that stops them doing what to us is natural.
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
fat_boy wrote:
But here is the thing. Evoloution. Why hasnt India, when given the design for a Bullet 350, evolved the design over the decades, and actually produced somehting like a modern motorbike?
Possibly because reliability and the country-wide availability of spares and maintenance were more important than innovation? Possibly because the economy was in the strangle hold of a socialist government? Have you asked an Indian?
Bob Emmett CSS: I don't intend to be a technical writing, I intend to be a software engineer.
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
fat_boy wrote:
And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did?
Think of it this way, most companies that offshore something don't send it to a group of competent and reasonably priced people in the new location, they're going for the absolute cheapest they can get. There are talented engineers from India, I've met a few while I was in school here at the US, but when push comes to shove they aren't going to work for the kind of money people are looking to pay when they offshore something. Just about all of the good ones were pretty focused on finding a job here rather than going back. As for style, you need to have a culture to have style, and the US is lacking in any culture really worth mentioning, at least at a national level.
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
I was watching Longhorn development for a while. It wasn't the programmer's fault that longhorn morphed into the abomination known as Vista. This was their structure...
V1 / | \\A1 A2 A3
/ | \
01 02 03 04 05 06
| | | | | |
B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6
| | | | | |
D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6Development teams are the D area. Let's say that D1 made a change to the start menu to add a shut down change it would go to B1. B1 would test it against their current build and see if it messed anything up. If it was good, they sent it to 01 which was merged with 02 in their current form and checked. This was approved by A1 and merged with A2 and A3 to become the new V1 This new version was then sent down to be used in 01,02,03,04,05,06. The entire process took months so the "true" version of Vista (V1) was literally a good 3 to 5 version behind what people were working on in B1-6 This seems to be okay. Except while that was happening, D4 happened to have a change to make a new way to shut down the machine... They added it. No one knew D1 had already done this. Their version was months behind the top version because it hadn't trickled down and was still being tested. So now D4 sees this new item show up that effectively invalidated a month or more of their time, and they left it in and moved on because some other stuff they made needed their new code anyway. And to top it off, now the code had to deal with both these ways to shut down, but people assumed theirs was the only way and both people had done code that worked well with just their shut down version. So now things got buggy when someone tried to do something using the other's function. (And I think this was actually one of the issues I heard about, look to see how many ways you can shut down vista using a menu) The communication was pretty bad and this was never fixed even after they realized it. The Silos they mention here...[^] It doesn't matter where your engineers are from, if none know what the other is doing it is going to suck.
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
NY Times story this morning - Indian Students Wield Tests for College Spots[^]. 'Higher education presents a problem of quantity and quality. Even as India’s top students are world class, most Indian universities are not, with roughly two-thirds of colleges and universities rated below standard.' ... 'Domestic critics say the emphasis on standardized exams has overly focused Indian education on rote drilling and test-focused exercises.' And so you have a system pumping out tens of thousands of poorly educated graduates who think they're world-class software engineers. You don't need a crystal ball to see the impact this will have on software quality. Outsourcing is invariably an unmitigated disaster, and Vista is just one (albeit a prominent one) example.
L u n a t i c F r i n g e
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NY Times story this morning - Indian Students Wield Tests for College Spots[^]. 'Higher education presents a problem of quantity and quality. Even as India’s top students are world class, most Indian universities are not, with roughly two-thirds of colleges and universities rated below standard.' ... 'Domestic critics say the emphasis on standardized exams has overly focused Indian education on rote drilling and test-focused exercises.' And so you have a system pumping out tens of thousands of poorly educated graduates who think they're world-class software engineers. You don't need a crystal ball to see the impact this will have on software quality. Outsourcing is invariably an unmitigated disaster, and Vista is just one (albeit a prominent one) example.
L u n a t i c F r i n g e
It's not just this, cheating (especially plagarism) is endemic in some parts of the world, and people tend to get to university on a "I can buy my way in" strategy. The latter point, leads to the attitude, I've payed my way in, now I expect to graduate. It would be a good academic study to try and work out how many forum posts are people just trying to get their coursework done.
Dalek Dave: There are many words that some find offensive, Homosexuality, Alcoholism, Religion, Visual Basic, Manchester United, Butter. Pete o'Hanlon: If it wasn't insulting tools, I'd say you were dumber than a bag of spanners.
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It's not just this, cheating (especially plagarism) is endemic in some parts of the world, and people tend to get to university on a "I can buy my way in" strategy. The latter point, leads to the attitude, I've payed my way in, now I expect to graduate. It would be a good academic study to try and work out how many forum posts are people just trying to get their coursework done.
Dalek Dave: There are many words that some find offensive, Homosexuality, Alcoholism, Religion, Visual Basic, Manchester United, Butter. Pete o'Hanlon: If it wasn't insulting tools, I'd say you were dumber than a bag of spanners.
Keith Barrow wrote:
It's not just this, cheating (especially plagarism) is endemic in some parts of the world, and people tend to get to university on a "I can buy my way in" strategy. The latter point, leads to the attitude, I've payed my way in, now I expect to graduate.
Oh, I know! What other explanation could there be for the prevalence of questions of the ilk (if I may paraphrase) - 'I'm a complete moron who is unable to grasp the simplest of programming concepts. I'm also unable to form a proper question. Plz post code to meet this obvious homework requirement. Will pay.' No interest in the subject; no aptitude for it, but every expectation that the system will support this bullshit, and I can only assume that they think it will continue to support this bullshit after they graduate. And who knows? Their software industry as a whole must indeed function in this manner, at least to some degree, or the belief in it wouldn't be so evident.
L u n a t i c F r i n g e
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Keith Barrow wrote:
It's not just this, cheating (especially plagarism) is endemic in some parts of the world, and people tend to get to university on a "I can buy my way in" strategy. The latter point, leads to the attitude, I've payed my way in, now I expect to graduate.
Oh, I know! What other explanation could there be for the prevalence of questions of the ilk (if I may paraphrase) - 'I'm a complete moron who is unable to grasp the simplest of programming concepts. I'm also unable to form a proper question. Plz post code to meet this obvious homework requirement. Will pay.' No interest in the subject; no aptitude for it, but every expectation that the system will support this bullshit, and I can only assume that they think it will continue to support this bullshit after they graduate. And who knows? Their software industry as a whole must indeed function in this manner, at least to some degree, or the belief in it wouldn't be so evident.
L u n a t i c F r i n g e
LunaticFringe wrote:
Oh, I know! What other explanation could there be for the prevalence of questions of the ilk (if I may paraphrase) - 'I'm a complete moron who is unable to grasp the simplest of programming concepts. I'm also unable to form a proper question. Plz post code to meet this obvious homework requirement. Will pay.'
when did this happen! all ive seen want it for free
Smile and the world smiles withyou, laugh and they think you are a nutter
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LunaticFringe wrote:
Oh, I know! What other explanation could there be for the prevalence of questions of the ilk (if I may paraphrase) - 'I'm a complete moron who is unable to grasp the simplest of programming concepts. I'm also unable to form a proper question. Plz post code to meet this obvious homework requirement. Will pay.'
when did this happen! all ive seen want it for free
Smile and the world smiles withyou, laugh and they think you are a nutter
It happens; frequent the C++ or Java forums long enough and you'll see it. It's not as common as requests for free, but it happens. ('Prevalence' probably wasn't the best description to use. 'Frequency', perhaps.)
L u n a t i c F r i n g e
modified on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 2:20 PM
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Christian Graus wrote:
I don't think that an ability to be good or bad at anything is a racial characteristic
So why cant the Japanese style a car properly? They are all uniformly ugly pigs. Every single one. Just compare them to a Peugeot 306 for example, and I am intentionally taking a basic car, but the lines on it, the shape of it, is really very nicely thought out. Nissan Micra? A dogs dinner. But here is the thing. Evoloution. Why hasnt India, when given the design for a Bullet 350, evolved the design over the decades, and actually produced somehting like a modern motorbike? It has to be something cultural/social that stops them doing what to us is natural.
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
you don't like Lexus? The LFA's a pretty sweet looking car.
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
When I was working for an American company, I had access to India-developed code. It looked like code from someone who just got out of college. Poor error handling, bad styling, hard-coding. Recently, I developped a BizTalk application for a company and they are happy with it. But, for cost reasons, they outsourced further develpment to Egypt. Then I received an email from the Egyptian guy to help him install Visual Studio, because not only did he screw up the BizTalk dev environment, but he was unable to repair it. Those companies who want to save money by outsourcing do business with foreign companies who also want to save money by hiring junior devs. In short, you have what you pay for.
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When I was working for an American company, I had access to India-developed code. It looked like code from someone who just got out of college. Poor error handling, bad styling, hard-coding. Recently, I developped a BizTalk application for a company and they are happy with it. But, for cost reasons, they outsourced further develpment to Egypt. Then I received an email from the Egyptian guy to help him install Visual Studio, because not only did he screw up the BizTalk dev environment, but he was unable to repair it. Those companies who want to save money by outsourcing do business with foreign companies who also want to save money by hiring junior devs. In short, you have what you pay for.
It's worse. I've spoken to several 'interns' in India where being an intern means you're not paid, you get no training, you work on paid projects and you're expected to use CP and similar sites to get your work done.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
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Christian Graus wrote:
I don't think that an ability to be good or bad at anything is a racial characteristic
So why cant the Japanese style a car properly? They are all uniformly ugly pigs. Every single one. Just compare them to a Peugeot 306 for example, and I am intentionally taking a basic car, but the lines on it, the shape of it, is really very nicely thought out. Nissan Micra? A dogs dinner. But here is the thing. Evoloution. Why hasnt India, when given the design for a Bullet 350, evolved the design over the decades, and actually produced somehting like a modern motorbike? It has to be something cultural/social that stops them doing what to us is natural.
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription
fat_boy wrote:
So why cant the Japanese style a car properly? They are all uniformly ugly pigs. Every single one. Just compare them to a Peugeot 306 for example,
Regardless of looks the only people stupid enough to buy French cars are the French and the global "Wankers who are not French but crap on endlessly about France and everything that is French and sound like complete wankers when they attempt to speak French club". I suspect you're a founding member. You can pick them easily when you hear things like... "oh this blue pen reminds me of the blue cheese we had in *small french village on one has heard of*" "You have a sore foot? that reminds me of last year when we were skiing in France" "We should sell nuclear material to tin pot dictators like France does" "My Peugeot is at the mechanic again"
modified on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:06 PM
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fat_boy wrote:
So why cant the Japanese style a car properly? They are all uniformly ugly pigs. Every single one. Just compare them to a Peugeot 306 for example,
Regardless of looks the only people stupid enough to buy French cars are the French and the global "Wankers who are not French but crap on endlessly about France and everything that is French and sound like complete wankers when they attempt to speak French club". I suspect you're a founding member. You can pick them easily when you hear things like... "oh this blue pen reminds me of the blue cheese we had in *small french village on one has heard of*" "You have a sore foot? that reminds me of last year when we were skiing in France" "We should sell nuclear material to tin pot dictators like France does" "My Peugeot is at the mechanic again"
modified on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:06 PM
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So, when I was out at Microsofts dev center in Hyderabad I saw BIG posters showing all the Indians who developed Vista. Chatting to a ex Microsoft employee, who now works for the firm I am currently contracting for, I learned that for Win7 Microsoft used all the old XP developers from the US. Now as we all know, to our cost and persponal pain, Vista was a disaster. Slow, unstable, buggy as hell, and so fundamentally bad no one wanted it. Dell and GAteway said to Microsoft that all the corporates were still asking for XP and so they had to keep on supporting it. As for Win7 as we all know it is fast and stable. OK the GUI sucks IMO< but thats a personal thing. And it REALLY sucks. If I could put the 2K GUI on it I would be happy. (Perhaps I can take the explorer.exe off 2K and give it a go...) So, and here is the point of this thread, given the state of some of Indias other Engineering products, Austin Ambassador cars and Enfield Bullet motorbikes, that are both currently made in India, and date from British designs in the 50s and 30s respectively, which havent been modernised at all, is India capable of good, inovative engineering? And, are all the companies offshoring dev work to India shooting themselves in the foot like Microsoft did? (BTW I also chatted to a guy form ST micro who was very derogatory about a SW product they had had developed in India) Of course leading on from this is a view I have about Europe. If you want the best engineering, with cutting edge design and performance, European engineering is the best. From Hifi kit to trains its the best in the world. The US is also good, as mentioned above, with the exception of styling, which I find absent in many of their products. What is your experience of engineered products from different regions of the world and have you come to a similar view as me?
Morality is indistinguishable from social proscription