Thank you, Microsoft
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This is the same type of thinking I get from some folks who always 'blame the politicians' for the messes democratic countries get in, without considering the voter side of things that drives the stupidity. I've worked for many orgs that stay away from the 'hottest tech' rat-wheel.. those folks tend to create better/more stable/more predictable/more profitable products, and for some orgs run by folks completely in love with that same rat-wheel (with the coincident lack of quality and chaos that results). Its easy to blame the provider, but remember that they are simply providing what their customers ask for.. in the absence of that need, things would be a tad more rational. Remember.. Microsoft can't force folks to buy things, its a two way street. Your post ignores this part of the human equation, making it, err.. less than reflective of reality.
Umm, that isn't exactly correct. Case in point, multicore processors. From a software standpoint, there is nothing lovable about multicore. Getting full performance out of multicore chips is a nightmare of multithreading. Users get nothing either, except the performance boost they've come to expect. For the chipmakers though, multicore is easy. Chipmakers couldn't make their current processes go faster because the transisters were too leaky, so they replicated older chip designs to get 2, 4, and soon 8 on a die and called that a performance increase. Otherwise they'd have to drop the price of their chips. But aggregate performance is not what we want. We want faster uniprocessor performance so we don't have to mess with multithreading. It's not what customers want. They want performance increase that works with their existing code too. But it is what chip makers want, because it's cheaper and quicker than investing in new process technology. Same thing with microsoft. We don't want a new OS every three years. But if microsoft doesn't make a new OS every three years, buyers expect the old one to get cheaper and cheaper, or at worst to not get more expensive. So there has to be a new feature. And it has to be in the OS because otherwise you could just add it onto the old one. And you have to get programmers to develop code that only runs on the new OS, to give users another reason to upgrade, so there has to be new and incompatible APIs to learn every few years. OK, it also helps that the way microsoft develops APIs, the old ones can't be extended very well. That would be dumb for another company but for microsoft, it helps them sell OS upgrades. It's very true that you don't get to buy what you want or need, you get to buy what somebody wants to sell you. And smart somebodies only want to sell you stuff that helps them out, whether it helps you or not. Sigh.
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Umm, that isn't exactly correct. Case in point, multicore processors. From a software standpoint, there is nothing lovable about multicore. Getting full performance out of multicore chips is a nightmare of multithreading. Users get nothing either, except the performance boost they've come to expect. For the chipmakers though, multicore is easy. Chipmakers couldn't make their current processes go faster because the transisters were too leaky, so they replicated older chip designs to get 2, 4, and soon 8 on a die and called that a performance increase. Otherwise they'd have to drop the price of their chips. But aggregate performance is not what we want. We want faster uniprocessor performance so we don't have to mess with multithreading. It's not what customers want. They want performance increase that works with their existing code too. But it is what chip makers want, because it's cheaper and quicker than investing in new process technology. Same thing with microsoft. We don't want a new OS every three years. But if microsoft doesn't make a new OS every three years, buyers expect the old one to get cheaper and cheaper, or at worst to not get more expensive. So there has to be a new feature. And it has to be in the OS because otherwise you could just add it onto the old one. And you have to get programmers to develop code that only runs on the new OS, to give users another reason to upgrade, so there has to be new and incompatible APIs to learn every few years. OK, it also helps that the way microsoft develops APIs, the old ones can't be extended very well. That would be dumb for another company but for microsoft, it helps them sell OS upgrades. It's very true that you don't get to buy what you want or need, you get to buy what somebody wants to sell you. And smart somebodies only want to sell you stuff that helps them out, whether it helps you or not. Sigh.
Have you actually worked for one of these companies? I have (Oracle). The decisions you assume are being made are the furthest from reality I can think of. All the API/product oriented decisions are made to meet customer needs, not manipulate the market. Believe what you wish, but after over a decade at Oracle, I can personally tell you that you don't know what you are talking about. The folks working at the large companies are feverishly trying to meet the needs of their customers. All the talk about having stuff forced down folks throats and them just accepting it is utter hogwash. If that was the case the teams I saw disbanded due to bad feature/quality wouldn't have been disbanded.
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MehGerbil wrote:
It appears that anything is possible.
Ahhhh, fresh-faced programmers always seem so impressionable and full of hope. And then...
MehGerbil wrote:
Today my boss put a print version of this article on my desk:
Reality comes crashing down on them, killing their dreams, dashing previously held assumptions and beliefs over the rocky cliffs of dispair, making them rethink their liberal view of firearms ownership, if only long wenough to "teach those bastards in Redmond a lesson the won't soon forget". Welcome to hell, young Jedi. I have ammunition older than most Microsoft tech, and it's still viable.
.45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly
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"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"The staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - J. Jystad, 2001 -
Wow a real life example exactly illustrating my point of why the original statements and lukewarm retraction were such a calamity for Silverlight. I've become convinced that in fact it's a safe platform to bet on but your situation illustrates perfectly why it could become a sort of self fulfilling prophecy in a world where perception can quickly become reality.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Sadly, its seems like perception is frequently reality.... I'm beginning to think of the 21st century as the 'century of the conspiracy theory'.. it seems to apply to all walks of life. The internet, rather than acting as a conduit for information and truth, has become an echo chamber of fear.
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Sadly, its seems like perception is frequently reality.... I'm beginning to think of the 21st century as the 'century of the conspiracy theory'.. it seems to apply to all walks of life. The internet, rather than acting as a conduit for information and truth, has become an echo chamber of fear.
Don't you think that's a wee bit pessimistic. It's the same internet that can allow a gay person in rural Mississippi to access support groups that can help them anonymously and privately get counseling they need. It's the same internet that can help an auto worker in Detroit who lost their job years ago keep their house by selling hand made items online. It's the same internet that can and often does feature thousands operating out of complete selflessness to debunk false information. I think it just depends on your point of view.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Don't you think that's a wee bit pessimistic. It's the same internet that can allow a gay person in rural Mississippi to access support groups that can help them anonymously and privately get counseling they need. It's the same internet that can help an auto worker in Detroit who lost their job years ago keep their house by selling hand made items online. It's the same internet that can and often does feature thousands operating out of complete selflessness to debunk false information. I think it just depends on your point of view.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I didn't say it isn't used for good.. you are correct.. it certainly is! You are missing my point.. its acting as a magnifier for these types of things. There have always been conspiracy theorists amongst us (read history and you'll see it).. but the raw incidence of it has gone up considerably.. And when it went up coincided with the explosion of the internet. Those amongst us who are easily fooled have access to google! Wikipedia is a microcosm of the greater effect.. I've been reading history for decades.. so I know how to tell good stuff from trash.. and the pure history on Wikipedia is NOT trash! Just an excellent reference source :) But.. There are pages on wikipedia that are subject to edit wars because of some popular cause/political position/ideology/belief which have as much relationship to truth as I have to the Pope. The internet taken as a whole seems very similar to me.. and those folks that are easily fooled..
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I can't say I feel very sorry for Silverlight developers right now. They have staked their livelihood on a single company's whims, a company mind you that has a storied history of changing its mind whenever it pleases. "Oh wow, Win32! Time to-" "Err, .NET is in now? Well OK, let's-" "Oh, WPF? I guess that makes since with Vista-" "Silverlight? Really?!" Just to give some examples of how spastic their desktop development toolchain has been. You may as well buck up and learn HTML/JavaScript because that stuff is proven, platform/company-agnostic, and is only going to grow in the future. Now I'm also a bit of an open web app zealot but I wasn't always that way. I still use Windows and I've always loved C#'s syntax and features - I just wouldn't stake my job on them given the choice.
Did you miss the fact that much of .NET is a wrapper round Win32? And that you still have direct access if you want? Not only does Win32 still live, it still lives in .NET! .NET is there to help insulate against change.. whether that is a successful goal will be judged 10 years from now, but I CAN tell you that .NET speeds things up considerably from the old Win32 days. Similar problems today written in .NET take me 1/3rd of the time than they did in the mid 90s. And those days where a HUGE change from when I was coding embedded stuff in Z80 and 6502 in the mid 80s.
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richard_k wrote:
Your post ignores this part of the human equation, making it, err.. less than reflective of reality.
Indeed! Which begs the question, did someone ask for a platform specific browser package like Silverlight? IIRC, people have been bemoaning the conflicting support of HTML/Javascript in different browsers, wishing for that companies like Microsoft adhered to standards, and that standards addressed real world needs. So how does Silverlight fit this bill? I'm terribly cynical. After watching the PDC presentation on F#, I was left shaking my head, my god, they are REALLY talented at taking a technology and twisting it to promote their own agenda (Azure, cloud computing, etc) while hiding that under something we all theoretically want: access to lots of information and a good way of filtering that information. How they twist F# into a tool to accomplish their agenda (making money for themselves and information providers) while convincing us that F# is THE technology to use for interacting with that information, man, that's truly an accomplishment. Marc
Well, as someone who builds enterprise browser-deployed apps we love it. The pain we suffered through previously fiddling with ASP.NET apps to get them to run on two or three different browsers, and even then they looked like crap. Flash was never up to the job. I still can't understand the carry on. All because one guy feels the need to use ten words where one will do. His boss replied to his attempted clarification, and the boss's response was pretty clear. Silverlight is not dead, and will be a core platform. HTML5 is supported for cross-platform purposes (they're never going to built Silverlight for all the possible devices out there - phones, thin clients, whatever) and they're going to do both properly. I used to hate Microsoft's development tools, but things have changed in the last 5 years. There is a reason Borland declined .. many of their diehards, like us, went over to Microsoft. I personally am a big .NET fan .. a consistent managed environment from little devices, through CE and all the way up to Enterprise class apps.
I hate signatures, so I'm not going to add one. See?
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Have you actually worked for one of these companies? I have (Oracle). The decisions you assume are being made are the furthest from reality I can think of. All the API/product oriented decisions are made to meet customer needs, not manipulate the market. Believe what you wish, but after over a decade at Oracle, I can personally tell you that you don't know what you are talking about. The folks working at the large companies are feverishly trying to meet the needs of their customers. All the talk about having stuff forced down folks throats and them just accepting it is utter hogwash. If that was the case the teams I saw disbanded due to bad feature/quality wouldn't have been disbanded.
So, buying up MySQL and then making it more expensive was done strictly to meet customers' needs, right? No, clearly this move was made to remove a successful low-cost alternative. The market responded clearly too, warming up the Postgress open source project. So don't try to tell me this was about meeting customer needs. Customers needed an inexpensive, reliable database, and top transaction rate was not the most important thing to them. Customers *wanted* MySQL. Oracle *wanted* customers to pay more (to Oracle) for any choice they made. Yes, I've worked for big companies. And yes, on individual projects, the design teams work hard to meet customer needs. But at the strategic level, where projects are selected, you may rest assured that firms consider lock-in, weakening or eliminating competition, maximizing profit, and all those other things that run counter to customer needs. Maybe I should ask if *you* work for one of those companies, because clearly you have not been involved in any strategic level interactions.
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About two weeks ago I suggested to my boss that we move all new development over to WPF/Silverlight. I purchased books and installed VS2010 along with the .NET 4 Framework. I've been working on learning the basics of Silverlight over the past two weeks and so far I love the technology. It appears that anything is possible. Today my boss put a print version of this article on my desk: http://www.infoworld.com/t/html5/microsoft-surrenders-silverlight-html5-cross-platform-front-654 Given the clarifications Microsoft has made so far I think the article is ignorant. Irresponsible reporting aside, none of this changes that fact I've been put in a less than ideal situation. Part of the problem is that the life cycle on so many products is getting to be ridiculous. New technologies/methodologies arise quickly, enjoy 15 minutes of fame, and then disappear. My view on this is best illustrated by my actions: I waited until Silverlight 4 to even look at the technology. WPF and Silverlight required a huge investment of time to master. The time involved makes learning "the hottest" every 18 months a foolish waste of time. I don't want VS 2012. I don't want Silverlight 5. I don't want HTML 5. I want a standard IDE that I can use long enough to master and enjoy without three new versions of a platform being introduced while I've yet to complete a project in the original. If they'd slow down a bit and allow a user base to develop maybe they'd enjoy more success. A development life cycle that seems to be driven more by panic than need will destroy adoption. I realize thing are competative, but if the development community is contantly playing catch up I cannot help but feel many of them will get tired and go someplace less dynamic. Where I work we have a 30+ year old mainframe that still does it's job. While we'll never get that from Microsoft I'd settle for something that lasts 5 years.
I couldn't agree more with EVERYTHING you've said. - I waited till Silverlight v4 before even looking at it, "typical I'll wait till SP 1 thinking" - I dont want HTML 5 either, personally I'm sick of HTML!!! I want to build platform neutral RIA's that renders the same on every browser. - Mainframes at my work are 30+ yrs old too= and they aint going anywhere
While we'll never get that from Microsoft I'd settle for something that lasts 5 years.
Move to Mono and host on apache. Like Joel On Software points out http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PickingShipDate.html[^]
For Systems With Millions of Customers and Millions of Integration Points, Prefer Rare Releases. You can do it like Apache: one release at the beginning of the Internet Bubble, and one release at the end. Perfect.