> We use PCs, Macs, Figma, Sketch, GitHub, JavaScript, ZEIT, and other modern tools to design, prototype, and build the future of software development.
This is some incredible self-awareness. I've encountered more than a few people who casually brush off applying to Microsoft because they prefer developing on unix machines.
For the outside it still feels like unix is seen as a necessary evil.
It will be used extensively, devs are welcome and MS platform need to be compatible at the lowest level. But at every term ther is this tingling feeling of “you know we would have preferes if everyone was on windows and coded on VisualCode for .Net”
I think MS changed a lot in the last decades, but it still doesn’t feel like the best place to work in for people who fundamentally don’t care about windows ecosystem. Is this undue prejudice nowadays ?
The Mac vs PC wars seems to have mostly passed. If not back when Gates actually invested in Apple when Jobs came back as CEO, then certainly when desktops lost their primacy among devices and growth stagnated. It also became clear that market shares would remain roughly stable.
MS earns its money selling 7-digit support contracts for databases and other enterprisy products. More and more, they will go the way of IBM and shift to services.
To remain invested in some sort of petty tribalism proscribing individual choices in tools would just be embarrassing at this point.
It may also be harmful, causing its workforce not to notice good ideas first appearing on other platforms, scaring away people not willing to work with (in their view) inferior tools, and risking to end up with a shortage of expertise when they decide to expand on non-windows platforms.
I've previously worked for a company bought by Microsoft in the UK, and we (and all the MS employees I met) used Macs. The modern Microsoft goes to where the customers are. Yes, there was an old-guard that was very windows-centric, but all the new people and energy weren't dogmatic
Uhhh, they've changed a lot. They actively support competing platforms, releasing products for Android, iOS, Mac OS and Linux. They support Ubuntu on Windows in terminal, they regularly contribute to open source from React Native to Electron. Edge is a huge improvement over IE and it fully embraces web standards. Microsoft has even merged their web docs with Mozilla. They support .NET on all platforms.
If they honestly released a top notch version of Office for Linux would you, in 2018 where most have switched to Google Docs or other web based office tools actually use it?
I very much doubt it. I feel you're just reeling these things off as some burden of work you want them to toil away at as a debt you expect them to pay to the Linux community.
99% of the people I know use MS Office. Maybe 20% use google Docs but not as their main office suite.
If they did release Office for Linux, I'd use it for work, since everyone uses it there.
> I feel you're just reeling these things off as some burden of work you want them to toil away at as a debt you expect them to pay to the Linux community.
I don't think they owe anyone anything. I'm just saying if they claim to love open source or Linux, then they need to prove it.
So the online version of Office 365 and the desktop version and the mobile apps will share a lot of the same code. This would also make it far easier to deliver desktop apps for Linux should they decide it's worth it.
They've also worked together with Linux projects to make the Windows Subsystem for Linux a thing (so you can now actually "install Ubuntu" from the Windows app store).
The vendor lock-in company you're thinking of is now called Apple, not Microsoft.
Exactly. Everything that "new Microsoft" does right is targeted squarely at developers. I'll judge Microsoft by how it treats the rest of the world: dark patterns to accelerate Windows 10 adoption, using consumers as beta testers, protecting their Office monopoly above all else.
It's mainly only developers that use Linux. Using consumers as beta testers? Who doesn't do that or something to that effect these days? "Move fast and break things" ship fast, get feedback, and iterate, etc. These are all mantras of agile, startup culture. Meanwhile, I'm not sure I see this with their latest products at all.
I think there's a difference between shipping untested changes on an ad-backed cat picture web app, and selling a $99+ operating system that is essentially a beta version:
I thought that this article was overly pessimistic until Microsoft's rings of "insiders" didn't catch the fact that the Windows 1803 update broke machines with pretty common Intel and Toshiba SSDs.
All of this wouldn't bother me at all if it weren't for the MS Office monopoly that forced everyone from schoolchildren to public servants to deal with this crap. I want nothing to do with keeping this business running.
That depends on what you mean by "what Apple is doing".
I'm not a fan of Apple either, but at least they are not hypocrites.
If MS stopped pretending that they <3 Linux. (see my other comments)
And if they stopped pretending that they are this new friendly open company. Forcing upgrades to win10 and forced telemetry that is a pain in the ass to turn of permanently, is not at all open or user friendly. What a privacy nightmare.
If they did just that, then at least I wouldn't hate them for being such hypocritical assholes. They'd just be a company whose products I don't like.
For example: a (para)-VM that's capable of running off Linux filesystem or subvolume (so you don't need to allocate separate partition or disk image for that), capable of running all the win32 binaries, and seamlessly integrating into Linux desktop and infrastructure (i.e. non AD-Kerberos would be great).
I was originally going to say that they should open source those. But then I changed my mind to just releasing it on multiple platforms as a start. And so Windows doesn't make sense there. I should have proof read that better. Thanks for pointing it out.
They have spend decades indoctrinating their users, that command line is baaad... and now it is a good thing, that they support linux binaries in windows command line?
I will believe they changed, when they release their crown jewels (especially Office) for Linux as a first-class release (i.e. not ala IE for Solaris or WMP for HPUX).
They have changed for worst. When I upgraded my PC recently my retail Windows deactivated and it took me few days of talking to "support" to re-activate it. They were treating me like a potential thief and I had to even show them invoices that I have indeed purchased new motherboard.
Another one - I purchased Visual Studio 2015 just before they released 2017. They didn't want to give me a refund nor upgrade deal.
Oh and you cannot turn off spying in their Windows 10.
they have definitely changed, they have re-aligned themselves with what matter today. There earnings has just surpassed $100 billions which is the direct effect of their re prioritizing the product lines and philosophy. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/19/microsoft...
Because they keep churning out garbage. And the only "good" stuff they do make, they don't open source, or even release it on multiple platforms.
Not to mention the fact that they are extremely user hostile. Putting ads in a paid for OS? And mining private data. If their OS was free I'd at least say they had an excuse to do that.
> Because they keep churning out garbage. And the only "good" stuff they do make, they don't open source, or even release it on multiple platforms.
.NET Core runs on Mac, Windows and Linux and is BSD licensed, and totally not all garbage (though I'm guessing you will disagree with me here with no backing facts because what defines garbage is mostly opinionated views). VS Code is the same scenario. Wow it astounds me the lack of understanding coming from you.
Yes I will concede that .net is not garbage. I have written code with it before and it's pretty average. It doesn't really give me anything that I can't do with Java or C++ (or other programming languages)
So what I'm saying is that it doesn't really bring anything worthwhile to the table.
VS Code. Yeah, I am not at all interested in an electron based code editor. And yet again, there is nothing new or novel here. There are dozens of other code editors that are free, cross platform, and very powerful.
If they open sourced (or even released on multiple platforms) Visual Studio, then I'd take notice. Same for Office.
> Wow it astounds me the lack of understanding coming from you.
And I'm likewise astounded at all the people falling for microsoft's brainwashing PR bullshit.
> VS Code. Yeah, I am not at all interested in an electron based code editor. And yet again, there is nothing new or novel here. There are dozens of other code editors that are free, cross platform, and very powerful.
Again with the lack of understanding, Microsoft produced a new standard for editors called Language Server Protocol[0] that once implemented in an editor and for a language can be used across editors and IDEs. They are doing more contributions through VS Code than you realize.
As for Open Sourcing VS I would love that but VS Code is snappy and awesome as it is so it doesn't bother me. VS Code with the right plugins (same can be said of Emacs, Vi etc) is amazing. For Dlang / Rust the best support I've seen for either language is for VS Code which is the youngest mainstream editor out there atm. Don't simply dismiss VS Code it's fame / usage speaks for it's own quality as a tool for editors. You even see in Sublime Text and Atom discussions that a number of people have just simply switched to VS Code.
They don't claim they love open source, or that they love Linux.
But microsoft does. So by not open sourcing or releasing their main products on Linux, they are being hypocritical assholes who just want to look good.
Well, my country literally committed the original Holocaust yet you probably don't automatically assume I'm an anti-Semite because of my nationality (and if you balk that so much time has passed since the end of WW2, think about whether you would have been right to think me an anti-Semite if we were in the 1960s).
Companies change. Especially large corporations that have always been fairly heterogeneous. Microsoft never cared about killing open source, Microsoft cared about improving its bottom line and killing open source was considered a necessity to accomplish that goal. That didn't work out and now they're doing things differently.
Figma should aim for their own Linux or BSD distro focused on full stack webdev (designers who code, coders who design), and maybe even tailored hardware in the future. There's so much potential in this space, I wouldn't sell to MS. They could become an Apple alternative that is respected by designers!
Replace all with a simple text file or even more basic html, and win simplicity award. Number of commits so far is an example of why things need to be simple.
It sucks that the reactions to this are so close-minded and negative. It definitely makes me feel that the HN community is becoming a toxic and insular echo chamber.
young developers and really senior do that.
Young are just naive, really senior are no longer interested in new technologies.
You have to aim for the middle, when the developer is interested to learn. Thats where you find agnostic developers
Funny I consider myself agnostic but I'm usually seen as a "young developer" despite having been doing programming as a hobby for at least 10 years now. I guess professional experience is worth more to be fair.
I'm in the camp that uses Windows, Linux and Mac. Whatever laptop is nearest to me and gets whatever task done the quickest is the one I'll use, and these days it's my Surface Book 2 which has replaced even my iPad from being my media consumption device.
Plus, I also imagine it's a self selecting process as only those with vitriol are the ones bothering to comment, while most people simply view it for what it is.
If I remeber correctly, their Now service uses several cloud vendors, they let you choose where you want to deploy, including Azure. Now, Up, Netflify and other services like that are basically providing a better UX for a special audience on top of those clouds, that better UX is what you pay for.
Funny you found this! I was quite amazed what you could do with the styling, especially the support for background-image.
As soon as this got merged, I realized, just as yread points about below; the complication of tracking due to the ability to include url() tags. Would be fun exploring the complications of that.
Blame is on me for not testing it in multiple browsers but I kind of assumed it would break somewhere due to this relying on fairly experimental features. :)
So, that's you who add that console message. I've submitted a PR to remove the styling it breaks on many browsers (actually, it only works on Chrome-based browser).
I know that we can style console text (try open console in facebook when using Chrome), but only until today, I learn that we can also add image background. Thank you.
Works fine if you have developer tools enabled (advanced tab) and open java-script console window. End up with a multi-colored block (orange, green, and black for me) with the link in the middle.
That's not what it is supposed to end up with. It's supposed to end up with a big Windows logo on a black background, with a message below that, and the link at the bottom.
Here is a screenshot showing what it looks like in Chrome on the left and Safari on the right: https://imgur.com/gpSMx44
Firefox 62.0b9 is similar to Safari, except the blocks are all black instead of colored, and the relative dimensions are different.
Yes, thank you I love getting to the bottom of things. I tried disabling mine though and it still works. I think that's it for me though right now- could be a number of different things but I'm working on something else at the moment heh.
Works in my Safari desktop and iOS. Maybe it's because Microsoft fixed it in ~14 minutes or it's because I have a traditional art degree and my Safari just loads things differently ;)
Well spotted, I also didn't realise you could print such complex things in the console till I checked Discords out. That gave me a fright! Took me a while to realise that I was actually looking at the console.
Yep. Here's the line that prints it – open a new Chrome tab (ymmv w/ other browsers, definitely looks weird in Safari), open developer tools, and paste it into the console:
console.log("%c\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Hi there! \n\nIt seems you like to poke around as much as we do.\n\nhttps://github.com/Microsoft/join-dev-design", "color: white; background-color: #080808; background-image: url(https://microsoft.github.io/join-dev-design/msft-square.svg)... background-size: 70%; background-position: 50% 25%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 3em; text-align: center;font-size: 1.25em;");
I knew I can style console but never put two and two together. For example, I’ve had to do this with google contacts just to read the actual error because the error on the website is too vague.
I know they can also track my every keystroke and cursor in their window but I somehow thought of right click -> inspect as not subject to tracking. I’m so much to learn.
Full Unicode is supported nearly everywhere but HN these days. ;P
Also GitHub has long supported :emoji-name: expansions for those that want to limit UTF-8 in their git commits, and for those on operating systems without dedicated emoji soft keyboards. (In recent Windows 10, Windows+. and Windows+; bring up the emoji keyboard. It's great.)
I've seen projects require emoji as prefixed commit type descriptors: a bug emoji like ant is more interesting than FIX:, a wrench more interesting than TOOLING/SUPPORT:, etc. A neat benefit of that is it leaves the commit types as one character width lining things up nicely and leaving more room for meaningful text in the commit header.
I tend to do something similar with my personal repositories though not nearly as systematic.
> Short of ideas and creative people? Or just want it for free?
As I see it, it's at worst a fun experiment on the design of a single page.
I think it's also a very nice way to get a conversation going with people who might be good fit for their team.
All in all, I don't think there's any need to be that negative about it =)
Not sure if it's just me, but I can scroll down by 5 pixels on my device. Is there content below the Call-To-Action or is it suppose to fit the entire screen?
Sort of unrelated, but I feel like Microsoft's behavior lately has been kind of fishy. I don't understand all the self-promotion, and I don't see it nearly as much for other tech companies.
Is repeating 'intelligent cloud' over and over again helpful in getting customers? Or is this all just a big stock pump?
Don't most devs prefer writing code on Macs? I haven't met many developers who use linux as their main development machine, and it makes sense. If you are productive on Linux, you will most likely be immediately productive on a Mac.
I used to think the same before my work company issued us macs. The fact that you have to purchase and install third party software for things which are either inbuilt in modern Linux DEs or come as simple small plug ins is crazy.
The lack of a frecency based app launcher, fuzzy findable window switcher, auto hide and scrolling of menu bar items when an apps menu is too long are all things that can be done in a pinch on GNOME or on something like bspwm, i3 etc. but need me to shell out around ₹2000 to buy third party software on the Mac is appalling.
Finder is shit compared to Nautilus, their spaces implementation leaves a lot to be desired etc.
If you're spending 2000 <what currency?> for "scrolling of menu bar items when an apps menu is too long" you should maybe reconsider priorities. You could possibly feed a few families in <what currency?-country> with that.
Plus spotlight works well as a "frecency based app launcher".
I wish they'd look at fixing the UI of their core product - Windows 10 - first before anything else. It's a huge downgrade from Windows 7 and they still haven't picked up the ball. Quite shocking really.
I don’t see why it would not be their core product. It’s still huge in the enterprise, it’s the one thing that can’t be easily replicated by a competitor and so guarantees them a long term revenue stream. Everything else has successful competition (PS4 for the Xbox, Google Docs & G-Suite for Office 365, AWS & Google Cloud for Azure, etc).
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This is some incredible self-awareness. I've encountered more than a few people who casually brush off applying to Microsoft because they prefer developing on unix machines.