[–] raydeen 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Their just banging their digital dicks against the wall at this point, hoping against hope, that something will magically happen in their favor. Face it MS, you've lost all credibility. Nothing you do from this point on will matter to a hill of beans. You've proven that your nothing more than a cage full of retarded monkeys desperately flinging poo at the wall in the hopes that something meaningful will happen other than giving the zoo go-ers something to point and laugh at. Your worse than Apple at this point. And they some how managed to trick their customers into buying what amounts to a Raspberry Pi wrapped in a shiny gold laptop shaped object. With less ports.
[–] 3385752? 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Sometimes I wonder if the world has forgotten what good software looks like. Somehow we got used to crappy beta test updates sold as new and get charged for support when yet again that software gets broken.
I come from a time where you get one release every couple of years, and then a series of bug fixes. But all these years you had a stable and working environment you could trust. When you booted your computer you know that it will be ready. Nowadays we get scared to boot our PC because yet another update is updating and we have no idea if the PC will boot this time
[–] donotreply ago
Use 7, if you need Windows, turn off "recommended"... never do auto update!
Of course I speaking to those who know but damn what a cluster it is becoming. I have clients who wonder how someone knows what type of shoe size they have or when they need more toilet paper... Thanks Amazon!
[–] 3384985? 0 points 6 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago
This subscription and rapid release cycle kills good software and turns users into beta testers. The moment you go in a subscription model then you must release in regular intervals. But that comes at a huge cost, partially tested crappy code just to get that deadline.
And to make it even worse, it kills your development team because they are pushed in a burn out. And it upsets every single enterprise IT'ers because yet again you come with forced upgrade that will kill their network.
[–] rwbj 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Another big difference (related to what @aaronC hit on as well) is that now a days Microsoft is no longer seen as a desirable destination for skilled developers. When I was going to school they were a top tier choice. Even for folks that didn't really like the company itself, they were still one of the absolute top companies you could possibly work for with great benefits, great environment, and a large number of exciting projects to work on. Now a days the top tier incoming talent at Microsoft is instead going to be full of rejects from other companies like Google, Facebook, the various less well known (but no less ambitious) silicon valley companies, and so on.
This is a huge deal because what most folks outside of computer science (and likely even your median developer to some degree) may not appreciate is that software development is an incredibly skill based ability. Saying two programmers are about the same is similar to saying two baseball players are about the same. Getting the left overs seriously hurts a company like Microsoft that not only needs skilled developers for their projects but they need an enormous amount of them.
[–] aaronC 0 points 10 points 10 points (+10|-0) ago
You forget the next generation of programmers is inferior. We're seeing the computer science students who learned Python, Javascript, HTML, and other high level scripting languages take over from the ones who grew up on C, C++, and assembly. And it's not pretty.
Mozilla is going through something similar too. The next generation is taking over and they're just flat out removing features that require more advanced programming and flat out cancelling products like Thunderbird.
Around the mid 00s, universities started to dumb down computer science programs, because they had really high drop out rates before that. Now, they revolve around trendy web technologies and avoid more difficult concepts. I imaging your average computer science student from a state university would leave struggling to manage memory, let alone handle implementing their own mildly complex data structures like binary search trees.
And of course you have diploma mill H1-B visa workers coming in too. In short, as H1-B low skilled workers and the next generation of computer scientists that come from the university day car generation continue to take over, you're going to see brands that were previously successful and released somewhat decent software (I'm far from a Windows or MS fanboy, I use Linux 90% of the time but I can understand Windows 7 and some earlier versions did some things very well) will slowly start to fade away and get worse.
You see it with iOS too. Android has some big flaws as well, but since they are google and can get the finest talent, they struggle with it the least.
[–] 3385628? 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I agree, I see the quality of software and OS becoming one giant pile of shit. It will takes at least 5 years to recover from that.
Microsoft won't survive this. Between now and 5 years Microsoft will have to change name, split up the company or get bought by a new emerging company. I have seen this happening with Borland.
[–] moneyshift 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
I got into tech in 1995 and cannot agree with you more. While I work primarily in embedded systems (doing low level hardware bootstrapping, bootloaders, drivers, real time OS work, etc.) I know people who work strictly in the web space, including a few former embedded guys who couldn't find a job in the embedded space and started doing web apps to pay the bills. The overwhelming observation: programmers aren't really programmers anymore; they're glorified designers who care more about how something looks rather than how it functions or how it can be tested and verified to be reliable.
A somewhat related anecdote:
I was employee #3 at a startup where we built embedded systems (test equipment). To control our first product we created a multi-platform C++ native client interface. The product was well received largely because of the interface. It worked everywhere, worked consistently, and pioneered visual description of a network configuration that our lower-level software would then emulate, making it really easy for the end user to use.
Flush with cash due to the success of this product, and unable to leave well-enough alone, several years down the road one of the marketing-type founders saw the proliferation in web apps and thought it would be a good idea to replace our C++ client GUI with a glossy webapp and in the process toss our expensive C++ devs and hire a bunch of JS/PHP guys (win, win, right?). As the tragedy unfolded I sat down at the hardware level with my mind on my own work, shaking my head watching the problems emerge that I had predicted on day one.
Three years and several million $$$ later they finally had something that worked (wink wink, nudge nudge) but our support staff was completely unprepared for the hell that rained down on them after we started releasing the new product. The lines exploded every day with calls about how this or that wasn't rendering properly or how the button clicked but didn't do anything, and oh-by-the-way they just installed the latest version of browser X (or the browser vendor stupidly assumed that automatic updates of the browser were fine and dandy...no need to involve the user in that decision). How do you test a moving target? Hint: you can't. The devs spent so much time maintaining the abortion they created that they never got any new features out in the couple years I remained there before I threw in the towel and left to start my own biz.
[–] ForgotMyName 0 points 5 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago
When I hear about CS students learning with high level languages, it boggles my mind. That's how you make a casual dev that writes office macros, not how you make a proper professional. I've met people that have no idea wtf most datatypes are, how they're structured behind the scenes, or when/why you'd use one over the other. How do you even get a job when you don't know these things? It's egregious.
[–] Frenchgeek 0 points 9 points 9 points (+9|-0) ago (edited ago)
Easy : there's a marketer running the update servers and a programmer behind him doing damage control.
( The admin is hidden in the corner, sobbing softly )
[–] [deleted] 0 points 10 points 10 points (+10|-0) ago (edited ago)
[–] Kaizervonmaanen 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago
2015 year of the linux desktop
[–] nobslob ago
the only windows box in my house is for gaming. I hope pc gaming starts supporting other OS's soon :/