State of Microsoft

Note:  I'm not quite sure what I was going for with this, but I just started writing and this came out:

So I had dabbled in web programming a bit starting out with some basic HTML and JavaScript and finally nailing down a few of the finer features of PHP and working with SQL databases.  I'm currently maintaining a few sites in those languages.  And then someone told me about DreamSpark.  So I checked it out...

I've started working with Visual Studio 2008 quite a bit and really like what I've seen.  I've been teaching myself C# as best as possible and am looking forward to developing some web sites/applications in this framework.  I also have got Expression Studio to work with some of the visual aspects of the site, though I haven't delved into these puppies too deeply yet. 

While developing in PHP, I switched around quite a bit trying to find exactly what people used to create the newest things.  Of course there are the many different libraries including PEAR, there's developing with template engines like Smarty, and there's also the decision of which editor to use.  (I ultimately decided to go with emacs.)  Then I realized that there was no cohesiveness with everything.  Everyone was incredibly for openness and things being free, but nothing worked well with anything else.  For instance getting PHP support along with HTML in emacs was a bit of a hassle.  You have to download mmm-mode and install that, meaning you must put it where it needs to go and add the correct syntax to include it to your .emacs file.  Seems a bit ridiculous.

So I thought to myself, there's got to be something out there that brings everything together.  Enter Visual Studio.  Working with this program in the brief amount of time that I have, I must say it is well polished.  Everything works just the way you want it to, as well as it being much easier to customize for your specific application.  I've been exposed to the .NET Framework, Ajax Control Toolkit, C#, Windows Server 2008 and so much more.  The best part about this is that the developers of these programs work together to make sure the programs work well together.  Now you may think that the same happens for open source, and it does, but not near the extent that it happens with a company like Microsoft.

I've always been a small fan of Microsoft.  So of course, I was disappointed when I got into web development and discovered that creating anything to work in IE6 just absolutely blew.  IE7 made improvements, but didn't quite match Firefox.  Now they've got IE8 in development.  I still use Firefox for browsing, thought I have IETab installed and most Microsoft pages autmatically load to that.  All I can say is I'm skeptically hopeful that IE8 will be good enough to convince me to switch.  I watched a few videos about Microsoft's work regarding IE8 and the Acid 2 Test, that was great.  Transparency is what a company like Microsoft needs, especially with something where people live and die by openness and developing to web standards.  They try to do a great job with their IEBlog, but the Beta 1 was released a few months ago and all they've posted on that blog are features about that.  I think they should post news on what they are working on and how development is going...transparency.

I've had Vista on my computer since about a month after it came out.  Everyone else may not like it, but I happen to think it works well.  I've never had an issue with it.  (This needs repeating.)  I've never had an issue with it.   Office 2007 is probably one of the best suites ever created by Microsoft.  It is so incredibly easy for me to do things like create a Bibliography/Works Cited for papers I write.  That's the way most of their applications work.  I look at Apple and I think how arrogant.  I don't like Steve Jobs ever since I saw a few interviews he did with Bill Gates and others.  I think their ads with PC Guy, their posting of banners after release of OSX to Microsoft, and other situations where they show how big of pricks they are just prove that point.  Plus iTunes sucks.

So this naturally drew me to Microsoft having been pushed away from Apple, having tried Linux and not liking how nothing worked on it except for its own apps, and having tried open source development (PHP) and being a bit disappointed in support.  Undoubtedly Microsft has made mistakes, IE probably being the biggest.  But what I see now is them trying to fix things.  They are working hard in IE8, working hard to get things like Mesh, Live, Office 2007, and some of their new exciting product like Sync, Surface, and Silverlight to the their customers.  They are also trying to open up quite a bit.  They've set up a system where their employees can maintain blogs about what they're doing, and even set up communities Channel 8, 9, 10, etc.  In my opinion, they are starting to clean things up and are heading in the right direction.

So here's what I've learned in the past few years:

• Open source projects are great and will always be around/needed
• Microsoft has its hand in everything
• Microsoft is trying hard to satisfy the customer
• Large corporations will always be hated in the end (just wait Google, your time's coming if not here already)
• Microsoft makes mistakes
• Microsoft's not going anywhere
• Visual Studio is sweet (that one is my own)

Last I thought I'd just include a few suggestions in case anyone happens to still be reading this:

1.)  Fix IE's UI in IE8.  The Back and Forward buttons are fine, but if I want to refresh or start the page I have to move all the way across the address bar to do so.  Granted I know the keyboard shortcuts, but sometimes I want to click it and it's much faster if they're right next to it. 
2.)  Start putting a large emphasis on add-ons for IE like Firefox.  It's the customization that draws people to the program.  Being able to include things like AdBlockPlus, Firebug, weather (a nice one not the crappy one that exists), etc...
3.)  Improve the address bar of IE by including details about each.  One thing I've always hated is how you may mistype a URL and then it's permanently saved in the address bar.  If the site doesn't load, don't save it.
4.)  Never stoop to Apple's level when advertising your products.
5.)  Continuing innovation including interoperability and connecting multiple PC's using the internet is good.  But you already know that...

That's all I got...thoughts?

 

 

Not all people dislike Vista. The one that do are only making so much noise that you can't hear the others. And since when do satisfied people go to the street to protest. Has never happened.

I also like the integration part of Visual Studio. It's so cool how everything works together and how smoothly it does that. That's something that I always miss when I do something at university with open source tools. They are all an island of itself. No integration with others or very limited integration (speaking of piping data from one to the other in the console).

Btw. I have recorded some screencasts on C# - they might be useful for you since you have been learning it on your own: www.liensberger.it/Screencasts.aspx

Vista has gotten bad publicity due to compatibility issues and  the general hate comments on the web for the OS which comes from average users following the rest of the internet crowd ,basically they do not even  know why they are talking badly about the OS . It has a few issues that could be improved but generally i would say it's a great OS and even go further to say that it is better than Win XP . The security + performance bundle that vista offers cannot be matched by XP . I complained in the past about UAC but now i have  come to learn that " If it is not annoying ,it is not security". Shocking but true . And who said you'd have to be on the high end of pc specs to run vista ? My PC's specs :

• Intel Dual Core  ~1.7 ghz
• Intel 945 chipset (on board GPU)
  
• 1GB ram (believe it !)

Running Vista Home Premium,runs smoothly at that too.

Open source i believe would be the breeding grounds for new innovative ideas and tech in general . But in the end the bigger companies like MS would have to step in and refine the product into  a compatible ,inter operable one .

Wow, I actually did read the whole thing and I have to say I'm impressed with your analysis of the current state of things.  I'm glad to see that people understand we are working hard to stay connected with our customers and bring them the best products and services we can.

@ Christian

Thanks for the screencasts Christian, I'll take a look at those and let you know how they work out.

@ Donald Adu-Poku

I think this line sums it up incredibly well:

Open source i believe would be the breeding grounds for new innovative ideas and tech in general . But in the end the bigger companies like MS would have to step in and refine the product into  a compatible ,inter operable one .

I would just add that there are definitely great ideas from open source, but that isn't to say that they can't come from the large companies either.  Sometimes it takes the organization in order to bring some of the new innovative products to market.

Very true, the larger companies would have no need for their research departments if all the viable ideas were coming from open source projects.

bryant, excellent points!

I agree with you that any LARGE corporation will end up in more problems, and the extent Microsoft is growing large (in terms of employees, services, products) it needs to be really balanced in giving the best out of the best to its customers. The reason for it to be balanced is because - No product or service is called the best unless it satisfies it's customers' needs

Vista - It was a total marketing failure from Microsoft. At one time, the Microsoft Vista Campaign over hyped it's features and PC's which aren't even capable of running Vista were labeled Vista Capable. I still see in some of the computer stores here in my local town where you can see Laptops labeled "Vista Home Basic Capable", and for me Vista Home Basic should not even be considered. People can use XP Professional for that case, lol.

Another problem I see with Microsoft is the growing number of SKU's that they release with each release of their new Operating System. That needs to be really taken care of.  2 SKU's like Windows XP and Windows XP Professional should be really fine, unlike,
1) Vista Home Basic (not needed at all)
2) Vista Home Premium (really good for home)
3) Vista Business (not sure ???)
4) Vista Enterprise (not sure ???)
5) Vista Ultimate (really good, it stands to it's name - Ultimate)
And also I would like to see Media Center to be a separate offering from Microsoft which can be installed in any SKU

Remove the unwanted dependencies - IE, Windows Media Player, Media Center etc., from the Operating System and give them as separate offerings

But, this is all expected. Everybody learn from their mistakes and I believe Microsoft has learned a lot from Vista. It's not that Vista is bad, the way they took it to the People was wrong (thats just one line, but has many many ways that were wrong)

That said, I am a very big fan of Vista, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET. I am still yet to see an Operating System where the development platform is so well organized and excellent to develop native applications. And the amount of effort Microsoft has put into documentation (MSDN) is no way comparable to anything else.

That story almost exactly fits my story of my current state of the world of developing.

I myself was never a Microsoft fan (a bigger fan of Microsoft than before, but not a "Microsoftie", yet...), and I was mostly introduced to the "Anti-Microsoft" software such as L.A.M.P, Linux, some Macintosh, and such since I myself was trying to put my web project on the web, and since I didn't have much money, I seemed everytime pointed to the many... Linux, and Apache hosts, and also a few of them having a nice "free" web hosting. I've spent so much money, believe it or not, on these hosting packages. At the end it all seems I've going through a major learning phase in my life, don't use Linux.

I've since this yera after experiencing the true Linux disliked Linux, it has good intentions, but so very well diverse and so hard to find your solution, if there is one. The desktop of Linux such as the distrobution of Linux called Ubuntu. As you said, Microsoft has a well made stack of software, and Visual Studio has been well made. So very awesome, and well made products are out there, but the general-public knows so little of the "back-end", "behind-the-scenes, and so caught with their computer, and Windows problems that they just start thinking how bad this is, and want something "better". I do have some things I want to change (mostly just what a developer can do such as "us"), and improve on.

One feature of notice about IE8 that you would like isn't really a "problem", but if you it's your own personal issue, you may want to research on IE8, and create an application on the beloved Visual Studio 2008, and create a way to do what you want to do. There is one thing that is annoying that I myself really can't do, that if you make a mistake on the previous secured page, I would like to go back re resubmit the form, or whatever, but when I do as I click Back, the page says the web page is unable to repeat or something...

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At chakkaradeep and Christain...

I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate for over a year, or when ever the MSDN Subsciption service allowed developers to be able to test out Vista, and so I've been delited to test out the product. My computer is a Gateway with 1GB RAM, and that good stuff that I would say is "middle-end".

Great write up; and great responses.