
Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate? - seanmcdirmid
When new the Nokia tablet was announced yesterday, submissions made it to the front page but were promptly flagged off by many saying &quot;this wasn&#x27;t relevant to HN;&quot; regardless of all the excitement over the new iPad.<p>So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by default? Is it ethical to flag something because the article is related to a company you don&#x27;t like, even if the source is generally reputable (theverge, engadget, ars)?<p>Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft (research) and my wife works for Nokia; so ya, ouch.
======
iamshs
In that particular thread, I was accused of being a shill and an astroturfer
by 3 members. All of the accusers had karma greater than 1500, and atleast two
of them were on HN since at least 2 years. Why? Because I posted the spec list
of the tablet. And I do not have allegiance to any of the tech companies at
all, except having used their products one time or another.

MS hate is vicious on here. I remember recoiledsnake [1, 2] alluding to it,
and not that particular topic, infact lots of MS topics are bumped off the
frontpage while having lots of points. Not on this site, I made a point on
neoGAF debunking a point regarding XboxOne related to a technology that I am
very much familiar with. I was ambushed by 15-20 people in matter of 10
minutes and banned. One single post, nothing inflammatory. On this site, yes I
do see MS hate from lots of members. I do not think I remain enthusiastic in
posting on here. Some of the members call themselves veterans and use that
status to just point barbs. Disagreements are one thing and can be deliberated
in civil manner, but downright unencumbered hate and allegations is another.

[1]-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=recoiledsnake](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=recoiledsnake)
[2] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716419)

~~~
pg
That article was not flagged off the frontpage. It set off the flamewar
detector.

As for recoiledsnake, that is one of many accounts created by a group or
individual who is either an astroturfer or indistinguishable from one. Part of
his/her/their m.o. is to talk constantly about there being an anti-Microsoft
conspiracy on HN. Sometimes he/she/they would use multiple, separate accounts
in the same thread.

~~~
sillysaurus2
_Sometimes he /she/they would use multiple, separate accounts in the same
thread._

Is it possible they post from work, and hence share the same IP address with
other HN posters? Microsoft is a big place.

~~~
jlgreco
This is PG. If he doesn't think it is just a bunch of well-meaning commenters
coincidentally behind the same NAT, then I am inclined to believe him.

Anyway, do you know what I do when there are discussions online about my
employer? I stay the fuck out of it. I think that is good policy, unless
participating in those discussions is part of your job description. Best case
scenario here: a bunch of well-meaning Microsoft employees got into an
internet fight, got mistaken for a sockpuppet ring, and got a discussion about
their company pushed off of HN? If that's in their job description, I don't
know why they're still getting paid; if it isn't, maybe they should consider
spectating next time.

~~~
eksith

      Anyway, do you know what I do when there are discussions online about my employer? 
      I stay the fuck out of it.
    

This is an excellent policy. Employee participation (unless they're
CEO/Founder, CTO or some combination thereof that can speak with authority)
will almost invariably lead to problems. It's good that some employees feel
"passionate" and "enthusiastic" about their company/product, but if that's
left unchecked and they refuse to remain objective, it will not prevent the
thread from going up in a passionate and enthusiastic fire ball.

Same applies to social media.

~~~
yuhong
I don't think this is good policy in this day and age.

------
olalonde
In case you are genuinely wondering, a lot of the hate towards Microsoft stems
from their historical hostility towards open standards[0] and open source[1].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents)

~~~
donretag
Apple maintains many of the same positions, yet they are loved. Apple actually
uses a lot of open source, yet rarely contribute back. Microsoft Research
contributes a ton to computing research.

Note: writing this in Google Chrome on my Macbook

~~~
slaven
Well Google Chrome as of last year was based on Apple's open source Webkit so
that's not quite true.

~~~
curiousDog
Webkit isn't Apple's open source. It was already open source when KDE started
it.

~~~
scott_karana
KDE didn't start "WebKit" per se. Apple definitely deserves some credit for
what they did, but you're right: Konqueror originated it all.

------
pnathan
Hiya Sean,

So you posted a real classic flamewar topic here... heh. Enjoy the war. But
here's my take on Microsoft Corp, since you asked nicely.

You guys don't play nice. You've never played nice, and the fact that you've
gotten better lately seems to be more due to the fact that you've lost
dominance and have to interop with other operating systems. I'm not really
going to provide significant examples, there are lots out there for a quick
search. Things like file formats, threading models, frigging slash directions
in filenames, deviance in compiler standards. Not to mention that MS had a
terrible rep for being aggressive and with bad ethics in the 80s and 90s
(leaving aside the F/OSS fight).

Technically, I find MS offerings to still be catching up in automatability to
Linux. _Still_. Not only that, but you have had since the 90s this obnoxious
habit of having "moving targets" for your APIs. So learning one API just meant
that I'd have to learn a new one to do the _same_ thing in a year.

I've recently had the opportunity to do heavy .NET development, and my opinion
is that as a developer whose worked for years in Linux, Microsoft technologies
wasted my time comparatively. Everything from Windows 8 out to the shenanagins
with IIS to actually get my webapp deployed. I was able to do equivalent work
in Ruby on Rails (a language and framework I didn't know) in a fraction of the
time I spent fighting C#, MVC API and IIS; this experience was repeated with
Caveman and Common Lisp (a framework I didn't know, a language I did). I can
not believe how painful it is to develop on Microsoft tooling, and how meekly
people accept it as the way it is. I don't like having my time wasted.

I'm not going to say Apple or Google (or Oracle, SAP, etc, etc, etc) is
blameless, okay? But I don't really like Microsoft policy and technologies, as
a rule of thumb. Note that I really respect your arm of the company - MSR -
and think that it does great stuff like F#, Pex, and others. That still
doesn't obviate my dislike of MS as a corporation.

Regards, Paul

~~~
anonyfox
I work with ruby/rails, node.js/coffeescript, python, scala and some other
stuff on a daily basis on my day job. Thanks to MSDN-AA, i had to work with
the complete Microsoft-Stack at University the last year, given every single
tool for free (including visual studio ultimate). Guess what? It was just a
pain. I can't even describe in words how unproductive it feels to work with
.NET when you are used to the latest "hipster"-stuff to get things done
beautiful in minutes instead of hours/days. Not to mention that all the tools
usually cost a few bucks if you have to buy it... i wouldn't. Thanks to the
MSDN-AA program, I and most of my fellow students never want to touch
Microsoft stuff again.

Microsoft spend huge affords to create nice stuff, but for decades they just
don't get it. And i don't get why people working with .NET regulary stop
complaining after a while and think that ugly workflows are "ususal".

~~~
maaaats
Meh, some of the tools are like vim. Hard to get started, great when you know
them. It sounds to me like you are hating because you didn't spend enough time
using these things.

~~~
devrelm
That's what I'm getting out of pretty much this entire post.

As an asp.net mvc developer by trade, I could easily say that it could take me
hours/days to get stuff done in node.js/rails/django/name-your-framework, that
I could otherwise get done in minutes in mvc. Of course, I'm self-aware enough
to realize that it's because I have 4 consecutive years of experience with
.net, but only a cumulative of maybe a few months in all other technologies
(php/rails/python/c/c++) combined (not including school-work.)

~~~
orclev
I've worked with a lot of languages and a lot of frameworks over the years,
and the ones from Microsoft are always hands down the most needlessly
complicated and poorly documented of the bunch. PHP may be a double claw
hammer, but at least it's a really well documented double claw hammer. MVC
includes at least 5 different kinds of double claw hammer, a normal hammer, a
combination hammer/chainsaw, a mislabeled jar of nitric acid, and a swiss army
knife, and half complete and half accurate documentation of 2/3rds of it.

You like MVC because you've basically spent the time to find all the good bits
and just pretend all the tons and tons of horrible bits don't exist. Good for
you, but that also means anyone new to basically any MS tech has to spend
years learning where all the mines are buried, when instead they could use
basically any other tech stack in the world and not have to worry about
navigating a mine field in the first place.

Oh, and just for fun every 5 years or so MS deprecates that particular mine
field, lays a new one, and forces everyone to go play in the new minefield
instead.

~~~
devrelm
I disagree that MVC is not well documented, but perhaps I've just learned
where the good documentation is (for MVC.)

That said, I have to agree that every time I've dived into PHP/RoR, there have
been plenty of articles with well-drawn maps of the minefield (to borrow your
analogy.)

> Oh, and just for fun every 5 years or so MS deprecates that particular mine
> field, lays a new one, and forces everyone to go play in the new minefield
> instead.

I know I started at the beginning with this new minefield (MVC came out less
than a year before I started using it,) but I don't see this happening as
much, at least not with MS's web offerings. The last version or two of MVC and
EntityFramework have been OSS under Apache 2, so they can continue to be
developed even if MS decides to go a separate route.

I understand that this is not the case for their desktop and mobile offerings,
and that they have jerked their developers in that field around in different
directions each time they come out with a new OS. I think that their web
offerings are more stable. The only things that may change fundamentally are
server components (IIS, SQL Server, MVC, EF, etc.), or the browser. If the
browser changes, everyone's screwed; and if the server components change, the
developer can simply decide to stay on older versions (until licenses run out,
which I'll concede as one problem.)

And of course, all this flows back to documentation. PHP/Python/RoR have much
better documentation because they're all much more widely used. If more people
used MVC, more people would write about it, and there would be more
documentation for it.

The only remaining issue is a pretty big one: cost. Yes, there's a VS Express
Web Edition, but that has its own issues. So, you're left with BizSpark as the
next best option. It's what I've done. I have 2 more years left before I have
to decide whether to start paying. So far it's great, but I know that it's
going to come back and bite me in the ass unless I start something profitable
before then.

And I believe that that's the real reason that it's not more widely used; or
at least the original reason, with lack of documentation and other MS-hate
being secondary to and/or consequences of it. In a community where people have
5 ideas fail before hitting something profitable, it's hard to justify the
extra cost of $1000 or more per developer, even if it's actually free for the
first few years. Why risk paying $1000+ per developer and an extra $100+ per
server 3 years from now, when you can start with something free and have it
still be free 3 years from now? That's what it all boils down to.

I'll admit, I'm probably tossing in the towel on MVC soon. But it's not
because of poor documentation or fear of being forced to switch to a new API
requiring a large rewrite on my part. It's because 1) the IDE and servers are
5-10x more expensive than those for Python/Ruby/Node/PHP; and 2) everybody's
using Python/Ruby/Node/PHP, so finding work is tough. After all, what good is
working on a side project to show off my MVC skills, if nobody will hire me
for it anyway?

------
jeswin
I'll tell you the story of my friend Greg.

Greg has been a believer in Microsoft. He went to all the Tech-Ed conferences,
attended every MSDN event he could. Conferences are grand stages that leave an
impression. He drank all the cool-aid that was served at these conferences.

Things were really good early on, this was the last decade. The computing
scene at that time revolved around Microsoft like the many moons of Jupiter.
Greg and his team built products with Silverlight, WPF, .Net, Windows
Workflow, Biztalk, Remoting, and the like. Every conference offered something
new, something exciting. The apps they built worked great, looked great.

Fast forward to now. Greg is a decent programmer, but he wants a new job
badly. The problem is that nobody wants to use all that stuff that he knows.
People want to build on standards; apps that work on every device. Not just on
Windows and not just on Internet Explorer. Greg still doesn't get it. He
hasn't seen much of the world outside Microsoft, and still wonders why people
don't want Silverlight. Still tells me how WPF is so much better that anything
else out there. And running only on IE, why is that even a problem? Everybody
has IE. Poor Greg, tough times.

There may be many issues with Microsoft. But more than anything else, I would
fault them for building their entire ecosystem with total disregard for
standards, their refusal to work with whatever community existed outside. This
probably wasn't intentional, they must have probably believed in what they
told their developers. Even though so much has changed since their glory days,
there's a part of Microsoft which still refuses to engage.

There was a Steve Jobs interview from the late 90s in which he said, "The
problem with Microsoft is that they have absolutely no taste". Jobs wasn't
talking about aesthetics; it is true of pretty much everything from Microsoft.
From UIs, to development frameworks, to tools, to shells and even APIs. Back
then, having "no taste" was totally fine because people communicated far less.

Now we have a whole bunch of people who are stuck using this stuff. And many
of them don't really get it yet.

Edit: I just saw that you work for Microsoft, and specifically Microsoft
Research. You guys make awesome stuff. The above is mostly about the Windows
platform.

~~~
girvo
Well, I run Elementary on my laptop, OS X on my iMac, have an iPhone, a Nexus
7, and a BlackBerry Playbook (quite an underrated tablet for it's time). I'm a
developer, and build apps for all of those devices.

And you know what? WPF _is_ nice. I _liked_ Silverlight (but am frustrated
that it doesn't work under Linux, though not surprised). Microsoft make _good_
developer tools, in my personal humble opinion.

The problem I see are they still make a large amount of missteps, and don't
engage the "tastemakers" of tech anymore. Any goodwill they once had has been
squandered, and if you look at Yahoo! you can see that it's super difficult to
get it back.

Now that Ballmer is leaving, it will be interesting to see what happens in the
future -- will they get a CEO that isn't afraid to take big, bold risks? To
cook the golden goose in the short-term, perhaps, to allow for growth into new
markets?

Somehow I doubt it, but I wish they would.

Windows 8 has been really good to me; I've installed it (and Office 2013) on
all the devices of my family and (ex)girlfriends, my ex has a Windows Phone on
my recommendation. They all love it, and find it easier to use than anything
in the past. Just today, I purchased a touch-screen HP All-In-One for my
Grandfather, and he loves it (and is super excited about using the Kindle app
while in his lean-back chair on the 22" screen, synced with his Kindle
itself).

When I was working at Harvey Norman, I sold $15 000 worth of Surface and
Surface Pros to customers in one month; They were easy to sell as long as you
knew how to appeal to the consumers _actual_ needs. They didn't suit everyone,
but for those that did no other Tablet came close.

Basically, they have more potential than nearly any other tech company out
there. Something has been holding them back, and they've succeeded in spite of
themselves. I hope that they can turn it around moving forward.

~~~
belorn
What did you try to accomplish with this post? The parent post talks about the
perceived mono-culture of Microsoft, and the effects this has on his "friend
Greg" when Greg later tries to seek a new job.

Your post is all about how much you like Microsoft. It could likely be
replaced by the words "But I like Microsoft developer tools", and still get
the exact same message across. There is no sources to back it up, or arguments
against or in favor of the parent post. Its the exact style of comment that
creates flame-wars which HN want to eliminate.

Please, if you reply to a commenter about mono-culture and job seeking, focus
your comment on that subject. Do not fall into "but I like X" kind of replies,
or all you get back is "you are wrong, X is bad".

~~~
girvo
I find people that "like" companies quite amusing.

I think Microsoft has potential, but currently there is a reason I don't use
any of their products nor plan to personally. Doesn't mean they don't have
their place, like any product.

Also, an argument could easily be made that OP's post, which I found really
interesting, is just another way of saying "Microsoft sucks", as it is merely
anecdotes without sources again.

Regardless, I merely posted my opinion, like many others here. Sorry that it
doesn't conform to your ideal.

~~~
belorn
Anecdotes is better than pure opinion. They can be poked at and questioned as
any other unreliable evidence, and has a place in discussions (if somewhat far
down).

However, saying "I _liked_ Silverlight" is not an anecdote. I can't discuss
it, poke or question it, as it is without doubt true that you do indeed like
Silverlight. As substance for a discussion, it as empty as it can be. At best,
I can ask you to write a new comment which explains _why_ you like
Silverlight, in which you maybe then end up using _anecdotes_ to support your
view. That would then be the actually comment of substance, in which debate,
research and discussion might flow from.

In the hierarchy, "I like X" and "I don't like X" is at the bottom. As such,
my "ideal" is that comments should indeed strive to be above the lowest of the
lowest, even if that means just going a step above into the realm of
Anecdotes.

~~~
mcgwiz
With all due respect, anecdotes vs opinion? A blurry distinction if ever there
was one. Who gets to be the arbiter of that distinction, and placement in
"the" hierarchy of HN comments? It's plain as day that girvo's comment as much
as jeswin's included first hand accounts of real world events (Greg and his
myopia regarding non-MS tech, and satisfied
friends/family/grandfather/customers that demonstrate MS' market viability).
jeswin's comment as much as girvo's included personal opinion.

There was a recent HN discussion about anti-MS bias on the site. I wonder if
that may be relevant.

------
nikatwork
I started my career working on VB apps, and ASP then ASP.NET websites, using a
Windows dev box.

After learning several OSS stacks, I have nothing but contempt for Microsoft
technologies. I wouldn't say I hate MS - they are what they are - but I am
certainly conditioned to be very suspicious of their offerings. I would never
take a job working on a MS stack again, ever.

I currently work for a large enterprise that uses a mix of MS and OSS, and I
take every chance I get to swap out the MS tech with OSS. The devs love it and
it makes me happy.

~~~
jabits
''The devs love it and it makes me happy.''

Not all devs. Microsoft tools have contributed to a long, successful, and
enjoyable career for me, and I have yet to find an IDE as nice as VS (any
contemporary version). The MS toolsets have been mostly good to work with, a
few warts not withstanding.

What OSS tools and IDEs are making your devs so happy, and making their jobs
better than say, VS 2012? (serious question)

~~~
nikatwork
• The biggest smile was moving them from VSS to GIT (+GHE)

• Replacing Windows servers with Redhat has opened up a wealth of automation
opportunities

• RoR on the frontend has allowed a much faster development and deployment
pipeline (ASP.NET and Java are still used for the high-ceremony stuff)

• Our monitoring and alerting is much more straightforward and comprehensive
for the OSS components

• I am so tired of propping up sickly MS servers, the Redhat servers are rock
solid straight out the gate

OTOH for large enterprise, Sharepoint and Office integration works very well,
that's really the MS sweetspot. I'm also interested in their new ALM offering
(TFS), I haven't seen an OSS equivalent as yet. However these are not dev
stacks.

I'm not saying you can't do great stuff using MS tech - stackoverflow is proof
of that. But I have extensive experience in both worlds, and I'll take OSS any
day.

------
Mikeb85
> Why the Microsoft hate?

Because of Microsoft's shady business practices over the years (including Elop
killing Nokia's most promising phone OS, Meego, and driving the share price
down so MS could scoop it up) and the fact their software is just plain bad.

No one actually wants to use MS Windows. Microsoft ruined/killed some of their
most beloved franchises (Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, Combat Flight
Simulator). Internet Explorer is a joke.

Not to mention, the ridiculous licencing terms that come with MS software, the
high prices, and questionable functionality. If paying for Vista was bad, it
was worse that Windows 7 wasn't a free update.

And then there's all the attack ads and FUD Microsoft has spread over the
years (especially against Linux), which continues to this day with the
'Scroogled' campaign and attacks on non-Windows phones.

Anyhow, a better question would be who actually likes Microsoft? Even OEMs are
jumping ship and desperately searching for alternatives (witness all the
Chromebooks coming out now)...

~~~
thisiswrong
> Microsoft ruined/killed some of their most beloved franchises (Age of
> Empires, Flight Simulator, Combat Flight Simulator). Internet Explorer is a
> joke.

This! The AOE series was and IS a central piece of rts history. Ensemble
Studios. AOE Online :(

WTF Microsoft?

------
georgemcbay
I (speaking for myself, obviously, not anyone else on HN) don't hate
Microsoft. I use Windows! Windows 8 in fact!

For context because I'm sure some people (I do think there is an anti-MS bias
here on HN, though not as pronounced as OP thinks it is) may think I'm some
stereotypical Microsoft-using rube. I grew up in the 80s, programming first on
the C64 (BASIC, 6510 Assembler), then Amiga, then various UNIX systems (SunOS,
IRIX, AIX, Ultrix, Solaris, later Linux).

I avoided Windows like crazy until Windows 2000 came out because prior to that
release the idea of using an OS where one process could crash the system at
any time seemed ridiculous (post my Amiga days), and running NT was only for
"enterprises" (at that time). But since I first started using Windows 2000,
Windows has always been my "primary" OS, partly for gaming reasons, partly for
access to commercial software (currently Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop), and
partly because I simply actually just like the look and feel of it.

In the meantime I spent quite a number of years doing Win32 software
development (though now I'm mostly doing Android/Java and some embedded stuff
with Go) and to this day, Visual Studio is still the programming environment
by which all others I use are measured and found wanting. There are some
pretty decent other ones, but I still miss the absolute power of the VS
debugger (against C, C++ and C#) and everytime I find myself doing printf-
debugging because the FOSS tool I'm using doesn't have solid debugging support
I cry a little inside.

I also still do a lot of Linux-based programming these days, each Windows
system I use has half a dozen or more Linux VMs running on them regularly, but
I still prefer Windows as an overall primary desktop. It is fast and extremely
stable these days (hell, the GPU driver can crash due to Nvidia bugs and
Windows will just restart that mofo and keep going, how cool is that?).

All that said, yes, Microsoft hasn't always acted in the best interests of the
overall industry (but neither has any other company near their size, and
Microsoft has gotten better over the years while some others I won't name have
gotten worse, IMO). Also, I still haven't found any good reason to buy a WinRT
device. But my overall impression of Microsoft is pretty positive.

~~~
rounak
Under the assumption that you're a developer, how do you deal with the lack of
a great Terminal/Command line interface on Windows?

~~~
_random_
It's like asking people from the future how do they deal with the lack of
internal combustion engines. Well, we kind of don't need them in most cases.
Because things evolved. GUI has been invented long enough for everyone to
catch up.

~~~
subsection1h
You should contact Microsoft and tell them that creating PowerShell was a
mistake because GUIs are the future. I'm sure they'll weigh your "GUIs are the
future" argument carefully, as we have.

------
quaffapint
I'm almost afraid to reply to this. It's like the hunt for Communists in the
US during the cold war - ah another MS sympathizer.

MS made a lot of mistakes - so did Apple. I was an Apple tech support - it
really sucked not having multitasking and dealing with so many OS issues. Now
I make a living off the MS stack.

I think MS sticking with RT is a bad move - go with full Windows support. I
would still say a Nexus device is probably the best bang for the buck.

In the end it's just an opinion, but you don't need to jump down a company's
throat because their not the ones in vogue at the moment.

~~~
mikeash
And much like the Communist thing, there are some good underlying reasons even
if the end result is not necessarily good. For the Communists, it's because
they were horrible oppressors. For Microsoft, it's because they nearly
destroyed the industry back in the day, and to many of us it seems like they
set back computing about a decade with their monopolistic tactics.

That doesn't mean that the Microsoft of today, much diminished in power and
much increased in reasonable behavior, deserves our continued ire. But it's
hard to shake the reaction to that kind of massive mistreatment.

~~~
kefka
Aside the whole Communist topic.. Ye who enters that debate lies in Internet
flamewars.

Who cares what Microsoft did to the community. They changed SMB protocol to
screw up open source devs. They intentionally fouled up Kerberos
authentication. They added API after API in part to foul up WINE. Not only
that, but then they continuously stagnated on any sort of browser development
until Mozilla kicked in.

But that's the past.

Now, we have them to thank for 'trusted computing', where the computer trusts
the owner (hint: we aren't one). We can thank them for bringing in the
forefront HDMI and trusted video/audio path. I can only remember how many
sound/graphics cards were trashed after the newest Win Vista refused to even
work with them. And I now do tech support for the industry that requires
'secure boot' turned on all newer machines. If you're one of them unlucky ones
running SurfaceRT with an ARM, sorry, it's not compatible with anything other
than what the owner wants (another hint: you still aren't the owner).

Yeah, the MS dev team does seem pretty cool. But you all get criticized over
what the whole company has and still does. If you don't like it, dnot tell
people you work for them. There are other research places other than MS, if
you don't like them.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Microsoft Research is the only company still doing pure CS research that I'm
aware of. This is widely acknowledged also, even by my peers who are working
for Google (we talk often, Apple is completely MIA from the research space).

~~~
curiousDog
Do you it's time MS cut funding to do pure research and focus on research
that'll lead to products instead? Like Google research does? There seems to be
waay too much fluff in MSR too. I mean the number of techfest posters on
campus showing off social (facebook, twitter data) related research was just
ridiculous - I don't see that even remotely benefiting us in the near future.

Also, most of these researchers do not collaborate or are otherwise unaware of
similar product projects going on in-house. For example, we have a ZooKeeper
committer and contributer from MSR, yet we ended up building a distantly
similar one in azure only to find out later that it existed (this was in it's
early days).

------
martey
You have not provided any evidence that flagging is the reason that articles
about the Nokia Lumia 2520 fell off of the front page. It is entirely possible
that they disappeared because not enough people were interested in upvoting
marketing information about a tablet running Windows RT.

 _So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by
default?_

The guidelines for this site suggest that it is bad form to compare HN to
other sites, especially when your account is under a year old. They also
suggest that users should not complain about downmodding (which you are
doing).

I think this would have been a reasonable post if you had found evidence that
articles involving Microsoft consumer electronics received more negative
comments or flags that articles from other companies. Instead, the post and
its comments are just a bunch of unfounded accusations of anti-Microsoft bias.

I would argue that the facts that you assumed that articles about the Lumia
disappeared because people were maliciously flagging them, that you posted an
extremely positive comment about it [1] without disclosing your Microsoft
affiliation, and that you reposted an Engadget article about it [2] just 6
hours after it was originally submitted, and at the same time you were
insulting people in the original submission's comments [3] just as troubling.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6590538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6590538)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6591911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6591911)

[3]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6591575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6591575)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The article definitely had enough upvotes to stay on the front page; it was
definitely knocked two pages back for some reason, and someone admitted to
flagging.

My account is more than a year old, I have 3000+ karma, and I have a low
number on Slashdot as well (and made the front page in 1998).

The bias is real and documented. I posted my own original comment with no
expectation but to express my pleasure, most people who know me on HN know my
affiliation, and it is in my user info. I didn't start fighting until the
comments got very nasty. I reposted because I didn't think the article got a
fair shake the first time.

~~~
magicalist
> _The bias is real and documented_

as I mentioned above, this is not the case. While some Microsoft stories may
be knocked down the page, you would have to measure what happens to every
other kind of story to know if Microsoft stories are in any way special.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I meant, the bias was real and documented in this case. But as pg pointed out,
the article got killed because a flamewar was detected: basically a bunch of
Microsoft haters took a dump on the article...and its history.

In general, many MS articles make it through, and I didn't notice any overt
Microsoft hate until last night (or this morning your guys time).

~~~
bcoates
It takes two to tango. There was a lot of "vote down and move on" behavior in
that thread. Instead, people kept responding to content-free posts, which
predictably got content-free re-responses--because the kind of person who says
something dumb is also the kind of person that demands to get the last word
in.

Responding to threadshitting is a form of threadshitting. It's not very
enjoyable for anyone who clicked in hoping to see interesting discussion about
the subject of the link.

------
anigbrowl
I agree, it's just pack behavior. And no, I don't work for MS, nor have I
ever.

Having said that, launching the day before the iPad was bound to invite
negative comparison without something really special, notwithstanding the good
value proposition of this tablet. What has personally held me back is that
Windows RT has nothing in particular for me because it can't run any x86
legacy apps, while surface Pro seems rather expensive.

As with Google & Android, and MS with many previous versions of Windows, this
platform is poor for musicians and not great for visual artists. I know
creatives are a small market, but they're a very influential one. I don't like
Apple or iOS much, but next time I buy a tablet with a view to making music,
what other choice do I have?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> What has personally held me back is that Windows RT has nothing in
> particular for me because it can't run any x86 legacy apps, while surface
> Pro seems rather expensive.

I agree with that personally, but I would hope that Windows RT could grow a
strong enough ecosystem that this wouldn't be a big deal.

> As with Google & Android, and MS with many previous versions of Windows,
> this platform is poor for musicians and not great for visual artists. I know
> creatives are a small market, but they're a very influential one. I don't
> like Apple or iOS much, but next time I buy a tablet with a view to making
> music, what other choice do I have?

I think focusing on creatives is key also. In particular, I would like to see
some decent touch-friendly programming environment on a tablet; without which
I'm still stuck using a laptop for relatively dumb reasons.

~~~
anigbrowl
Since you work for MS Labs, I beg you to investigate the state machine
possibilities of tools like Reaktor and Flowstone, which are geared towards
signal processing but which are plenty versatile, and seem like they'd be
ideal for touch deployment in principle. I can rant on about this at length in
email if you're interested.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Let me take a look. This isn't my field but I have a couple of colleagues who
might have an interest here.

~~~
anigbrowl
Thanks for being so open to an off-the-wall suggestion. You're welcome to
contact me any time if I can help.

------
skriticos2
I have to work with their system every day at work. I don't have a choice.

I'd really like to go out of Microsoft's way, but they don't let me. I'd like
to look for any workplace and be asked the first day: "which OS / software
stack I prefer?" or give me a blank box to set up. But I usually just get a
Windows box which I'd choose last (somewhere behind pen and paper).

They do patent extortion (they make more money of Android than Windows Phone).

They don't contribute much back to the world at large. I don't mind
proprietary software, but I insist on open interfaces that let software play
together. They don't do that. They don't publish essential specifications,
don't contribute code to the community much and if you reserve engineer their
protocols to provide compatible services, they sue you and extort royalties.
And then there are things like OOXML that they forced through ISO.

Companies working together with Microsoft are regularly burned.

They have been repeatedly used very dirty tactics to corner the market and got
fined for it.

I don't particularly fancy their software (I'm much more comfortable with
Linux systems). Automation of Windows software is horrible and they suffer a
bad form of NIH.

This rubs me the wrong way.

Make them an optional thing in my life that I can avoid and I stop having hard
feelings for them.

~~~
igravious
You don't _have_ to do anything. My friend, be more confident. Learn the stuff
you want to learn. Polish your CV. Look around for work that _you_ want to do.
Bide your time and look around. There are alternatives.

At one point in my career in the mid-90s I decided that I had enough of
working with MS technologies because of the way they abused their position of
dominance and killed companies I liked like Borland and Netscape and because I
learned about F/OSS and started getting into Linux. Then came the Halloween
documents and that was it really. It did hurt my pocket, but you know what?
Sometimes you have to act on principle. These days it is much easier to ignore
Microsoft tech though it's annoying they bought Skype and poisoned Nokia. I do
think that MS Research is a bunch of awesome though, those people rock.

Anyway. I'll say it again. Don't continue being unhappy in what you do. You
don't _have_ to do anything. Take control of your own destiny. If you need
help/advice just reply to this post. Take care.

~~~
skriticos2
Oh, I did not say I was unhappy. I just said I'm not content with the status
quo.

And what does an engineer (by heart) do when things are off? Fix them. For me
this means strengthening alternatives. I just recently released a side project
in the Ubuntu Software Center growing the ecosystem with it.

I can't make a living with this though (yet), so I'm doing a regular day job
too and there is not much choice there sadly around here (Germany).

I also have a family, so I have a strong incentive to keep a stable baseline
income.

I'm working in the direction of doing something nice with my own company where
I can write the rules. It just takes some time and effort.

------
sandGorgon
I am personally rooting for Microsoft because, hey, you're the underdog. But
the seriously botched up release process of Windows 8.1 brought me back to
hate.

I can't download an ISO - I have two computers in my house and I'm in India
with 2mbps,30 gb bandwidth (which is not cheap). Seriously, why would you do
that?

I could not ask my friends for a CD.

The second problem - I can't do a clean install of 8.1 using a windows 8 key.
Because Windows 8.1 is supposed to be "an upgrade from Windows 8, if you have
a 8 key". So the only way to clean install 8.1 is to clean install 8 and THEN
launch the upgrade installer. Combining with the above issue, Im looking at
about 12-15 gb of download to install two computers. All because some sales
suit thought it was a bad idea. Again, seriously? Look at how Apple did the
Mavericks release - the bar is much higher.

I want to like Microsoft - I really think you guys innovated with Windows
Mobile (although Win 8 Metro sucks) , but your business practices soon turns
that into hate.

------
gbog
> Is it ethical to flag something because the article is related to a company
> you don't like

I do not think the important topic of Ethics should be brought so low as to
help us decide on whether to flag or not a link on HN. Let's replace it by
"stupid".

Then yes, it is stupid to flag a post just because it relates to a company we
do not like.

However, it is not stupid to dislike Microsoft. You might remember Paul
Graham's Microsoft is Dead(1): for people a bit older than 20, Microsoft is a
company which was very frightening, a company which did really try to kill
Internet, and force all our industry into a nightmarish path where we
programmers would all be happy slaves.

Just because they have changed the color of their last make-up will not change
this, and I would hope Hackers here and there would actually despise _more_
Microsoft and other similarly dangerous companies.

(1)
[http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

~~~
hrjet
Another reason for being wary of Microsoft:

Their OSes and applications have an auto-run policy (run stuff automatically
when a CD is inserted, or scripts in Excel, etc). It is clearly a way to allow
viruses into the system, and then make some money from updates and anti-
viruses!

~~~
nekopa
Maybe my sarcasm detector if off, but aren't windows updates and Microsoft
Security Essentials (a pretty good AV from what I hear, I wouldn't know as I
run Linux) completely free?

~~~
hrjet
I don't run Windows either but I read articles in which Microsoft plans to
sell their anti-virus service, for example [1].

Moreover, even if these are presently free, in the context of this thread we
should consider the experience of users over two decades of history of Windows
and Office products!

[1]: [http://windowsitpro.com/security/microsoft-should-offer-
free...](http://windowsitpro.com/security/microsoft-should-offer-free-
antivirus-technology-its-windows-customers)

~~~
nekopa
I understand being wary of MS, I've used their products since the mid 1980s,
(Switched over to Linux for everything but gaming about 10 years ago), but you
do realize the article you referenced is from 2003?

------
tacoman
For me, it's kind of like sports. Why do you hate certain teams?

I'm a 90's linux user so my hate for MS is self explanatory and these days
mostly irrational. Recently I found myself working with a group of Microsoft
employees and it's tough to "hate" them, their company or the really nice
products they flaunt around (Surface, Windows Phones, etc).

There are a lot things that continue to feed my dislike for the company
though. It's silly things, like the way they continue to ignore the existence
of industry standard protocols (ssh! there is BSD code! just copy it!!).

In day to day dealings with the company I sometimes still get a sense of
arrogance and not-invented-here type scenarios that prevent a better solution
from being perused.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You don't have to love MS or upvote their articles, just not use the flag
button to kill articles because you don't like them.

I definitely empathize with much of what you are saying. But many of us are
just average joes working for a big company with diverse interests. You might
still want to interact with us because we know things and have interesting
stories to tell. Even if you hate a certain team, would you really give their
players a cold shoulder?

~~~
tacoman
I work for a telco so I understand what it's like to work for a big unloved
corporation. FWIW, the MSFT employees I work with are a great group of very
talented and helpful people.

------
tptacek
Are you sure about this? If I go to HNSearch, look for Nokia stories, and sort
by date, I can't find a comment saying that any of them aren't relevant to
HN... which doesn't surprise me because there's no argument under which Nokia
wouldn't be relevant to HN.

Can you link to one of these stories that got flagged off the site?

~~~
iamshs
Thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6590378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6590378)

~~~
tptacek
I see one guy saying he flagged the story ('JanezStupar). That person abused
the flag button and needs to stop doing that. I don't see a lot of people
saying the story wasn't relevant, or saying they flagged the story.

I'm asking because there is more than one reason why a story might drop off
the front page; flagging is one of them, but so is the voting ring detector.

~~~
iamshs
Here's the chart for that story:
[http://hnrankings.info/6590378/](http://hnrankings.info/6590378/)

I do not know what the correct interpretation of it is though. Not at persons
flagging will write a comment though.

------
pkteison
I know it's been too long and it's an unreasonable position to take, but I'm
still upset about Stacker.

Add on wasting the purchase of Danger (Sidekicks were amazing), intentionally
changing their OS solely to screw with competitors, the terribleness of
embrace and extend, and I just can't get excited about anything from
Microsoft. Sure, they've behaved better recently, but they've had real
competition recently. I stop short of hate, but I'm not excited about their
stuff unless it's something as big as the Kinect can drive my car to the moon.

------
jamespcole2
I don't think people hate MS, they just don't even think about them. Whenever
I am at tech events(usually web related ones) MS isn't openly criticised,
they're not even discussed as an option.

I spend about 50% of my time developing .net apps and the other half on
linux/web stuff so I'm pretty familiar with the MS tech stack and it always
feels very clunky and outdated.

MS hasn't created a really compelling consumer product since the Xbox and they
have just totally lost consumer mindshare, they are the slow, clunky old thing
you use at work because you have to, not the thing you buy when spending your
own money.

In my view the future is(at least in the medium term) Linux on the server and
mobile devices, Unix on the laptop/desktop in the form of OSX and maybe MS on
the console and Windows running legacy systems and some servers.

I'm not a particular fan of Apple either(I've never purchased any of their
products) and only use Linux(Ubuntu) and Windows in a VM but it seems to me
consumers just don't care about MS any more and I'm not sure that MS has the
skills to change that.

~~~
_random_
"it always feels very clunky and outdated." \- can you elaborate? And please
don't mention Java, JavaScript, C++ as those are all old and barely evolving.
Web - maybe (Ruby is quite good at one specific thing). I would like to hear
about something that makes e.g. TPL and Rx "clunky and outdated". I would like
to see something that beats Visual Studio + R#.

~~~
jamespcole2
It's mainly things like the lack of a good package manager for provisioning,
inexplicably large installers, sub-par automation, inscrutable GUI's packed
with useless features, having to RDP into a server to perform basic tasks
rather than just using SSH, massive bloat(why is everything so huge?), a
general disregard for dev ops.

Also I find the licencing really irritating when creating VMs and servers. In
the end thinking something "feels" old and clunky is a subjective perception
but every time I use MS products it feels like they were created with little
or no insight or knowledge into what anyone else is doing, leading to a lot of
NIH syndrome.

Absolutely garbage browsers are also a big problem, I know IE 10 is passable
but in 4 years when it hasn't been updated and people using Win7 and 8 are
stuck using it, it will be the IE6 of its day.

Don't get me wrong, I used MS products basically exclusively for the first 5
years of my developer career, and still use them a fair bit now, and thought
it was amazing, it's not until you move outside that bubble and start using
better tools and methodologies that you realise how far behind they are.

------
xradionut
Here's the deal: Despite having some awesome tech and many talented employees,
Microsoft as a corporation has a history of shitting on developers, smaller
companies and independents. There's a history of threatening OSS, monopoly
abuse, abandoning APIs, bad certs, crapware, gross mismanagement, ignoring
constructive requests and a very bad case of Not Invented Here. And they do
have an history of astro-turfing and aggressive social media promotion.

Disclosure: I've primarily worked as a MS stack developer and admin for over
two decades. But I've also used a full spectrum of other technologies over the
years, too. I've been agnostic and objective when it come to the industry, but
I've eaten enough excuses from Redmond. There's good alternatives, I'm
exploring more of them.

~~~
dangero
Abandoning APIs to me is a sign of bad management, and that's what I really
can't stand any more. I have spent my career building apps side by side for OS
X and Windows and I just can't stomach Windows any more. The thing is, unless
you're really lucky, you probably have worked at a few places that had really
bad management. I know I have. When you get the same vibe from the company
that manages your IDE and complete computing (operating system) experience
it's a terrible feeling. Take Metro for example. I can't stand the thought of
developing for it because I have this sinking feeling that in 2 years
Microsoft will have to abandon it and I will have wasted hours of my life that
I can never get back. Conversely, take Objective-C. I have been greatly
rewarded for taking the time to learn that. Something tells me that isn't
going anywhere. Granted, any company will have some misses and drop things,
but Microsoft it's like loading the barrel of a gun with 5 bullets and putting
it to your head.

Disclaimer: This is opinionated commentary partially describing the bad
feelings that I actually feel towards Microsoft after all these years. They
are more emotional and less factual, but I think the fact that I arrived here
associating these bad feelings towards Microsoft shows what a deep hole they
are in with developers.

------
Locke1689
People in tech, including those on HN, are often prone to hyperbole (myself
included).

I've got a bunch of example topics: MS, the NSA, F/OSS, Google & privacy,
CISPA, etc.

In each of these cases, there's usually some voices of reason (grellas,
anigbrowl, tptacek, masklinn, gruseom, I'm looking at you) and a lot of people
who treat the story as life and death.

CISPA is the END of net neutrality. Google is the END of privacy on the
internet. F/OSS is about what's RIGHT and what's WRONG and F/OSS is RIGHT and
proprietary software is WRONG. MS SecureBoot isn't about addressing a well-
studied security problem by Microsoft and the security industry, it's about
PUTTING DOWN the Linux desktop. The NSA is the END OF ALL PRIVACY.

I'm not sure what the reason is but people just overreact.

So here's my take on MS. It's a software company. Use their stuff, don't use
their stuff: whatever. The days when it was THE software company are over. If
we don't ship you a compelling experience, use something else.

------
auctiontheory
Why the past tense in so many of these posts? Windows and especially Office
are still an efficiency and $$ tax on businesses and consumers around the
world.

I would guess that 1% of Office sales are for folks who "need" the
functionality of (most likely) Excel over what is offered by OpenOffice,
Google Docs, etc. All the rest are driven by the effective monopoly of the
Office file system "standard."

I am happy to pay for great products, like my MBP, but these aren't great
products - even after decades, Word is still a <NSFW> to use.

~~~
OrwellianChild
I don't understand your argument... The popular standards in all proprietary
formats exert a "tax" on businesses and consumers in the context you describe.
Witness Adobe with Photoshop and Flash, Apple with iOS devices, etc. Yet
people pay the $240/year for the Photoshop license instead of a one-time $30
for Paint Shop Pro (or free for GIMP). It's not a conspiracy - everyone else
using the same ecosystem as you has external benefits and that's why people
buy in.

It's not just that Excel is powerful (and it is...). It's that as a user, I
have access to all the pre-made macros and VBA tools from an army of other
users. I have the availability of help from a plethora of well-staffed
volunteer forums. I have the ability to natively open any XLS, XLSX, XLSM, and
XLSB file that a colleague or customer sends me.

I think it is unwise to underestimate the power and privileges gained by
working in the dominant ecosystem. People don't part with their money that
blindly or lightly - it is the easy choice to go with the herd on many of
these decisions rather than paving your own road with a (relatively) un-tested
marginal player.

~~~
auctiontheory
You are conflating two completely different properties of MS Office: (1)
product functionality (e.g. macros) and ecosystem, and (2) proprietary file
format lockin.

I'm objecting to the latter, when it is a virtual monopoly, and I'm suggesting
that the vast majority of Office sales are for the latter reason, not the
former.

~~~
OrwellianChild
So, by extension, the vast majority of Photoshop sales are due to PSD lock-in?
And the vast majority of Apple sales are due to iOS lock-in?

I'm seeking a distinction here. If my statements about Adobe and Apple are not
true, what makes Microsoft different?

~~~
auctiontheory
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling me; this has
been widely discussed for years ...

Apple and Adobe do not have the segment market share that Microsoft does with
Office. More importantly (to me), people buy Apple and Adobe products because
they _want_ to. People buy Microsoft Office because they _have_ to. And they
feel they have to not because Office has functionality that is so unsurpassed
to help them get work done, but for one reason alone: file-format lock in.

As if, and again this is hardly original with me, a private company controlled
the protocol to make phone calls and forced you to buy their (overpriced,
crappy) phones to access the phone network.

~~~
OrwellianChild
Guarantee I'm not trolling. I simply disagree with your appraisal of the
situation. This is the quote I have the most problem with:

"People buy Apple and Adobe products because they want to. People buy
Microsoft Office because they have to."

By what possible criteria could you assert this? Each company exists in a free
market with multiple competitors - the very ones that you wish people would
use instead of the leaders (e.g. OpenOffice or Google Docs). Furthermore, in
certain segments (like cloud-based office offerings), people _are_ migrating
in droves to Google Docs. They held between 33-50% user share in 2012
according to Gartner.* This is not the behavior of a locked-in market.

*Cite: [http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/23/google-apps-vs-microso...](http://rcpmag.com/articles/2013/04/23/google-apps-vs-microsoft-office.aspx)

Finally, an AT&T-style hardware infrastructure monopoly is not in play here.
File formats don't lock you out of word processing any more than iOS apps keep
you out of the smartphone business. They just offer a perk. I can't get every
cool app on my Android phone. That doesn't mean that Apple is exerting a tax
on me. It's just a selling point I have to consider.

------
spamizbad
I'd like to thank you for offering that "Full Disclosure" \- it represents how
Microsoft culture has changed over the years (for the better). In earlier
times, Microsoft would often encourage its employees to covertly astroturf on
its behalf on various internet forums or news groups. This happened on
Arstechnica years ago, and involved quite a bit of drama when one of the mods
traced the IP of a poster back to Redmond's office after the convert employee
was trolling the Linux/OSS forums.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I have never heard about astroturfing happening in the company before, and
besides, I'm in research.

We are allowed to post from our computers at work. I'm sure, given that
Microsoft has 100k employees, that there must be a few bad apples in the
bunch: you know, statistically speaking, their will be a few mentally
unbalanced people doing things that Microsoft might not otherwise approve of.

~~~
jejones3141
John Dvorak, quoted on
[http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos/2005/11/2_grassroot...](http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos/2005/11/2_grassroots_an.html):

"Some years back, Microsoft practiced a lot of dirty tricks using online
mavens to go into forums and create Web sites extolling the virtues of Windows
over OS/2\. They were dubbed the Microsoft Munchkins, and it was obvious who
they were and what they were up to. But their numbers and energy (and they way
they joined forces with nonaligned dummies who liked to pile on) proved too
much for IBM marketers, and Windows won the operating-system war through
fifth-column tactics."

Also, googling "Steve Barkto" will turn up interesting information.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I wouldn't know. Back then I was working for IBM on OS/2 in Boca Raton, in, as
I was told, the very office space that Microsoft vacated a few years earlier
when the NT/OS/2 collaboration broke down.

But if I had to choose between IBM and Microsoft, I think Microsoft wins as
the more ethical company. IBM seemed like a very shady place to work business
practice wise. And no one is talking about IBM these days on HN, unless they
happen to do something like Watson occasionally.

~~~
yuhong
_the very office space that Microsoft vacated a few years earlier when the NT
/OS/2 collaboration broke down_

After MS has already sent the original OS/2 2.0 SDKs to developers. I wrote a
blog post about this entire fiasco you should read:
[http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-
os2-20-fiasco-...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-
os2-20-fiasco-px00307-and-dr.html)

------
ksk
>So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by default?
Is it ethical to flag something because the article is related to a company
you don't like, even if the source is generally reputable (theverge, engadget,
ars)?

I've been browsing slashdot practically since it started and if thats your
barometer, then the most tech websites are 'Slashdot!'. In my opinion, the
vast majority of the anti-ms comments can be safely ignored as they are just
trolls looking for attention. Whats interesting is that the trolls that
attempt _technical arguments_ are also wrong the vast majority of the time.
And if they bring an ideological argument, then they are some kind of open
source zealot and bring nothing new to the already dead old open-close source
flamewar. (Open-Source won BTW :P)

I know several people at MS.. and MS has great talent as well as some
extremely well engineered products. With all that said, MS has done some
pretty shitty things in the past. And all of those shitty things have been
bouncing around in the internets echo chamber - being twisted into half-truths
to complete lies for about 10 years. There is just too much misinformation
entrenched in the community for MS to be able to counter that. I don't know if
they deserve it but its going to be a long long time before you can expect any
kind of fair treatment from average geeks.

------
shearnie
My startup friends and I here in Brisbane, Australia talk quite a bit about
going to San Fran to "soak up the start-up vibe".

I often joke about having the nerve to set up camp in a coffee shop there and
whip out my Surface Pro, fire up visual studio, and sling some C# and see how
quickly I'll get hated on.

I do wonder, will that really happen? Honest question.

~~~
icefox
Just begging for some sort of poke.... Hmm how about: Even if you got some
negative comments it wouldn't be much as you would have to put it away when
its battery died before long ;D

Seriously C# is nice and while I am a die hard unix guy I wouldn't be caught
owning a MS laptop myself I am coding with C# server code at work at am
enjoying the experience. I would honestly be curious what you could do doing
in C#. MS is giving no direction on the future of C#, desktop is suppose to be
JavaScript now? Server isn't about C#, but supports everything? XBox cross
platform stuff is shutdown, silverlight dead.... So you hacking in it in a
coffee shop would be a curiosity.

~~~
_random_
Things you can do with C#:

1) Web using ASP.NET MVC 2) Desktop using WPF, XAML 3) Mobile on any platform
via Xamarin Mono

PS: if you see someone hacking C# in a coffee shop, than it's most likely
something for mobile, highly-portable and probably a game (MonoGame and Unity
are pushing C# mainstream as it's much better than dealing with Obj C or
JavaScript).

~~~
icefox
I'll give you #1, but from digging into the topic #2 is very much up in the
air long term and I would be _very_ wary of starting any new project with it
#3 doesn't count as it is through Xamarin as I was explicitly talking about
Microsoft plans.

------
benologist
If you see a comment you think is ridiculous click "link" and you should be
able to flag them. I don't think HNers in general hate MS but this community
is pretty biased towards OS X and Linux, it's hard to feign interest in stuff
you don't use.

Engadget and The Verge are professional plagiarists, it would be bad for this
community to adopt those sites as some kind of standard for tech news, and
it's awesome seeing them fail over and over again to get a foothold here.

~~~
chimeracoder
> If you see a comment you think is ridiculous click "link" and you should be
> able to flag them.

This option isn't available to everyone - I, for one, don't have flagging
privileges.

I'd assume that this is probably a karma threshold, but it appears I actually
have slightly more karma than you do, so they must be using some other metric.

~~~
cjfont
So when you click "link", you don't actually see the "flag" link at all? With
my low karma it's appearing for me. FWIW, I've never flagged anyone before.

~~~
chimeracoder
Nope. I can downvote people, but I can't flag them.

I don't remember ever having this privilege, on either comments or on stories.

------
madmax96
It's because Microsoft used to be such a horrible company. It's debatable
whether or not they still are, but that's not the point. I still haven't
forgiven them for their tactics that destroyed competitors who often had
superior products, and I probably never will. Not only that, but typically
speaking, it sucks hacking on Microsoft products. All of Microsoft is also
anti-hacker; I can't hack my OS, I can't hack the programs they make, etc.
That was probably the mentality of HN when they claimed it wasn't relevant.
Since iOS and OS X work well together and OS X is somewhat hackable, it gets
more love.

------
dec0dedab0de
Without reading any other comments, I would say that Microsoft does not have
any goodwill left. Everyone respects Microsoft research, but it has to be
something interesting enough to stand on its own merit to be worth caring
about. The flipside is that there are tons of people that really like Apple
for some reason, though I suspect that will fade in time.

------
rajivtiru
I'm relatively new to HN. It's disappointing but I kind of just accepted the
Microsoft hate, as a given(like nick cage on reddit).

Also recently I started to see posts from older HN members who don't like what
the community is turning into.

------
lisper
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I hate Microsoft because they're
crooks. They made their money not by creating a better product at a
competitive price, but by breaking the law. And then they used the position of
power and influence that they had attained by breaking the law not to make the
world a better place, but to crush competition and inhibit innovation.

You asked.

------
lessnonymous
In this thread: People getting confused over what Hacker News is.

We're not the OSDN. In fact we (as a collective group of users) are not
related to the open source movement in any way. Why should MS's closed-source
viewpoint matter to us? Are we not here to build businesses in the tech space?

Sometimes the right tool to use is made by Microsoft. Sometimes it's open
source.

~~~
gbog
Don't forget the "Hacker" in Hacker news: it is very natural, reasonable,
expected and even necessary for Hackers to have a strong and marked preference
towards open protocols, open source software, and to dislike monopolies,
walls, closedness, blind rule abiding, etcetera.

A convoluted spirit might believe hackers like closed doors because they enjoy
breaking in and would like more of them. But that is wrong, just as it is
wrong to believe that physicians would love to have more deadly diseases to
play with.

~~~
general_failure
And yet we have apple stuff all over frontage when they are clearly against
hackers

~~~
gbog
Yes, it worries me too, but it seems the tide retreats slowly.

------
DSingularity
Well I dont hate them. I actually always admired MS. When I was a kid, Windows
3.1 just amazed me.

And I continued to be a fan. But then one day I realized GMail was so much
better than hotmail. So much free space! No more deleting! Hotmail refused to
change, so I switched over. Then one day I realized that linux was such a
great place for me to learn how to program. So I picked it up.

With time I tried other products and, one by one, I realized there were
alternatives I prefer to MS's offerings. Today I bought my first Macbook. My
first non windows machine. I dont plan on purchasing any more Office licenses.
And for the first time in a while, I see no MS products on the horizon for me.
Not the XBox One. Not Windows 8 mobile. Not surface pro. Nothing.

Why? I prefer their competitors products. Its not MS hate. They just dont have
a single product that exites me. Nothing.

Now if you asked me about Windows 8 UI, I would tell you that I think its an
abomination. That might look like MS hate.

If you asked me about the Surface, I would tell you I hate how it tries to do
so much and fails to lead in just about anything. If you ask me about IE, I
would tell you that I think Firefox and Chrome are better, although the new
one seems crisp.

Nothing to do with the brand, all to do with the product.

------
underwater
I was disappointed that the Nokia thread was nuked. I was interested to see
HN's take on it. Instead it ended with a silly flamewars about astroturfing
and we ended up with half a dozen articles about OS X and the iPad on the home
page.

------
forgottenpaswrd
So you work for Microsoft and your wife is from a company that is being bought
by Microsoft, so everything in your life is Microsoft.

That's ok, great, you are totally biased in favor of this company.

So you can't understand or respect other people opinions. "hate" is a very
strong term for not caring enough, or not caring as much as some family with
all members working for the company.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Nokia isn't a part of Microsoft, even if that could happen in the future. My
wife was working for Nokia before recent events.

------
jes
I don't hate Microsoft, but as an older (54) hacker who was plenty happy on
his 11/780 running Mt. Xinu BSD in 1989, I'm still waiting for this whole
"Windows" thing to blow over.

------
mercurial
> So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by default?

Well. HN has a strong proportion of open-source people, and Microsoft's
relationship with the open-source community has been historically poor, in no
small part due to ethically-challenged decisions made by Microsoft management.
I'd even argue that Microsoft has essentially lost all trust when it comes
down to it. Embrace, extend, extinguish, etc. Much as Oracle's brand does not
attract the best feelings here.

Though I'll point out that Microsoft Research as a distinct unit produces
extremely valuable work, and that many folks talking about the bad quality of
Microsoft products haven't touched Windows since the dawn of the century.

> Is it ethical to flag something because the article is related to a company
> you don't like, even if the source is generally reputable (theverge,
> engadget, ars)?

No, I wouldn't say that it is.

------
abraxasz
In my case it's more grudge than hatred. The fact that a company made me pay
for VISTA is unforgivable. \joke

More seriously, I've noticed that a large portion (like in 90%) of the CS
department and Statistics department in my Uni (US, Ivy) run mac os x, or
linux. Is that a general trend elsewhere? I have my own reasons for preferring
OSX, and I have a hard time believing that these 90% picked osx or linux just
because of a "vogue" or "trend". Genuinely curious here.

~~~
onedev
Yup I go to a well known state school and literally everyone has Macbooks. All
the students, all the professors; EVERYONE.

Every company I've worked at in the past (both in SV and elsewhere) were ALL
using Macbooks exclusively. Go to Silicon Valley and every company/startup
there is probably all Mac'ed up from top to bottom with some remote linux
boxes thrown in, usually accessed through a Macbook.

In fact I've seen the transition firsthand from my younger High School days to
College. When I was in High School, it'd be very rare to see my friends or
teachers, or just people in general with Macs. Now, it's surprising when
someone DOESN'T have a Macbook. It's crazy. Macbooks are THE quintessential
laptops... nay... computing devices in general for most people. Honestly, it's
for a good reason too, they're solid for both the pros and mom/dads
everywhere.

I might come off as a bit of an Apple fanboy here, and it's true I love their
products, but the phenomenon I described above is independent of my personal
views; it's something I've really observed around me.

------
ksec
1\. IE 6, Is that not enough to hate them? Anyone who has done any sort of web
development during the IE6 era would hate them.

2\. The ugliness of Microsoft Office. I dont see each version of M$ office
were ever an improvement. While it did generate excitement, it wasn't until
someone who actually tired iWork to know how easy it is to do beautiful
documents and charts. And to be it wasn't until the Office 2k7 did they start
to react ( But they got Ribbon in there which is an even bigger let off ). And
although many improvement since then, those days i would remember how i am
forced to use office.

To me, i see absolutely no heart and souls in those Microsoft Products. They
aren't well thought out, most of the time contradicting or even annoying.
Purely in terms of user experience it was very bad.

And M$ was really rich. The Richest company at one point in time. That is not
to say people hate the riches. It is merely a point that they have so much
money why didn't they go and fix things. Things that should have been done
long long time ago. And as the Mac Vs PC ads have put it, they put so much
more budget inside marketing then fixing bugs!

Their Business Practice is also a point of hate. Using Windows Monopoly to get
rid of competing technology by including something similar of their own.
Personally I have no problem with that. Honestly if the product offering from
Microsoft were superior then people would use it anyway. BUT THEY WERE NOT.

And there were a lots of other little things there and there that shows they
are just a huge pile of mess.

Of coz Credit where credits due. There are amazing things Microsoft did.
Microsoft Research for instance, i saw the presentation on real time voice
recognition and translation. And many other things from Microsoft Research as
well. Xbox 360, from PS3 prospective were quite good ( not great, but good ).
And Mouse and Keyboard, that is the only competitor against Logitech in
consumer range.

And I dont think People are Pro Apple and therefore Anti M$.

------
edderly
Up front, social media is largely about signalling. If X is deemed unpopular
amongst 'those in the know', you signal your disapproval and vice versa.

Context matters a lot for Microsoft.

Amongst older people, there are enough casualties of Microsoft's success
around to warrant a default hatred for the company and it's values.

However, the saddest indictment is even at the height of their success many
people didn't like or even hated using their products (take the parody of
Windows/BG in South Park the movie in 1999 as an example if you like).

So I think Microsoft as a deserved reputation for considering the enjoyment of
their products as a separate from the success of their business, at least in
the mainstream. It's not to say that Microsoft don't do good products, but
it's difficult to regain trust which is lost.

------
xentronium
> So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by default?

It's been like this for some time. Bias is slightly changed from being very
google-centric to apple-centric and back, but hate for microsoft is pretty
much clandestine. So much for anti-flamewar features, encouraging group
thinking.

I don't think you can fight it much, just don't read hn in the days of apple
presentations, you won't miss anything.

------
ilaksh
The main reason I hate Microsoft is because of all the time I had to waste
getting websites to display correctly in their browser. And the fact that I
know they made it incompatible on purpose.

------
etler
Personally, some of the stuff microsoft has been building recently looks
really appealing. I want to give some of their stuff a chance, particularly
their direction with tablets. I have a convertible tablet and in college used
things like onenote and the text recognition it has is simply amazing, better
than anything else I've used. I could stash an image on it, then write on top
of it, then search it immediately after! So I think microsoft has had a good
track record with tablet technology, and I'm definitely interested in trying
out the new stuff. I haven't yet, simply because I haven't had a chance to
test the new surface pro.

------
shanselman
This article nails it...the Worst Part about Working at Microsoft

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/09/what-is-the-
wor...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/10/09/what-is-the-worst-thing-
about-working-at-microsoft/)

It's the number of people who doubt us. We suck, we hate OSS, we are evil, we
are incompetent.

Thing is, Microsoft isn't a monolith. It's little startups, small groups and
big groups. I went there 5 years ago to do open source and I'm doing it. I
can't speak for the other gajillion groups but mine doesn't suck and we work
hard doing nice things.

It's tiring be to doubted so consistently.

~~~
jcbrand
Oh, you mean the article that claims MS should get credit for the chair I'm
sitting on? Uh, ok...

Making OSS that only works on the MS stack doesn't really count.

~~~
shanselman
Ya, his article jumped the shark there and went downhill from there, but the
essence is there. We dropped the ball on Smart Watches, Tablet PCs, Pens, etc.

Agreed on the OSS thing, that's why my group doesn't do that whenever
possible.

------
shadowmint
You know those articles on stackoverflow which are marked 'matter of opinion,
not constructive'?

yeah. this. That.

(I fully endorse discussion about meaningful topics, but I think it's a bit
stupid to have a microsoft vs. not microsoft post push up at the top of HN.
Everyone, post your opinion on this topic now, instead of actually talking to
each other~)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
This post wouldn't have happened if that Nokia Tablet incident yesterday
didn't occur, where people were stopped from talking to each other through a
few anti-MS trolls throwing shill accusations around. You are free to
completely ignore this post, but given the number of upvotes, I guess there
are some pent up feelings about this.

------
ern
I've seen more hate directed against Oracle than Microsoft, and I don't see
much hate against products like .NET, C# or Xbox, when they are discussed.

I guess that Microsoft-related topics are not regarded as supremely
interesting to most of the startup scene, which still drives this site in many
ways. MS aren't high growth, haven't been a startup for decades, and their
stack doesn't seem popular with startups. Even if a few people hate Microsoft,
I'd characterize the overall tone I've observed on HN regarding Microsoft as
largely indifferent.

------
Pitarou
Of course there's prejudice, but the main reason is that the HN crowd doesn't
believe that MS has what it takes to make a dent in the smartphone market. And
I'm with the crowd on this one.

Given the strength of the incumbents, Microsoft is going to have to pull off
something pretty special to make a dent in the smartphone market. Microsoft
played to its strengths by buying Nokia, but that's the only strength
Microsoft has in this brave new world of lightweight, portable always-on
devices, and its nowhere near enough. The organisation just isn't capable of
producing a smartphone consumers will want to own and use.

Take my wife: she's no computer lover, and certainly not a Linux nerd or Mac
fanboy. She has to use computers in her day-to-day life, and she finds it
stressful and confusing. But she loves her Android Nexus 7. In her mind, the
Nexus 7 tablet and her Windows laptop belong in different categories. If I
told her someone was trying to merge those categories ("The guys who make
Windows and Excel are going to make smartphones. Do you want one?") I know
she'd run a mile.

I can understand why we have very different takes on Microsoft. I'm also well
aware that Microsoft have solved a whole lot of problems so well that people
don't even think about them any more. And I LOVE the awesome work you guys do
in MSR. But I don't see enough of that awesome in the products people have to
work with every day, and in the smartphone market that's going to hurt!

------
tnuc
There is always hate for the big player.

In early Steve Jobs/Apple meetings their was a lot of hate for IBM. After some
time the hate was reserved for Bill Gates/Microsoft. The latest enemy is
Google.

------
warcher
Every company has their faults.

Apple is so much worse than Microsoft, business practices wise, in nearly
every way. But they're a minority, and they compensate for their rapaciousness
with a level of quality and attention to detail that nobody else does, period.

Linux and their ecosystem is like the Borg. Everybody will be open source
eventually, and if you don't get on board they'll just clone you. And
eventually they'll win. Look at how far gimp has come. They're gonna get
everybody sooner or later.

Google wants to be Microsoft in the worst way, but has not yet achieved the
level of hubris that would allow them to forget that a new search engine is
just a click away. And it is. If google pisses us off enough, they could be
wrapped up overnight. And they know it.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is a mean competitor that doesn't really do
quality and has its roots in the nineties when it OWNED EVERYTHING. And it
still owns the desktop, and office productivity. Which is the company,
frankly. Anything else they do is window dressing or a loss leader in search
of finding their way back to the center of the universe, which isn't going to
happen. And the beef people have with them comes from our remembrance of their
tender mercies when they ran everything everywhere. We, the consumers, are
vastly better off in a multipolar tech world, and its difficult to imagine
anybody allowing a single company to accumulate that level of monopoly ever
again.

Plus Microsoft astroturfs for pr like nobody else, so fans are automatically
suspect.

------
philwelch
Do you recall anything of the 1990's? IE 6? Embrace, extend, and extinguish?
The Halloween documents? Microsoft's conviction of anticompetitive business
practices left unpunished when the Bush administration took over? The decades
of terrible products?

~~~
erbo
And let's not forget their use of SCO as a sock puppet with which to attack
and possibly destroy Linux (see: perhaps 50% of the Groklaw archives).

 _Note:_ There may not be a "smoking gun" that establishes M$ as the true
force behind the SCO v. world+dog lawsuits, but there's enough circumstantial
evidence out there to establish "probable cause." Besides, if Linux were to
suddenly be outlawed and/or made non-free as the result of a court decision
going SCO's way, _cui bono?_

------
umeshunni
Why should the Nokia tablet deserve to be on the front page any more than the
new Sony tablet or a new Acer tablet? Does it have any new technology that
makes it stand out (like the 41MP camera in the Nokia 1020)? Does it introduce
a new form factor that's unique (like the 0.71" 1lb iPad Air or the trashcan
Mac Pro) ? Is it priced uniquely or does it use a new OS or processor that
other tablets don't?

Or is it just another 'me too' product? It is.

~~~
tr4656
The iPad Air isn't really a unique form factor; its just thin and light.

~~~
x0x0
and, you know, actually relevant given the thriving ios app business and wide
deployment. Unlike microsoft phones and tablets.

~~~
TheLegace
Exactly, I'm tired of hearing PC-esque defence of these incompetent companies.
Their products have always been a bane, they suck.

I remember my HTC Diamond on the original Windows Phone failure.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Then don't upvote the PC-esque articles, but why flag them?

------
avenger123
When you get as big and as powerful as Microsoft you could almost see the
company as a country. It's akin to America and its export of culture
(hollywood, music, tv shows, etc..).

You will find people that embrace it (large majority all over the world) and
others who despise it with a passion and still others who are indifferent.
There are those that dabble in it once in a while to see what the fuss is all
about and those that actively resist it to make sure their culture doesn't get
polluted.

I would say for the most part, the HN community is like Quebec in Canada.
Largely in love with their own culture and heritage (in this case open source
stacks and Linux) with a strong feeling to keep it that away. But, Quebec also
knows that English culture and the English language won't go ahead as its too
pervasive so they try to do their best to keep it in check. Just as in Quebec,
you have people that love the English culture and follow it but not too
publicly.

I have noticed HN crowd is likely very SF focused and the biases tend to skew
that away.

Well, so much for the analogy but at the end of the day, its part of the
territory when you become as big and successful as Microsoft. The same ASK HN
would be relevant if the company was changed to Google, Apple, IBM and so
forth.

------
mcv
The unjustified MS hate is a remnant of the justified MS hate of the past,
when they used shady business practices to force DOS and Windows down the
world's throat.

Nowadays they're fairly tame, however. It's time to treat them as any other
tech company.

------
jfe
i wouldn't say that HN or the open source community in general has shut the
doors on microsoft as much as microsoft has shut the doors on the open source
community. developers who get into the microsoft bubble never seem to make
their way out, and the number of open-source c# projects is limited in
comparison to those written in other languages, simply due to their system
dependence.

------
metaphorm
Microsoft has a reputation problem in the open source community. There are
some serious philosophical differences and its unlikely Microsoft can amend
its reputation without drastically changing its business practices.

------
kbart
I actually enjoy this Microsoft bashing. It's like seeing a former school
bully, who is now living of benefits and drinking cheap beer. Microsoft
totally deserves it after decades of aggression towards FOSS, unfair
competition and monopolising PC business. Of course, there are also really
good stuff coming from Microsoft, but that's nothing compared to the harm
done.

------
anoopelias
"Hate the sin, but not the sinner".

It is important as a community that we keep an open view about the products
that we see getting posted here. Microsoft might have made mistakes in the
past and had produced lowly products.

But who knows, it is possible that the next best thing in the world may come
from one of them - or for that matter, anybody. A prejudiced eye can only have
a blurred vision.

------
chaostheory
I feel the dislike of Microsoft stems from two major things:

1) Its history both when it was dominant and even with recent stuff like
trying to force always on DRM with xbone. Techies at large just distrust MS.
In MS's defense, I feel that both Apple and Google are working their way to
the same place, a lot more slowly but surely.

2) The difficulty of developing in Windows while not using the MS stack. Sure,
it's gotten a lot better over the years, but it's still not as easy as using
OSX or some Linux distro. Even when you do use the Windows stack you get
burned, I've known former VB devs as well as .NET devs who were with the
Windows 8 transition. Your open source eco-system also really sucks, leading
to a lot of unnecessary re-inventions of the wheel, which I don't have to do
when using other tech stacks. (Codeplex was really too little and too late.)

I also think the second point is why there's not as much hate for Google and
Apple, since their main offerings just work better from the techie
perspective.

------
einhverfr
I don't hate Microsoft (I used to work at Microsoft Product Support Services).
At the same time, I think after watching Microsoft try to break into the
consumer smartphone market for the last 14 years, I think there is a point
when one wonders if they should just give up. The only people I know using
Microsoft phones and tablets are Microsoft employees.

------
Lavinski
Just so you know there are a few guys out here (I'm one) that do like
Microsoft and my Nokia Lumia is going great.

~~~
Zoomla
Did you set the default megapixel setting for the camera lower then 41?

------
nonchalance
I suspect that most people here who hate Microsoft still use products like
Excel (for which there is no good competitor :) And maybe that's part of the
reason for the hate: for all the problems, there are a few indispensable
products that keep us coming back to windows and office and other Microsoft
products.

~~~
mixmastamyk
As a developer I have no need for office programs. On the odd chance I get
sent a file, libre-office is plenty fine.

------
mrmondo
Microsoft has had their day - their time has been and gone. Their software is
more bloated than ever and their organisational model is still 'build to
sell'.

------
gbvb
I think the problem is that it is not 'hate' like people are hating java. I
think it is more that MS has become 'irrelevant' in circles that matter :)
i.e. the consultants who go around telling new companies what to develop in.

If you see the pattern of adoption by developers, I see more developers
walking around with Macs, and linux boxes and running VMs to test out IE
compat than anything else.

So, MS has become another OS to work with than the OS to develop on. imo.

I had been in MS ecosystem for 10+ years before moving to other technologies
and it has taught me more about concepts of distributed computing (dos and
donts) than anything else. I can apply those to any problems i see today. But,
I will likely not not develop another asmx and aspx page.. :(

~~~
_random_
No one does asmx and aspx anymore. It has been ages since ASP.NET MVC had been
released - now it's just controllers, models and pure HTML - especially if you
use the latest flavour - Web API.

------
dscrd
Many of us lived through the 90s, when Microsoft strongarmed their technically
inferior products to the whole PC industry. In fact, they pretty much invented
the whole closed-source proprietary software model, and I totally agree with
Stallman that it is a horrible invention. And they were rewarded for it
handsomely. Then the numerous FUD attacks against many things I like, such as
Linux and the open-source community in general.

At least for me, all this has created strong dislike towards that company.
It's nothing that cannot be fixed, but not quickly, and I really don't see
them trying a lot yet.

Fortunately, the situation these days is much better than in the 90s since now
there are real alternatives. What was once hatred is now just suspicion.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> In fact, they pretty much invented the whole closed-source proprietary
> software model

Wow...are you sure you know your history?

Software is much older than the 1990s. Before there was Microsoft, there was
IBM (Apple and MS started at the same time, roughly). Before that, there were
no PC clones, only sanctioned hardware running sanctioned software, all with
big fat IBM support contracts. Even Apple practiced this, very closed-source
proprietary; Microsoft was actually the "open" alternative back then (Stallman
was probably playing around with PDPs, very much proprietary uncloneable
hardware systems that came with an open Unix).

Then Microsoft comes along and disrupted the entire industry. How? By shipping
an operating system for commodity hardware that could easily and cheaply be
cloned (IBM's accidental doing as they needed to ship the PC quickly). This
happened in the early 80s, which occurred before the 90s.

> Fortunately, the situation these days is much better than in the 90s since
> now there are real alternatives. What was once hatred is now just suspicion.

Fortunately, the situation these days is much better than in the 90s since now
there are real alternatives (DELL, Compaq, Gateway). What was once hatred
(against IBM) is now just sympathy.

~~~
dscrd
> Wow...are you sure you know your history?

Oh, that's right, it sort of was actually IBM. Then again, Bill Gates
perfected it --
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists)

------
LordHumungous
As a web developer, I will hate them as long as I have to support IE7-8

------
rufugee
Latest reason...if you run Windows server in a VM cluster you have to buy a OS
license for each VM for EACH POTENTIAL VM HOST. Read that again... The vm is
only ever running on one host at one time, but you have to license it for
_every_ host. BS

~~~
gnoway
Things may have changed, but you should take a look at Datacenter licensing.
Last time I researched this (2 years ago), a Datacenter license covered an
unlimited number of guests on that host.

That said, I think most businesses where this really matters have an
Enterprise Agreement with a yearly true-up. We're mid sized (<1000) and we
have one. No idea what we actually pay, but having an EA and a working KMS
infrastructure at least treats the symptoms.

I guess the OS licensing is really one of the bigger annoyances though. All
these guys waxing poetic about how great Visual Studio and C# and MVC.NET and
whatever are, might not be singing the same tune if those products weren't
being subsidized by the other components they rarely have to think about.

~~~
rsynnott
> That said, I think most businesses where this really matters have an
> Enterprise Agreement with a yearly true-up.

There may be a chicken and egg situation there; most people effected have an
enterprise agreement because most people too small to have an enterprise
agreement or where the enterprise agreement is not economical won't touch
Windows Server with a bargepole, because you need the enterprise agreement to
make it vaguely cost-effective.

------
vondur
Microsoft was/is a horrible company who abused it's monopoly position to crush
other companies. They tried to co-opt the internet by having major sites only
work in Internet Explorer. Most of the older tech crowd remembers them for
this.

------
dragonwriter
> So is HN basically becoming Slashdot where Microsoft hate occurs by default?

Like Slashdot, HN is a diverse community of people who tend to have strong
feelings about technology and tech companies, and negative views are naturally
highly visible. So, yes, there's a subgroup from whom consistent Microsoft
hate is to be expected, a subgroup from which consistent Google hate is to be
expected (including at least two distinct smaller, overlapping subgroups --
one which will refer to NSA collaboration in every Google story, and one which
will dismiss every Google story with a reference to the Reader shutdown), and
on and on and on.

------
fnordfnordfnord
I didn't flag the article, nor would I have, unless I thought there was an
active advert-spamming campaign or something. But, to answer your question:
They are just _so_ badly behaved as a company. The issues are as old as the
hills and have been beaten to death (the Halloween Documents were ca 1998, for
example) and were ongoing for many years and even continue to this day (USDOJ
antitrust, Java, SCO vs Everything, IE, Word Document formats,
interoperability & standards, etc., etc.). So much energy was wasted doing
unproductive things to the industry. I'm surprised if any of this is news to
anyone.

------
jorganisak
I agree. Even the biggest Apple fanboys should keep an open mind towards at
least reading the reviews of other products. Only competition (even if you
deem it inferior competition) can give rise to disruptive technology.

~~~
andrewflnr
Even if MS is your "enemy", it's obviously self-destructive to close your eyes
to what they're doing.

------
FallDead
I hate Microsoft because I would say that they probably do not utilize you to
your full extent or that they must shelve alot of your projects, Microsoft
does not appear to be innovating and or utilizing R and D properly, the next
thing is just half assing everything they have built. If they could build
things like how they built visio my god that company would be in a good place
in my mind. Another reason I hate Microsoft is that they are not unix based. I
mean like unix solved like 90% of the the OS problems. Like for fucks sake
adopt open standards. That is all.

~~~
jmodp
Actually, when it comes to Microsoft Research, Microsoft does it the right
way. Although it is considered a good thing for research projects to be
incorporated into products, many projects are free to take a longer view and
contribute to base knowledge that benefits all. Kind of the way Xerox Park
worked in the days of old.

Why should everything be Unix based? Aren't alternatives and competing ideas a
good thing? Adoption of open standards isn't enough. Just look at Google's
tactics with Android as described in the recent Ars article or Apple's control
over iOS. In many ways classic Windows (and MacOS) were/are more open than
either of those systems. It's too bad that Microsoft is being forced (by the
market)to follow that model. In the end companies will do what they feel is in
their own interest limited only by government regulation. That's the
capitalist way. Enlightened self interest will result in benefits for all that
are worth the cost of creative destruction. No need to hate on any company.
The market and the system will self correct.

------
kudu
Slightly offtopic but related: can someone explain the difference between HN
and Slashdot like I'm five?

~~~
fleitz
HN is the new cool piece of playground equipment, the old cool piece of
playground equipment has been overrun by losers and is now lame.

Eventually HN will become /. or reddit and we'll move on. It's essentially
nerd fashion.

~~~
randomhunt
Many years ago towards the beginning of my career proper in technology I first
came across the phrase "the September that never ended." Asking a close grey
beard he chuckled, explained poetically about newsgroups and finished with the
anecdote that when he first started his career he had come across a similar
phrase, asked a similar question and thus the cycle was complete.

~~~
fleitz
That's funny, I was going to make the post about eternal september, and
compare HN to /. and /. to USENET.

------
monokrome
If you can't see how much Microsoft is screwing everyone over, then you're not
paying attention. It's that simple.

At least they're transparent about it... Even if by accident.

------
Udo
Obviously I can't speak for other people, but since you asked:

I'm an OS X user, and before that I was a Linux/Unix user. I'm not really
familiar with Microsoft products (especially recent ones). When some cool new
tech gets announced, I'm interested by default.

I have nothing against hearing about stuff from "foreign ecosystems", on the
contrary. I was an active member on Channel 9 back in the Scobleizer days, and
I loved hearing about the interesting things you guys had been working on.

I didn't catch the Nokia article today, but chances are it wouldn't have
caught my eye even if it had been among the top ten on the front page. First,
it's not actually interesting on a technical level. Second, a lot of us here
on HN speculated what MS was doing when you positioned that trojan CEO at
Nokia, and then of course it turned out to be true. Not that there is anything
wrong with it per se, but I don't see how that dishonest-yet-obvious takeover
puts MS in a position to offer anything interesting that it couldn't offer
before. The Nokia name accomplishes very little in this case.

It's true that there can be some group hate on HN, however I don't see a lot
of it projected at MS - at least not beyond the usual background noise. We as
a community are way more hostile towards certain programming languages and
startups. Sure, every Apple thread, every MS thread, every time something from
37signals comes up, there are disgruntled people. But enough to single out MS
hatred specifically? I don't think so. Disinterest is the more likely culprit.

------
jayturley
As someone who has all of 1 karma and that's only because something made me
stop lurking, my take is that if enough members of an online community think
something is not relevant to that community, then perhaps it isn't.

Specifically regarding MS v. Apple - because of Apple's position in the
marketplace and the timing of their product releases, I think it entirely
reasonable that discussion of their new tablet trumps discussion of one of the
host of new Windows tablets.

------
cientifico
Companies should have values and vision. Microsoft have proving for so many
years that their only objective is money.

I still remember when they give money to SCO to send us letters to stop using
linux, and right now they offer linux servers. If your market sector is not
profit for microsoft, you are going to be ignored.

Also, because of microsoft, our goverments spent a lot of our money.

I don't say Microsoft is bad, neither that I hate it. It is just one more.

------
bra-ket
closed source since 1975.

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Microsoft was built around a BASIC interpreter coded by billg himself! But
more to the point, Apple doesn't even really uphold open source values either,
so regardless of whether they are right or not, it doesn't make sense to ding
Microsoft and not Apple.

~~~
phaer
That's true, there should be more a stronger anti-apple sentiment on this site
because restricting the freedom of your users is against hacker ethics. I am
only half-joking here, but I agree with the OP that flagging just because you
don't like the company is unfair and, personally I just don't up-vote those
submissions.

------
quantumhobbit
For developers it's open standards and such, but for typical users it is a
history of bad experiences.

Microsoft had the great misfortune of being the dominate computing platform in
the 90's and early 00's. Computers just weren't as reliable or easy to use
back then. Maybe Microsoft could have made Windows better back then, maybe
not. Mac System 7/8/9 was by all accounts less reliable than windows and
anything 'nix would have been unthinkable to a typical user.

So just about everyone has had a crapware infested computer running something
like windows ME or Vista that crashed every few hours. For many people, the
first non-widows computer they used was an android or iOS phone. Therefore the
association is Microsoft == crappy/unreliable vs Apple/Google == easy to
use/dependable. OEMs in a race to the bottom on hardware don't help Microsoft
at all.

I actually think windows 7 was a rock solid OS and Windows 8 is good once you
get over the awkward interface changes. But Microsoft's brand image has been
permanently damaged.

------
_pferreir_
I don't personally hate Microsoft, but it's true that it is perhaps not the
most popular tablet manufacturer in the world right now.

I know many people who own an iPad, several others who have Android tablets,
but zero Windows tablet owners. I guess that should explain by itself why
people are not really excited about it. Fuss and hype are not basic human
rights.

------
nspattak
I do not think that hate is the appropriate word for it, though I have found
myself almost hating this company in the past. I have thought about it, as it
is not a rational thing to "hate" a company and I came to the conclusion that
there is a reasonable explanation:

This company has caused me pain time and time again, so this is the first
reason I strongly dislike them.

That aside, this company may have had successful agreements and marketing
strategies but for a range of technical people they are more of a pain and
problem than a solution. They give attitude, they do not respect their users,
they do not innovate, they charge for ridiculous things (eg starter, home,
professional), they haven't managed to build an os+GUI in the last 25 years!

You (or a lot of other people) may not agree with the above opinion. The truth
is that a lot of people agree and it looks like a lot of them can be found
around here. This is my explanation.

------
xutopia
Why the Microsoft hate?

I was here in the browser war of the 90s. I was present when it destroyed
Wordperfect. I was present when it trampled on Netscape and others.

Now I see what they're doing with Internet Explorer and I'm thinking it's just
more of the same. They're only not in a position to assert themselves as they
used to.

~~~
puma1
What do you think about Apple's company practices? There isn't a more greedier
company right now. Yet they are viewed as magical. Please.

------
president
I don't care about any of the politics but Microsoft has horrible products
that have sub-par user experience.

~~~
teamonkey
So does Apple (iTunes, XCode).

------
informatimago
I was thinking, the new iPad Air are so expensive, I won't have money left to
buy and try a Nokia tablet...

~~~
seanmcdirmid
:) they haven't announced pricing for the Nokia tablet yet, and the air
definitely looks nice. I mean, they are both interesting stories, and there is
no reason to flag one of them to bury it just because it is
Microsoft/Nokia/whatever.

------
some1else
People that had to deal with supporting Internet Explorer for the past 10
years. Here's something I made to express my contempt in 2005
[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/ass.gif](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/s1e/ass.gif)

------
jakethehuman
Flags for what type of comments? Did the comment provide constructive
feedback? Or did it simply state an opinion with no support to fuel the
discussion?

It's -ethical- to flag comments that are false, off-topic, or do not
contribute to the discussion; not ones of differing opinion.

------
gadders
I have to say, as someone of 40+ years, a lot of the Microsoft hate seems kind
of quaint now.

I definitely remember being anti them when I worked for Lotus, and when they
tried to push horrible non-standards on the world.

Now though? I just don't think they're that scarey any more.

------
newsreader
I visit Hacker News throughout the day and couldn't agree with you more. The
dislike for anything having to do with MS is undeniable. I like HN and have
apps installed on my Android tablet and on my Nokia Windows phone (best phone
IMO).

------
api
Other than past things, like their attempts to thwart open standards in the
90s and their bankrolling of the SCO lawsuits against Linux, I can speak to
one reason that's contemporary:

As a software developer, everything is harder on Windows. I have three
choices:

1) Ignore Windows and ignore >50% of desktop market share.

2) Ignore non-Windows OSes, because things get easy if you do everything the
Microsoft way.

3) Endure the pain of porting to Windows, which is greater by orders of
magnitude than the pain of porting to Android, iOS, or small-market-share OSS
OSes like OpenBSD. It's like task one is "support the entire universe except
Microsoft," and task two is "support Microsoft."

~~~
_random_
Can you elaborate on pain of porting to Windows? Have you tried programming
C#/JavaScript/Java? AFAIK all those languages are portable to various extent.
If you want to use non-platform-idiomatic GUI then you can use something like
Awesomium and reuse HTML5.

~~~
api
I'm talking about writing lower level app code, especially code that interacts
with the network and the filesystem and uses things like threads.

All the world is not a webapp.

------
jitix
Be what it may, MS is still a great tech company. Windows many not be very
good for computing in general but it still is the OS that we write reports on
and play games on. And its stability with home computers is unmatched by linux
(the kind of systems with crossfire and SLI). And even now there is nothing
that can match MS Office in functionality.

Dismissing something just because it is related to MS is just discrimination.
Nokia tablet seems to be quite promising.. and unless its priced like 30-40k
INR I would like to get one. (btw I am a Hadoop/BigData developer working
primary on linux)

------
zeruch
I think its (a) because MS has earned decent amount of ire for decades of FUD-
tastic practices and (b) like Blackberry, no one is really terribly interested
(by comparison to Android/iOS) more than marginally.

------
Bahamut
The only things that really irk me about Microsoft is 1) Windows isn't Unix
based, and 2) IE doesn't update quickly enough, , which sets web development
for the future back.

Otherwise, Microsoft doesn't bother me.

------
rsynnott
I suspect it's less that people here hate Microsoft, and more that many people
here don't use Microsoft's products and don't really care about Microsoft. I
haven't used a Microsoft product to any significant degree since the early
noughties; this isn't because I hate Microsoft (I don't; I'm largely
indifferent to it); I just found that other things fit my needs better.

------
jheriko
I don't understand it personally I hate Apple. :P

------
Mustafabei
A majority of power users do not particularly enjoy Microsoft products, and
they have their reasons. Those are based on rational decisions i.e. lack of
efficiency, support, integrity etc. "Hate" is someting different.

If you think people hate MS, ask them specifically what they do not like.
Maybe THEY CAN'T EVEN GET TO SAY WHAT THEY DO NOT LIKE about the product and
discomfort grows into hate?

just saying.

~~~
mattwallaert
Actually, Microsoft has very easy feedback systems by which you can tell us
what you think about basically every single product we have. So you can freely
say what you don't like - you can even do it here and probably even get a few
employees like me to answer back.

As for your contention that people's feelings about Microsoft are based on
rational decision making - are you making the case that that is true of the
majority of users? If so, that case seems fundamentally untrue. Look at
studies of Bing results versus Google results: in a brand-blind test, people
prefer Bing over Google. If you switch the label, the thing people prefer most
is Google brand with Bing results. It is abundantly clear that there is much
more to how people feel about Microsoft than rationality, and I can't think of
a credible scientist who would say otherwise.

------
duncan_bayne
Personally, I remember when the Halloween Documents came out:

[http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/](http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/)

Amongst other things, they spelled out how Microsoft intended to 'embrace and
extend' standards in order to break interoperability.

If you want to know why people don't trust Microsoft, years later, have a read
of them.

------
jiyannwei
I use a PC with Windows 7. I have a Macbook but I'm not crazy about the Office
apps on Macbook so use the PC most of the time.

This past week, I spilled water on the PC and took it into the shop. I picked-
up a back-up ASUS, loaded with Win 8.

This was the beginning of my nightmare.

1\. Win 8 was just terrible. It took me way too long to figure out how to
perform simple actions. Win 8 is Frankenstien - it is Microsoft's attempt to
unify the computing experience by (a) copying numerous OS UI elements; (b)
slapping a tablet version of their operating system on top of a desktop
version; (c) burying elements behind keyboard shortcuts and some gaudy,
horrible startup screen that advertises other Microsoft products.

In a nutshell, they have built the perfect operating system for a
schizophrenic blind person.

After a day of cursing out Microsoft while trying to figure out basic things
(like getting to the "start" menu), I tried installing Office, the entire
reason I still use a PC. I rebooted the PC and voila - Win 8 told me it
couldn't start Win 8 and I had to revert to an earlier point in time.

I tried doing that and after another hour, Win 8 told me it couldn't do that
either and I had to reinstall Win 8.

I put the laptop back in its box and returned it and just started learning how
to use Office on Mac.

This is why Microsoft is just pathetic. I feel pathetic for giving Microsoft a
chance. This isn't hyperbole: Windows 8 is really a complete and utter
failure.

------
jpadkins
See Bill Gates letter to Hobbyists in this thread
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists)

Microsoft has always had animosity with the hacker crowd, and vice versa. This
has been going on for four decades.

------
mustapha
I should upvote the articles I like more often, instead of just clicking on
those with interesting headings.

------
tluyben2
First of all let me say that of the research I follow, MS research is
definitely in my top list. And you personally (with non MSR people like
Jonathan Edwards) are among the few who try to help the crap we call
programming which I hope you will pursue for a long time. I follow your
research and your comments on HN.

On MS (mostly opinion here as most posters in this kind of thread):

I used to love MS in the 80s, because of the MSX [1]; to me that all was very
open and nice.

With Windows 3.1 I saw something different; I was used to unix in university
by then and Windows 3.1 was so horribly unstable and generally completely
worthless that I thought the world had gone mad from buying and using that
crap. I used to look in pity on the people sitting behind the very frequently
crashing 3.1 (browsing with Netscape on 3.1 was like pulling teeth) machines
as I sat behind Solaris which never crashed. Which made MS, to me, the company
who releases things into the wild which do not work _and_ they dare to ask
money for it. I know they couldn't really help some of that; you could crash
3.1 as easy as DOS, but software under DOS crashed less frequently, wasn't
that much of a pain to work with (one open application at a time; good for
focusing too :). Matters became worse that, after a while, they had NT and
still they were peddling, for money!, that 3.1 abomination on humanity.

With 95 things didn't improve much (at the time it seemed it did and up from
3.1 it did, but in the big scheme of things it still crashed all the time) and
by then a solid version of NT was on the market so there was not much excuse
for releasing '95\. I became aware of their dubious business tactics against
small companies and with their partners; as a result of the technical crap
they released and their tactics I got 5 sparcstation 5 machines from my old
uni for free and installed redhat on my PC.

I try Windows and the eco system ever so often;I have a Lumia; love the
hardware, not the OS; many issues I've written about before. I tried to like
Windows 7 and 8; 7 is ok, but not more than that and 8 is... weird. I wish
they would've just had some balls and just only put Metro all the way with no
way to go back. Now it's just, like the Surface; neither meat nor fish; not
tablet, not laptop. For a client I had to install the MS-
SQL/Sharepoint/Exchange etc stack and write some software on it; I thought I
liked it at first, but after a while I got into the quirks which had no
documentation and not much online relief.

Basically; I try to like MS their products ever so often because I think their
should be competition; I just don't see any competition compared to what I use
daily. And stuff like the Android patents still stings; unless they turn that
back they haven't changed since the 90s and are still evil.

I don't 'hate' anything though; it's just something they shouldn't do if they
want my money.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Thanks for the comment. I'm attending Splash next week and Jonathan will be
there, I can't wait!

My post was about whether Microsoft articles were getting an unfair shake due
to flagging; I truly believe that people should upvote for what they want to
talk about and ignore what they don't. That's it. This is not about attention
or whether MS products are good or not. Its whether the Nokia tablet story
deserved to be thrown off the front page by a bunch of trolls even if it had
the upvotes to stay on for an hour or so more.

~~~
tluyben2
Cool. Wish I could be there :) No such stuff in the EU as far as I know :/

And yes I know; but this gives some background maybe of why people would hate
MS so much. They have been stung too many times in the (recent) past to allow
anything of theirs to rise to fame. I know quite a lot of (older) people who
are like that for the reasons I detailed.

I upvoted the Nokia tablet story and of course it did not deserve to be thrown
off. It looks like a nice product hardware wise. I noticed it too that high
ranking MS stories suddenly disappear, but I noticed that with other stories
(I found interesting) as well. I don't know exactly how that works here.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I also look forward to chatting with Gilad Bracha, many of the Google PL
people will be there that I don't get to see very often. EU has ECOOP (every)
and PLDI (this) year, I also went this summer to a nice workshop in Leiden on
language design.

I have good ideas on why people dislike Microsoft, but it baffles me that they
hate it enough to play dirty in getting those stories revoked. Why would they
even bother commenting on an article they weren't interested in anyways? It
doesn't make sense, it begins to look like Slashdot all over again. Did
microsoft cause so much trauma to them when they were children, or is this
just some sort of bandwagon-based nerd rage?

~~~
parasubvert
HN basically _is_ the same draw as the Slashdot crowd ... with iPhone vs
Android being the dominant flamewar in place of Linux vs MS. (or KDE vs
Gnome).

And fewer hot grits.

I'd say a lot of it was due to trauma in the 90s and early 2000's. People
really, really grew to hate Microsoft on a personal level, more intense than
the relatively trendy/casual Apple hate these days.

Things like the Halloween memos. The Java debacle. The massive industry time
waster known as WS-* (thanks IBM too). But also business practices like using
patents to try to dissuade Linux adoption in 2004 by threatening to sue their
customers if they don't pass over some payola (happened to my company at the
time). I truly am not lying about that last one - I worked for a large telecom
that received this threat.

That said I still have respect for MS Research and a lot of the work being
done on C# and .NET. Early in my career I was a COM/COM+/.NET guy but decided
it wasn't a company I wanted to do business with.

------
drill_sarge
Probably also a bit of Nokia hate. They basically axed everything interesting
they worked on, missed every innovation (totally not related to Elop) and got
bought for really cheap by MS (totally not related to Elop).

------
legohead
Over the past few years I have found myself respecting Microsoft and losing
faith in Google. I actually feel bad for Microsoft's missteps, but maybe that
is what is making them a more respectable company.

------
leke
I guess the reason is because hackers love open systems. Even companies like
google get shit from this place because "the best parts of Android are not
open".

~~~
_random_
Doesn't explain why Apple gets praise (most closed of them all). I think it's
more of a hype/image issue.

~~~
leke
I didn't know Apple got praise from hackers. At least not in my circles.

------
adidash
This -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6603008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6603008)

------
oddshocks
I'd say the causes of hate range from their participation with the NSA
surveillance programs to just plain making faulty software.

------
graycat
I'll ask a question, serious for me:

Mostly you guys are way ahead of me in knowledge of current software tools,
especially on Linux and 'open source software' (OSS -- I had to look up that
one!).

But I'm doing a startup the center of which is a Web site. If people like the
site, a huge if, then it could grow to be a big thing around the world. Did I
mention if people like the site? People might not like the site. But if they
do then I will need to grow a significant server farm, etc.

So far I'm a solo founder and doing all the work.

I'm keeping most of the site architecture and software dirt simple. At the
core of some of the server side software are two servers that have some
software I wrote implementing some applied math I derived -- still, just as
computing, the architecture and software are simple.

For various reasons, I decided to stand on Microsoft's software. Here is my
thinking, and where am I on thin ice?

(1) I can understand that if I had the knowledge and/or staff to know some
version of Linux and other OSS in detail, then Linux and OSS might offer me
more power and flexibility. My concern, forever, would be that I would be
getting in the business of operating systems, middle ware, and tools, and that
is definitely not my business. So, I'm eager to leave that work to a vendor
that specializes in such things, and for such a vendor all I could see was
Microsoft. So, right, it sounds like I want to pay money for my operating
system, middle ware, tools, etc., and in a sense that is correct. I.e., if
something goes wrong, then I want an 'account executive' to call and ask for
help.

(2) Sure, Linux and Unix have a long and powerful background back through Sun,
Silicon Graphics, BSD, AT&T, etc. But for my time on x86 I went from PC/DOS to
OS/2 to Windows XP, and along that path, each year, I thought that the OS I
was using was likely the most suitable for me on x86. E.g., instead of PC/DOS
or OS/2 on x86, I was not going to buy a Sun or SGI workstation at several
times higher price.

(3) As of now, as a desktop OS on x86, 32 and/or 64 bit addressing, as far as
I can tell, XP and/or Windows 7 look okay with Linux and OSS without huge
advantages. Where am I going wrong here?

(4) There are a lot of developers writing for Microsoft, and just what the
'platform' is is fairly clear, e.g., the .NET Framework of some version 2, 3,
4, 4.5 on Windows XP, 7, or Server. So there is some _definiteness_ to the
platform. On Linux I would have to learn about the versions of the different
'distributions'. I don't even know what would be involved.

Due to the definiteness and the large number of developers, on the Internet it
should be relatively easy to get answer to questions for the Windows platform.
Is this roughly correct?

(5) My biggest complaint with Microsoft is the quality of the technical
writing in their documentation. It looks like the documentation is from some
nerds who know the software but have no idea how to explain it to others and
_writers_ who know spelling, punctuation, and a little more and are highly
diligent but, still, don't know how to explain software. My fear is that bad
technical writing is common in computing and that in the world of Linux and
OSS the situation would be worse. E.g., for serious questions, maybe commonly
the solutions is just to read the code. Is this roughly correct?

(6) So far I've been pleased with the reliability of the Microsoft software
I've been using -- XP SP3, .NET Framework 4, Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET,
ADO.NET, IIS, and SQL Server. And from some of the large, busy Web sites
standing on the Microsoft platform, I suspect that Microsoft will be able,
maybe if at times I talk to them one on one, to provide what I need from them
for my site. Of course then I will be using Windows Server and developing on
Windows 7 with XP out'a here.

(7) The Microsoft software is from, right, Microsoft, and since they wrote it
and sell it, my understanding is that they support it. Actually via some
forums, I've already gotten some quite good support for free from some
Microsoft people apparently assigned to give serious answers to serious
questions. But it's been a while since I had such a question. But in the
future I anticipate questions, from me and/or my staff (if my site is
successful enough for me to have staff), and then I will want the option of
getting high quality paid support for serious questions. So, maybe my site is
crashing; I don't know why; and I want to call for serious help. I suspect
that I can get such help from Microsoft (even if I have to pay) but am unsure
just what the situation is for Linux and OSS where, e.g., where's the company
with account executives?

(8) So far I like the Windows Common Language Runtime (CLR) and .NET Framework
and the _managed code_ of Visual Basic .NET, C#, etc. So far I'm writing just
Visual Basic .NET and am quite happy with it; as far as I can tell C# offers
little or nothing more but has just a different flavor of syntactic sugar, one
related to C and that I don't like. I believe that, compared with C#, Visual
Basic .NET is easier to read on the page, is less prone to bugs due to being
more verbose, and will be easier to teach to new staff. Where am I going
wrong?

For the world of Linux and OSS, I don't know what programming language I would
use that I would like as well as Visual Basic .NET. What would the options be?

(9) From some of what I've seen of high end server farms on the Microsoft
platform, the automation of system installation, configuration, monitoring,
and management is excellent, but my view has been only from, say, 1000 feet
up. If this is so, then I'm impressed. Where am I going wrong?

~~~
kstrauser
I've known people who made the same decision for many of the same reasons, and
the universal experience I've heard was "it was all nice until we had to
scale, and then it got expensive quickly". If your stack works for you, great!
That's the important part! But if your traffic and income scaled by a factor
of 100, would you be turning a profit or desperately looking for financing?
You're the only one who can answer that, and it's something to consider.

~~~
GFischer
Same as kstrauser: Microsoft products are great, but they're more expensive to
scale.

I've been working with Microsoft products for close to a decade, and I think
their software stack is great.

However, for my current side project, I went with another platform
(Groovy+Grails, running on the JVM), purely because of cost (and also because
I wanted to learn it :) ).

You can choose to be part of the BizSpark program and get all Microsoft
software for free for 3 years, but you have to pay afterwards.

Prices for Microsoft software hosting is usually 2 or 3 times what it costs
for a mostly equivalent software.

For example, something I'm using now (Amazon AWS), the price of a small Linux
instance is $0,060/hr, while the equivalent Microsoft instance is $0,091/hr

Azure pricing is too expensive for me, I discarded it.

If I had money (maybe angel or VC backing), I might have considered it, but
it's a bootstrapped side project.

------
qwerta
I like Microsoft, they make good keyboards.

------
skrowl
As a .NET developer, I can tell you there's some definite 'eww, you use
microsoft' stigma here.

~~~
_random_
The funny bit is that they don't really know what they are bashing :). What
kind of open-minded approach is that?

------
teddyh
“I will never be a friend to the Roman people.”

— Hannibal

------
Thiz
Microsoft made a costly mistake more than a decade ago. They decided to attack
the internet with full force.

And they lost.

------
ekr
I can understand the Microsoft hate. The big question is, where is the Apple
hate?

------
antonpug
Microsoft makes shitty products that are not well designed or tested. Simple.

~~~
exodust
Can't wait for filtering technology that detects intelligence in comments. If
intelligence found, display comment.

MS has made flops, but also products they've worked hard on and made good over
time. All tech companies have shitty things happen in their product life. Even
car manufacturers. First-gen Mitsubishi Outlander - not a great car. Avoid.
2nd gen Outlander and above (2006+), new engine, better design, better
features... very good car.

~~~
antonpug
I am probably the least biased person when it comes to technology - I love
Apple's hardware and software, I hate Apple maps and iTunes, but I love Google
Maps and I hate Google Search. I like Bing as my search engine - Bing is nice,
I'll give Microsoft that.

Most other products, historically are crap. Microsoft always half-asses things
and comes up with products that are irrelevant to the end user. Windows 8? I'd
say it's a failure of epic proportions. Microsoft doesn't seem to care about
the user experience - I always get a feeling that someone at Microsoft was
thinking "Oh, we are getting stale, so we need to do something new - let's
come up with this entirely new UI, but we're not really going to put any
thought into how it is designed, and we are definitely not going to pay
attention to detail".

In OS terms, Windows was always ages behind OS X and Linux IMO - but at least
Windows 7 was "perfected", or as close to "perfected" as Microsoft can get.
Ever since I switched to OS X, I have not used Windows willingly, and that's 3
years.

~~~
mattwallaert
Sorry, I'm a little confused as to how you think Microsoft has historically
made products that are "irrelevant to the end user", when Microsoft powers the
majority of computing activity worldwide and has for more 20 years.

What it feels like you may instead be trying to say is "I don't like Windows 8
and think Linux/OS X are better", which is certainly a valid opinion
statement. I wouldn't, however, labor under the misunderstanding that
Microsoft doesn't care about users - hyperbole aside, do you actually think
that of a company of about 100K people doesn't care about other people?

If you've ever worked on a big tech product, you know that agonizing amounts
of attention are spent worrying about even the smallest details. Ultimately,
that might mean that we don't always make the best possible decision, but I
think it would be tough to say that Microsoft "half-assed" much.

It makes sense that you don't like the product; not everyone does. But it
seems foolish to equate your dislike with a) it being objectively bad, b) it
being half-assed, c) it being irrelevant (particularly when it plays a huge
role in the world), or d) that the people creating it don't care about it or
you. Indeed, d) is particularly important - isn't it grand that you live in a
tech world where someone like me, who works at Microsoft, cares about your
thoughts and feelings, even though you don't use Windows?

Microsoft (and many other companies) don't just care about the people who use
our products...we also care about the people who don't.

~~~
jorisw
The market share of Microsoft in the desktop computing business in no way
represents any kind of quality. Nor does it in any way mean that your users
like your product. If I look around me in any office, I see people constantly
fighting their computers as a result of the worst user experience on the
planet.

The main reason for Microsoft's market share is a historical one: They
partnered with IBM in the 80s, then PCs (IBM compatibles) became the de facto
standard.

Add to this the abuse to the progression of the Web that is Internet Explorer.
As many of the HN readers are web developers, well, do the math.

------
twittstrap
That happened once to [http://twittstrap.com](http://twittstrap.com). So
again, to make it news "twittstrap is buying no kia, spokesman says we can't
afforded", ;) have a nice day

------
wnevets
because all the cool kids love Apple. Half of the front page yesterday was
littered with Apple marketing post.

Being an Apple shill is a good thing here

------
merusame
I for one learned how to code with VBA - Hail MS!

------
Sagat
They're just jealous of Bill Gates.

------
morgajel1
the wounds microsoft has inflicted over the last 20 years are not easily
forgotten.

------
Thiz
You reap what you sow.

------
Ackley
I try to avoid Arstechnica whenever I can

------
smegel
Well...they are pretty evil, which has been fairly well documented over the
years. Suing companies for using Linux patents they refuse to disclose? Yep,
that is evil.

Oh, and sticking a UI designed for touch-screen tablets on ordinary desktops
and laptops is just stoopid. They have become a Blackberry-esque laughing
stock as far as making terrible business decisions and missing opportunities.

How does your wife think Nokia would be doing if they had released Android
phones instead?

------
jowiar
HN is (largely) composed of web developers.

HN dislikes Microsoft by default the same way Americans dislike government by
default. Americans views of government are shaped by their experience with
their local DMV, which leads to a conclusion of "government is a slow,
inefficient, bureaucratic, unfriendly mess". Similarly, web developers
opinions of Microsoft are shaped by their experiences with IE. And past
versions of IE that they still need to support.

If Microsoft wants web developers to have ANY respect for them, they need to
improve the interactions that web developers have with them. Today, I ran into
a JS bug in IE9 that manifests itself 100% of the time when the debugger is
closed, and 0% of the time when the debugger is open. Clearly, debugging this
is... frustrating. And clearly will never be fixed (as it's an old browser
version).

------
ps4fanboy
I always find it really hard to understand this behavior as well, as a self
confessed geek I really enjoy using all technology Apple, Google, Microsoft
etc. I really dont understand how people can be the cheer squad for a
corporate company, because they are all profit driven every single one of them
is inherently evil. So we should look at what they all do an have discourse on
the actions. To me HN is becoming like the console condition PS4 vs XBOXONE,
the companies want you to be like this, any sensible person with critical
thinking can see that everything is flawed and innovation is everywhere.

Being a fan or enemy of a company is stupid, you are just playing into
consumerism. I hope every tablet company has success because competition is
good for me.

------
dschiptsov
Usual reasons: monopoly practices, market manipulations, deceptive sales and
marketing technology, crashes and viruses due to low-quality outsourced code,
etc.

------
aaron695
Why do you think it was MS hate rather than just boring as?

Apple has a cult following. As such it also might be boring but it's sometimes
interesting to even non cult followers what the cult is up to.

------
yuhong
I think a lot of the MS hate is due to what started with Stephen Elop becoming
CEO of Nokia that came from MS and ended up with MS acquiring the company.

