

Microsoft Is the Most Exciting Company in Tech, Hands Down - kurrent
http://gizmodo.com/5889659

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dougabug
Am I the only one who cringes at the notion of buying anything from Microsoft?
In the 90's, if you mentioned the "Evil Empire," everyone knew who you were
talking about. Today, Microsoft is, to quote Steve Jobs, "Largely irrelevant."

The Surface is a convertible tablet pc (like the one my gf was smashing out of
frustration a couple nights ago), flattened by 10^5 atmospheres of pressure to
1cm thickness.

Let sleeping evil empires rest.

~~~
Maascamp
And support the conscious ones? Pretty much every major tech company these
days (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, etc.) is evil in some ways and
not in others. People are excited because Microsoft is one of the few tech
companies with the resources to bring new choices to market on a large scale.
Actively hoping for less competition seems rather myopic to me.

Who needs to leave Microsoft for you to stop cringing? Does it matter? Do you
need to see the company fail before you're comfortable? What about the
companies that hire their ex-employees? Will they become evil as well?

I'm a linux guy, but to Microsoft I say, "bring the noise!" In the end we'll
all benefit.

~~~
shirkey
You ask a compelling question with "who needs to leave Microsoft for you stop
cringing?". I'd suggest it is an institutional problem, and while not
completely unique to Microsoft (see Apple, Oracle), it is embodied within
nearly every aspect of their business model -- save the recent open source
bear-hug, the overarching corporate goal is to do precisely the opposite of
what you would wish to see: to have all other market options whittled down to
One Microsoft Way. They are not currently open -- and as long as Windows and
Office continue their bewildering dominance within corporate IT departments,
they will never be open, as it is antagonistic to that goal.

~~~
dougabug
Exactly. The whole conception of Microsoft is atavistic.

Wishing for the return of Microsoft reminds me of older disillusioned Russians
after the Cold War fondly reminiscing about the Soviet Union. Or Hobbits
hoping that if only Morgoth would return, he could counterbalance the power of
Sauron and Mordor: because the only thing better than facing the Dark Enemy of
the World, is having two Dark Enemies of the World!

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Hominem
They really are doing some cool stuff, the author mentions a few things. I'd
also mention the stuff they are doing in software. ASP.NET MVC, F#, hell even
good old C# is just getting better and better. There is plenty of room for
Google, Apple and Microsoft to all create cool stuff.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
ASP MVC isn't very good.

~~~
Hominem
I'm not going to defend them any more unless they start cutting checks but you
have to admit that even if you don't think it is any good at least they are
trying. You work in a windows shop you use whatever Microsoft gives you, we
could still be stuck with Web Forms.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
That's the problem, Nancy is just so much better.

~~~
Hominem
Well it is certainly smaller. I'd really like to use it at least for APIs
where I am currently using the WCF rest and JSON stuff but it would be an
uphill battle to get it deployed to production. Right now I use RabbitMQ and
Redis internally and I fight the same battle over and over. They can't believe
I wouldn't just use SQL Service Broker. I wish there was a way for Microsoft
to "bless" projects like Nancy.

~~~
bsg75
Its almost a syndrome, where many (not all) Microsoft shops can't envision
using something in addition to what MS offers, even if the effect is positive
for the developers, users, budget, timeline, etc.

