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Comment by pvitz | Hacker News Reader

Miguel de Icaza: "The developer division at Microsoft now employs the language designers and contributors to Python, Java, JavaScript, Typescript, F# C#, C++.

We just need some PHP, Rust and Swift magic to complete the picture."

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Simon Peyton Jones also work for Microsoft, so maybe add Haskell to the list.

In that list, TypeScript, C# were invented by Anders Hejlsberg who works for Microsoft. Python by Guido who also now works for Microsoft. F# was invented at Microsoft.

But as far as Java, JavaScript and C++, I am not who the luminaries are, that work at Microsoft. James Gosling and Stroustrup don't work for Microsoft.

They don't claim having inventors of the language, but language designers and contributors.

For example Brett Cannon is also at MSFT, he is a core developer and member of steering council for Python, he also qualifies along Guido for this claim in Python.

Herb Sutter, C++ ISO committee chair works for Microsoft, so while not the language inventor, someone pretty important in the community.

There's many folks from the Typescript team who sit on the TC39 committee that are responsible for moving state of Javascript (Ecmascript) forward.

Now that Microsoft Edge is powered by Chromium, there are many folks that also contribute/ have say in development of chromium and nodejs.

This is just a rumour, but Microsoft aggressively hired Chromium devs from Google.

Basically Microsoft wants to build the best tooling for the most popular languages. They have Github + VSCode. Who knows they may also acquire stackoverflow. It's in their realm.

> MS wants to build the best tooling for the most popular languages

If that is true, why don’t they buy out JetBrains?

Because VSCode is already doing better than JetBrains. It’s adoption as an IDE has been a rocket ship.

But I thought they wanted the best, not the most popular.

That might raise some antitrust concerns. Microsoft is already a strong contender the in the development tool space and there's not that much competition left.

Or maybe JetBrains is just not available for them. There can be something going on between JetBrains and Google considering Google decided to partner with them on the Android development tools.

Or maybe Microsoft feels they are doing well enough with their current tools. You can't really fit the JetBrains nicely to the "big picture". Microsoft needs VScode, because they want IDE running inside browser. They also need the big old Visual Studio. JetBrains tools could not replace anything, but they would be a third pillar.

lmao I assure you the department of Justice has bigger things to worry about than the IDE market

And their contributions belong to Microsoft, whose corporate leadership then has tremendous power to influence the licensing and pricing of future languages.

My impression of Microsoft's plan for the forseeable future, on the developer side, is to capture value from open source projects with cloud hosting, GitHub enterprise billing and the like.

They want a golden path from their developer-facing tools (TypeScript, VS Code, C#) to their monthly services (GitHub, Azure, Teams). They're going to make all of that work together as well as they can so you won't want to look elsewhere.

Frankly, it's ingenious. If it works, the hard-to-monetize value of open-source projects like TypeScript and VS Code will be captured in your monthly Azure bill.

While we're at it, a reminder that the most popular extension for VSCode is Python support:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/search?target=VSCode&ca...

(full disclosure: I'm one of the people working on that)

Would it be accurate to say that after embracing open source with VS code they're extending it with the proprietary pylance?

I'm not sure what you mean by "extending open source". The classic EEE pattern always referred to specific outside standards or specs being "embraced and extended", like J++ did with J2SE. Pylance doesn't extend anything, nor is it a dependency that can lock anyone in.

I don’t know. I work for a fortune 100 company and the corporate IT department is purposefully choosing tools not under MicroSofts control. AWS, bitbucket, Slack, Intellij, etc. And developers are encouraged to use MacBook Pros instead of anything running Windows.

I do as well and it's the opposite. Their sales people seem to have their hooks into the decision makers.

If azure "performance crippled" Mysql is anything to go by they'll probably try to start extinguishing the open source components at some point - either by pushing people to use non open source equivalents or by turning their OSS projects proprietary.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've already roadmapped to end open source development on vscode in 2025-2030. The extensions are already proprietary.

And Delphi, VB, erm J#.

Who is next? Ryan Dahl? Rob Pike? Larry Wall? Rich Hickey? DHH?

Larry Wall is at Craigslist

Seems appropriate

Craigslist is still web 1.0 no?

Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architect of Delphi and he has been with Microsoft. He also managed to create C# and Typescript.

There was also that dude who created GW-BASIC.

He doesn't work for them anymore.

No picture is complete without Urban Müller in it.

So they can own package management on Amiga OS, too?

Brainfuck. Mr. Müller is the father of Brainfuck.

Among certain circles, he was much more famous as the creator of Aminet.

Mozilla recent layoff could be th prelude for that on Rust. And is not the guy behind Swift and LLVM - I forgot his name - hopping around anyway :). And Zeev and Andi from PHP are also on the loose last time I read something. So :)

Chris Lattner?

Great idea to apply the principles of competition inside Microsoft:

After a few years of competition, they can just shut down the teams working with the least effective languages.

Using this methodology, Microsoft will end up using the best tools for the job. And they can accept people from any subculture for a few years while the experiment is going on!

This is the "developers developers develop" we have all been waiting for!

Wait, who matches each?

Well, the TypeScript and .NET organizations live within the Developer Division, and now we have Guido so there's Python. We also have fairly substantial dev tooling teams for C++ and Java so I imagine some of the contributors are there. We also have Node.js contributors as well as Electron (due to VS Code). Source: I work in DevDiv as well.

Any ideas on Perl?

Nope, I don't know of anyone working on Perl stuff in DevDiv but it's a big division.

Microsoft has had a Python tooling team in DevDiv for almost 10 years now. Originally, we were primarily working on Python support in Visual Studio proper. We also took the first crack at Node.js support in VS - also before VSCode was a thing.

Aside from that, Microsoft also owns the VSCode extension for Go, so there's that team, as well.

And the Pony guy

Can we skip PHP?

No, what Microsoft should do is a WinRT language projection for PHP. Can you imagine the epicness?

Considering that php runtime in 2020 is quite speedy (see swoole) a WinRT binding (good lib space) is not the worst combination. Just the syntax :)

Facebook has that covered

No worse in 2020 than JavaScript..

And Ruby!

As far as I’m concerned, they can continue to stay away from putting their typical Microsoft touches on Ruby.. NT ENTERPRISE, FOR BUSINESS.

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