It's happened: Microsoft Moves Scott Gu to Head Up Azure | Hacker News Reader

It's happened: Microsoft Moves Scott Gu to Head Up Azure

zdnet.com

48 pointsmsredmond21 comments

Let's hope this doesn't affect the direction of the .net platform. There's been a lot of great change lately with more open source work, smaller and more frequent revisions in platforms such as MVC. I'd hate to see it fall to the wayside.

I concur. With 4.0, C# and the platform has really matured from its origins as a Java clone. All the work to add dynamic language support in the CLR has made C# very enjoyable to code in. The addition of ASP.NET MVC and Razor were both long overdue, and highlights Microsoft's awareness that it now competes more with Ruby and Python than Java.

I hope the departure of the Gu doesn't slow down this progress or shift it in the wrong direction.

I believe ScottGu was in charge of the .Net platform which is the CLR and and related technology. C# is run by Anders Hejlsberg.

I don't know who Hejlsberg reports to but as a Technical Fellow I doubt it was ScottGu (with no disrespect intended)

If memory serves, Anders used to report to the Product Unit Manager for C# (even as a TF). Although, I'm sure DevDiv has reorged several times in the past four years, and my recollection of the org chart is no longer accurate.

ScottGu is several levels above Hejlsberg, who was underneath him in the org.

>> With 4.0, C# and the platform has really matured from its origins as a Java clone

So LINQ, proper generics, indexers, first class properties, delegates, events, using blocks, lambdas ... were cloned from Java?

I think he was trying to say it's matured away from its origins (in a good way).

There hasn't been too much discussion about C# 5 has there? Async / Task<T> and compiler as a service (which is already available in Mono) are the only new features that I think I've heard about.

Not that there won't be more stuff in there, nor do I think the radio silence on C# 5 is at all related to this... mostly I'm just curious if anyone has heard more about it :)

In terms of the language stuff I think we're safe - Anders Hejlsberg [1] - is a great steward of the language and the C# team seems very interested in sensibly adding new components to the language, whether or not Gu is still around to involve himself with the ASP.NET side of things.

[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

I would assume it wouldn't. The key to this decision is the fact that Azure is clearly in trouble. Almost no one uses it including .Net developers (I have to assume Microsoft was counting on their support right off the bat).

That's key because it tells you how ScottGu is viewed within Microsoft (you don't put a failure in charge of an important project that's already failing). Which in turn means the direction he's leaving behind on the .Net platform must be one the upper execs are happy with.

So IMHO you won't see any dramatic shifts away from the current direction

"Almost no one uses it including .Net developers"

Sources? I know of 3 startups (mine included) which visit HN that are based on Azure. I am also familiar with many other larger companies which are using Azure.

This seems to be the only sort of public exposure on companies using Azure. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/evidence/

The perception that the platform isn't being used is usually because those companies don't care to advertise their infrastructures. They sort of have more important things to do than write a blog entry on how much they love Azure.

Well the article itself says...

"As I blogged last week, Microsoft is seeking ways to boost sales of its Azure platform. One way the company is hoping to do this is by tightening up its developer story around Azure."

While Azure was largely blamed for Ray Ozzie's departure (http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/IT-watch-blog/ray-...)

You can look at the anemic selection of Azure Books: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

(By comparison look at WPF books a technology most people believe will disappear into Silverlight in coming years: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...)

I'd also point to the number of views on the average Azure article on DotNetKicks: http://dotnetkicks.com/azure

But to be honest I mostly based it on my own experience. I know many .Net developers and all of them have chosen to ignore the benefits of Azure and go with the more difficult task of implementing on EC2.

Note I'm not saying Azure isn't a good choice. I'd even argue it's a better choice in many ways than services like EC2 (Scaling alone makes it worthwhile for .Net developers). I'm simply saying it hasn't been a success for Microsoft thus far.

Azure definitely has some hurdles to overcome still. I was actually down in Redmond visiting the Azure team a couple of months ago and both complained and learned a lot. It seems their original focus for almost a year was building corporate migration tools and features which I think really hurt them in the community. But thats because those big companies were large paying customers. There are a lot of features that are just now getting the attention they need. (Table Storage, Caching, etc) Hopefully with those issues resolved it will be more attractive to other companies and developers.

I think its funny that you bring up WPF/Sliverlight because I've been fairly against the technology in general and have avoided it whenever possible in my .Net career. I quickly fell in love with ASP.Net MVC and will stick with internet standards when possible.

WPF/Silverlight and ASP.NET MVC are very different technologies. For one WPF/Silverlight are client technologies. More like HTML/CSS/JS than MVC.

But what I really wanted to say is that while I like Azure in theory, it's a pain in the butt to use. I used AppHarbor and literally had my first app hosted in 10 minutes, maybe less. With Azure it seems like there's all these things they want me to know. If I want to get up a super simple web site with ASP.NET MVC why are you making me know about all these different types of roles and load balancing and such?

My hope is that this is what Scott Guthrie will fix. ASP.NET MVC is surprisingly clean and pleasant. Silverlight is a triumph of moving WPF off the desktop. I'm really excited about the future of Azure, for once.

It's best to look at it like most of Microsoft version 1 products - it's going to be painful to use. But it has tons of potential - more so than any product in recent memory. And it's actually pretty reasonably priced, even if you aren't in BizSpark.

You really don't need to worry about roles that much. A web role is a website, and a worker role is a non-website service (though you can connect to a worker role via http). In theory, load balancing his handled for you so you can achieve redundancy with at least two instances.

Now, there are some real painful points with azure as it stands. My two two specific points are these: deploying takes a long time - some times over 10 minutes. So forget about agile build processes or continuous deployment or even making a quick, simple text change.

The other major problem I have is you have to run the debugger to get access to the development storage ( blob & tables). Both of these are really useful. But running the debugger all the time is torture.

Developer tools are hugely important to all of the MS ecosystem, and I bet these concerns get addressed - this is the big advantage for moving ScottGu over to the azure team. Azure is a big part of the future of that company.

You don't have to run to the debugger to get dev storage, just start it separately. It should put something in your start menu like Storage Emulator. It varies with version.

Hopefully, there's not much to worry about when it comes to the people doing open source work and working on MVC. The ASP.NET team is moving with Scott. In fact, I'm hoping that being inside a business unit that more directly profits from ASP.NET might end up getting the ASP.NET team more resources (almost everyone is shocked to learn how small that team currently is).

Scott Gu is really respected around the company. I'm sure this will be viewed very positively from within. His rise through the ranks is pretty unparalleled in a corp like Microsoft.

First thought: Oh crap what will happen to the great work he's been doing in the .Net tools?

Second thought: Oh wow, he could actually do great things for the Azure developer experience!

Fantastic! Like others have mentioned, he has done some great work in the past and I hope the momentum he created doesn't slow down.

But, I have to admit that I am very excited to see Scott moving to Azure. We're a .Net based startup running on Azure and I feel that the product and community could really use his help!

I love Scott and this is great. The title is incorrect though - Scott is only running one part of Windows Azure ( the linked article makes it clearer)

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