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Comment by lurker14 | Hacker News Reader

People think the email is weird or unique because they are surprised that Bill Gates made 40 Billion dollars by running a company that builds products that bring intense pain to it users, and he appears to as frustrated as anyone else about the problem, and yet is completely powerless to stop it, even though he is in charge of everyone involved.

It's bizarre to see someone who knows he is doing everything wrong and is flailing about to stop it, yet is drowning in money coming from his mistakes.

Microsoft has been a slow-motion train wreck for 15 years, surviving off the phenomenal success of early Windows, and it has been fascinating to get peeks inside the conflagration.

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Come on now.

> products that bring intense pain to it users

I'm a Mac user and I love Office (over OO and iWork).

> as frustrated as anyone else about the problem

It's not "a" problem. It's a large organization with tons of products, and some are more sucky then the rest.

> is completely powerless to stop it

He wasn't the CEO anymore when he wrote this. Also, even if he were the CEO, he can't go in and fix every annoyance himself. He's a leader, he needs people underneath him to do a good job. When they're not, he needs to remind them, that's what this email is.

> is drowning in money coming from his mistakes

If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation...

> Microsoft has been a slow-motion train wreck for 15 years

Have you looked at Win7? It's pretty good. C# 4.0 is much better than Java. Visual Studio kills anything else on the IDE market. Xbox rocks. A friend just got a Win7 phone, and the UI/UX seems to work very well, better than Android, about as good as iOS.

I do not think anyone is suggesting that he goes in and fixed it himself, but it is up to him to ensure there are processes in place to make sure this does not happen.

"If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation..."

I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements.

We are having this conversation because many many people worked hard on these technologies. Microsoft and Bill Gates are only one of them.

Of course, DOS and Windows accerelated wider adoption of personal computers, but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so.

>>but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so.

This is a hypothetical statement and there are n different ways our world could have diverged. Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward.

In any case, it didn't look it was a natural progression of technology before Windows became popular as the preferred OS for a personal computer.

>>> If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation...

>> but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so.

> Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward.

It is impossible not to speculate. The GGP is just speculating in the opposite direction as the GP. We simply must back our speculation with reasons. Personally, I like the GP's reasoning.

> I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements.

Or maybe the original poster was saying this because he was typing his response on a Windows computer.

It's easy to make claims about branches of history that never occurred. It seems like an absurd scenario where computers weren't widely adopted, but it's not really so absurd if you think about it.

Clicked you up but:

1. Seriously, try iWork ;-). Not only does Pages kick Word's butt, it can sit in the middle of a Word-based workflow (e.g. preserving change tracking).

2. Visual Studio doesn't kill Realbasic (from a tiny developer) or Xcode. Xcode has a different level of abstraction, but the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. But yes, it's pretty darn good.

3. Win7 is a tactical success but a strategic failure.

If you want an end-to-end picture of just how big a hole Microsoft finds itself in, go to http://microsoftstore.com

1. Their back-to-school incentive is a free XBox with each PC sold. Aside from just how big a loss this must represent (given the XBox 360 is, itself, a loss-leader) parents are going to LOVE this. Here's $25k college tuition and you want a computer with a free game console?

2. Because they're selling a weird hodgepodge of third-party products they need to provide things like a "recommend a PC for me given I am this kind of person" tool, and it makes no sense (e.g. I picked "develop with power" and got no results).

3. The chief selling point of the PCs they're selling is "no crapware".

4. Try to figure out their Win7 phone comparison tool.

And this is what happens when Microsoft goes out and deliberately tries to build an imitation Apple Store.

> the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs.

There may be some sort of selection bias here: Mac users are much more sensitive to polish than Windows (or Linux) devs - they have chosen a Mac over a Dell and paid more for it. I am happy with console apps, as long as they do what I need them to, and my Atom-based Acer netbook supplies about 99% of my computing needs.

> Xcode has a different level of abstraction, but the result is that Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs. But yes, it's pretty darn good.

Don't you feel like you're ignoring some very important variables by saying that? For example: Cocoa vs Windows Forms, Cocoa vs WPF, etc?

No, because I'm actually saying the reverse of what you think I'm saying. I believe Cocoa tends to operate below the level of typical Windows APIs -- low enough to have complete control over the UX but high enough to make things that ought to be easy, easy.

Windows tends to be friendly for lousy developers (typical systems integrators, of whom I have a great deal of experience). At a very low level it doesn't make much of a difference -- good coders will deal with the hand they are given.

I think you can make a case for selection bias in that Mac development (the old Mac OS toolbox now called "Carbon" and Cocoa today) is too difficult for hacks which filters out a lot of the crap that people who can cobble together junk using Visual Basic or whatever. (There used to be a website devoted to really awful Mac apps, most of which were built using Realbasic, but lousy Realbasic apps are cross-platform :-) )

With the exception of Keynote, Numbers and Pages have not behaved well for me when given large documents. Numbers in particular struggled with datasets that Excel would handle very easily. I would rather use Google docs than bother with Pages / Numbers.

I'm certainly no advocate of Numbers. Pages I use for pretty demanding stuff and I've had no problems. Word has problems editing a simple letter, but it certainly may scale to very large documents better than Pages -- but if you're doing that kind of thing, I'd recommend Framemaker.

   Xcode devs consistently produce far more polished apps than Visual Studio devs

What is that statement based on? It is an absurd idea. If "more polished" means better code then this statement is just not true.

I just completed an internship in a big technology company and the code produced there (for automation/control in the energy and utilities sector) is quite certainly "more polished" than any iPhone application or whatever else people develop in Xcode (certainly not automation/control applications). And they use, amongst other more specialized tools, Virtual Studio.

Xcode is an IDE with a very small user-base, alone because of the fact that the Mac still has a small user-base within the industry. It probably even still has a small user-base in the developer community (aside from the hipster apps world).

I would love to see some evidence that apps developed in Xcode are usually "more polished" than apps produced in Visual Studio.

And in my personal opinion Visual Studio, especially IntelliSense kicks Xcode's butt every day. And same with MS Office...

Note: I don't use an IDE unless developing in C/C++, C#, Java or Objective-C

"within the industry"

Ah yes. The industry.

I never understand people who think that VS is the greatest IDE. Sure, when I first started using VS2003 having been doing all of my C coding on the command line prior to that point it felt revolutionary and the best thing since sliced bread. Having used every iteration since then for my day job programming C# applications, I actually cannot stand VS. My dev machine is a dual core 3GHz processor with 4GB of RAM. Yet, compiling a reasonably sized project takes an age.

Frequent recompilations which are unnecessary as no code has changed. I can't make a code change while the application is being debugged. The sliding panels really get on my nerves, it's slow to open projects and to close projects. It's difficult to get fine grained control over the build process within the IDE itself. Every single "visual" feature, such as ASPX designer is dog slow to switch into from code view, or back out of. This has been the case with every version of VS and every dev PC I've had for the last four years.

However there are some things which I like about it - it has a good plugin API (Resharper is awesome) and a nice integrated debugger. My biggest issue is that it is a resource hog and incredibly slow.

I've also coded in Xcode and before that Project Builder for even longer than I've been using VS. The lack of published plugin support is annoying in Xcode but that is probably my biggest gripe. I make no comments about the level of "polish" that an IDE allows a user to provide as I don't think the IDE makes a difference. I would however say that I find myself probably twice as productive coding in XCode than I am in VS.

Compiler != IDE.

I don't know much about the WYSIWYG parts of VS, I only write textual code.

If your machine is too slow, get more RAM and an SSD. It's your daily tool, it's worth the investment.

"I don't think the IDE makes a difference" - Huh? Then why are we having this discussion =)

I myself spend the vast majority of my time in XCode [writing a database], using VS only to maintain the Windows port and C# client libraries. I find that I'm roughly equally productive in both, but if I had a choice I'd take VS over XCode.

Yes your'e right that the compiler != the IDE. The compile time should be attributed to the compiler, of course, but VS has a habit of invoking the compiler unnecessarily, even if no source has changed.

I don't really use the WYSIWIG aspects either but all aspects of the UI seem slow and cluttered in my experience. And whether or not you and I use those aspects of the IDE is somewhat immaterial. It is called Visual Studio after all and touts the visual designers.

My point regarding the specs of my dev machine were that it is a fairly decent, new machine and the load being placed on it really isn't that high. Comparatively I run XCode on a 4 year old laptop with 2GB RAM, slower disk, slower processor and it is far more responsive. (And FWIW the compiler is faster too, especially now they are using LLVM).

When I say the IDE doesn't make a difference to the level of polish you can apply to an application what I'm trying to say is that if you're writing mostly textual code as I do too, then the IDE doesn't really factor into the polish of the application. Although, I suppose I'm contradicting myself as if I'm more productive in XCode then I have more time available to polish, so there is an indirect relationship there :P

At the end of the day, they're both decent tools and and everyone will have their preference. My comment was really just because a lot of people have started using XCode in recent years, having moved from VS due to the "iPhone effect" and I see an awful lot of comments and posts about how much better VS is, and my experience contradicts that :)

Bill Gates very much was CEO when the registry and the filesystem were "crapped up" and made "unusable".

The Xbox is a piece of shite from a hardware standpoint. It comes with an insanely huge power brick that could be a medium-power game console in its own right given its size and weight; the hard disk clip doesn't work and of course there's Mr. RROD.

Why did it win? The same reason why anything from Microsoft wins: Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

This mail is from 3 years after Gates stepped down as CEO. I think you are trying to use this to reaffirm your personal beliefs about MSFT, rather than use this form your beliefs about the company. You seem to think that because MSFT made Gates a ton of money, the company should be perfect. The fact that you find it bizarre for a founder to be actively involved in his company's products and working to highlight areas needing improvement is, frankley, bizarre.

"This mail is from 3 years after Gates stepped down as CEO."

Questions: Was microsoft very different 3 years earlier?

Wasn't Gates still very involved with MSFT at that time?

> People think the email is weird or unique because they are surprised that Bill Gates made 40 Billion dollars by running a company that builds products that bring intense pain to it users, and he appears to as frustrated as anyone else about the problem, and yet is completely powerless to stop it, even though he is in charge of everyone involved.

You're focusing on the negative and forgetting the positive. Yes, Windows can be counter-intuitive, but it has enabled millions of people in the world to be more productive. This is why most of the planet is using Windows.

> Microsoft has been a slow-motion train wreck for 15 years

A lot of companies would love to be able to live for that long (and by the way, it's more like 30+ years).

Yes, you will be right at some point in the future, Microsoft will fall. It doesn't seem to be in the near future, though, considering their recent blow out quarters.

I'm a Mac user myself, but come on, let's be fair here.

>Yes, Windows can be counter-intuitive, but it has enabled millions of people in the world to be more productive. This is why most of the planet is using Windows.

Personal computers have enabled people to be productive, not Windows. And, the reason most people use Windows is largely for reasons other than the merits of the software.

"intense pain to its users" "completely powerless" "flailing about" "drowning in money coming from his mistakes" "slow-motion train wreck"

You my friend, have a way with words. Comments like this make me sad that a "lol" response is not an option.

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