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Comment by MP_1729 | Hacker News Reader

Satya Nadella's Microsoft is such a weird company. It's like there's one side of it that is running with Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things" and the other side is saying "wait, we're the most important software company in the world! Things can't break!"

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One side is open-sourcing .NET and VS Code and running GitHub well and making vcpkg. The other is crapping up Windows with embarrassing ad-ridden F2P games. It's really weird.

One side preserving backwards compatibility through the past 30 years, the other replacing the taskbar and losing half the features.

>open-sourcing .NET and VS Code

They didn't open-source the debugger so that you have to use VS or VSC. VS Code also has shittons of telemtry (same for dotnet LCI) and when you use Codium you are (officially) not allowed to use their marketplace.

>running GitHub well

GitHub is down nearly every week and constantly has problems. I appreciate them making certain features free though.

This is a pretty insightful comment. That's exactly how it feels. The core of their technologies have never been more solid, including Windows. But then on top of that solid core is a bunch of "move fast and break things" and short-term profit choices that make the whole thing seem awful.

Don't forget the ones that can't get a simple chat app to work right (Microsoft Teams) or the ones redesigning outlook which introduced a shit ton of bugs.

It's amazing that humans as a collective have decided that private corporations are the best way to progress as a civilization.

Even before Nadella, MS took insane risks with Windows. Ballmer oversaw the disastrous Windows 8 wigh the fullscreen Start Menu, which was hated far more than Vista ever was. W8 didn't even last 3 years before being replaced by Win10.

And that's to say nothing of the decade-long attempt to compete with Google and Apple in mobile with Windows Phone/RT/Nokia, which Nadella mercifully unwound.

I'm one of the very few people who genuinely loved Windows 8

One side is targeting corporate business, the other is for end-consumer.

The eye opener for me is the Surface Pro 10 only existing for businesses. They cared to design and produce the whole device, but not ship it to regular customers. That whole market is forced to go to the more experimental copilot line instead (which could arguably be great, but you don't get to choose in the first place)

Microsoft don't want to miss out on another big industry so they're compensating by trying to frontrun everyone whilst trying not to fall over.

2 cultures? Doesn't sound too surprising to me... one that is feature oriented and another that is old guard trying to support legacy customers.

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