Comment by stblack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stblack | Hacker News Reader

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Microsoft is a bulti-billion dollar company that doesn't much care for developers and users of its products. Oh, it says it cares, and for the incremental cost of an MSDN subscription it can buy the silence and obeisance of influential developers for years.

In the end, it will always suck to be a developer using Microsoft technology.

Here's the Microsoft bandwagon graveyard:

* 3D Movie Maker * Active Documents * ActiveX * COM * COM+ * Courier Tablet * DAO * dbWeb * DDE * Desktop Gadgets * Encarta * Expression and Expression Suite * Frontpage * HailStorm * LINQ to SQL * Live Labs * Live Search Books, Live Search Academic * Microsoft Bob * Microsoft Equipt * Microsoft Kin * Microsoft Live * Microsoft Live One Care * Microsoft Max * Microsoft Passport * Microsoft Repository * Money * MSN Music * OLE * OneCare * OS/2 * Remote Data Objects(RDO) * Response Point * Silverlight * "Smart" Watches * Soapbox * SQL Server DMO * SQL Server DTS * Tablet PC * VB * VBA replaced by VSA * Vine * Vista * Visual Basic * Visual FoxPro * Visual Interdev * Visual JPlus Plus * Visual Source Safe * Web data access via IDC * Windows DNA * Windows for Tablets * Windows Live Spaces * WinFS * Word Basic * WordHelp (.hlp) * XBox Live Service * Zune

Many of these probably deserved to die. But Microsoft's propensity for suddenly marooning thousands of developers and millions of users at a single stroke is unconscionable.

Silverlight dead? Funny, desktop / laptop machines still require it for Netflix -- not a small audience.

OS/2? Learn your history, MSFT helped create it, but it was an IBM product.

XBox Live? Last I checked it was still around.

I'm not a particularly MSFT oriented person (apple household) but having been around long enough, you might want to expand your horizons around MSFT product life cycles.

And, I very much disagree with your comment of "It will always suck to be a developer using MSFT technologies" ... Assorted MSFT technologies have made developers a lot of money over the years and I don't see that changing much in the next few years. Yes, they lag at mobile, but they are pretty damn big still.

>OS/2? Learn your history, MSFT helped create it, but it was an IBM product.

Actually, MS did once bet on OS/2. It is unfortunate that what was originally the MS OS/2 2.0 SDK turned into an entire fiasco. I really should write a blog series about it. In the meantime, look up "MS OS/2 2.0 SDK" and "Microsoft Munchkins OS/2".

They bet on it for a short while, but I was referencing the fact that they hopped ship and OS/2 continued under IBM for years. OS/2 Warp, continuing to run in ATM machines, the community wanting to continue OS/2, etc. It did eventually die, but it maintained a life well after MSFT decided to move on.

I still miss Galactic Civilizations. One of the better space strategy games.

An aside: GC2 is a fine successor. DRM-free, too. http://www.galciv2.com/

I tried that. But the original Master of Orion still beats it.

> OS/2 continued under IBM for years.

And meanwhile MS was attacking OS/2 using unethical tactics like "Microsoft Munchkins" that ended up being worse than working with IBM (under the JDA) in the first place.

I might write that as "IBM continued to try to fulfil promises to their customers for years despite their major partner jumping ship".

Silverlight -- how many other sites than Netflix do you know that use it? That is the only non-MS site that I've ever seen it used on.

Anyways, there's been lots of talk of SL dying[1].

1. http://stackoverflow.com/a/8929362/84473

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/case-studies/

Requires Silverlight

Yeah I don't believe I use any of those.

I'm confused about your statement, though -- are you saying that that specific MS page requires SL, or that the sites listed require SL?

If it's the former, well, that's expected as it is a MS site, and I qualified my prior statement with regards to such.

If it's the latter, I think it may be a stretch to say that SL is "required"; more than likely, it's used for a specific widget on each of those sites, which probably isn't integral to that site's core functionality.

For instance, I see NBC listed on there, but that seems to only be for the Olympics. I watch The Office on nbc.com, but I can see in the source that it's definitely a Flash player.

That's a lot of text to throw at two simple words

Your list is not accurate. Vista became Windows 7 & 8, OneCare became Security Essentials, Live is still around, Visual Basic is VB.NET, and I am sure there are more of those technologies. LINQ to SQL is like Silverlight - it's not being actively developed, but you can still use it.

"In the end, it will always suck to be a developer using Microsoft technology."

Just like in free software, it depends on what you learn. The Microsoft technologies I use at work are C#, F#, ASP.NET, and IIS. Those aren't going away anytime soon.

COM is not even close to being dead. Credibility--

3D Movie Maker was a Microsoft Kids product released around 1996. Not a developer product.

I wish that was the complete list of EOL products from MS.

Heres the list of discontinued software products

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsoft...

* ActiveX, COM and COM+ are all still widely used.

* Courier Tablet was never even a product.

* DAO was useful for over a decade and you can still write programs that use it today if you want to. Plenty of people do.

* DDE still works, matter of fact - perusing the list of hot questions on StackOverflow I saw a question about it today.

* Encarta was a developer product?

* Expression/Suite still works and is now available for free! Blend being rolled into Visual Studio? Great!

* Frontpage still works and you can even still buy it new, here you go - http://www.discountmountainsoftware.com/mifrpa.html

* Linq to SQL still works, I just used it in a small project the other day.

* Visual FoxPro made a lot of money for a lot of people and programs built with it still run on Windows 8. I know a company that just paid $50K for a program written in Visual FoxPro. Yeah, I'm sure the original developers hate Microsoft.

* Many of the other products you mentioned were transformed into something else. So, what's the problem? Don't like change?

On the other hand this is the other side of the equation:

1. As platform evolves, a system built on a dead product is itself a dead end.

2. Developers skills are also dead ended.

3. All the supporting products (build systems, test systems) are also dead ended.

We seem to reinvent new ways to do old things (forms, validation, saving to database), and this is very wasteful.

Part of the reason why the web has grown up so much is that it has enough time to evolve. I just saw WebStorm and it was amazing. You know what? This is possible because the browser as a platform has enormous incentive to maintain backward compatibility.

DAO in fact is still developed today as part of ACE, and has been since Access 2007.

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