ditoa

While demoscene stuff is seriously impressive most are using a shit load of DirectX to do what they do in such a small size. They are not bare metal demos.

"The development environment coders will use is based on Windows 7 and fully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012, allowing developers to debug PS4 code just like PC code. Tools will include C and C++ front ends that are largely compatible with most standard compilers, and various binary utilities, including CPU and GPU analyzers that can run in real time alongside games. Development houses will also be able to distribute tool and version updates to multiple dev kits more easily through a tool integrated into Windows Explorer."

Wow. Pretty big move by Sony there.

There is a massive difference between just bundling your additional software with your operating system and integrating (for no technical reason) your software with the operating system so that using an alternative is extremely difficult if not impossible (for the average user).

While I do believe that Microsoft should be able to include whatever it wants with Windows I want to be able to replace those parts with alternatives with zero friction.

Imagine if the US and the EU had not taken Microsoft up on this? We would still be using a god awful web browser which would have more than likely stalled the web from growing the way it has over the past decade and therefore not allowing a lot of the amazing web services we have today to exist. The same with media players. Look how crappy WMP is still compared to things like VLC. Or god forbid we would still have to buy things like CyberLink PowerDVD to play back DVDs because they are "allowed" by Microsoft to replace the built in media player for things.

Forcing Microsoft to split things up has done wonders for the IT world and while a lot of people see the huge fines as pointless they are very much not.

In the 90s Microsoft used its power to stall the growth of the web by several years. It was not until Firefox (and more recently Chrome) came along that Microsoft pulled its thumb from its ass and started to improve Internet Explorer much like it was not until Linux really got a hold in the server space in the early 2000s that Microsoft started to improve its server operating systems.

The same can be said for many parts of the IT world. Databases for example. Pressure from MySQL and PostgrSQL undoubtedly forced Microsoft to improve SQL Server (who remembers how god awful SQL 2000 was?). Even programming languages like Java and Python, etc. pushed Microsoft to make better languages (C#, F#) and platforms (.NET) and give away free tools (Visual Studio Express).

They had to as they had made the entry level to developing for the Windows platform (client and server) too expensive for individuals so they were going with the free tools as that was the only route someone could take if they wanted to get into development.

That is why we now have individual targeted tools for people to start with (the Express line as mentioned) so that Microsoft does not lose everyone to the free alternatives.

Pretty much the only product line that has survived the old Microsoft ways is the Office line because even with OpenOffice businesses couldn't make the jump for compatibility reasons (another awful thing about Microsoft).

Things are starting to change with things like Google Docs (mainly for small businesses) however I hope to see more competition in the next decade as with HTML5 it will be possible to provide a solid Office replacement as a web app.

The key for the enterprise in my opinion is the ability to offer this internally rather than an externally hosted solution like Google Docs though. Time will tell if I am right but I would bet that I am.

Unless I read it wrong the article says 10,000 servers going live this summer with the plan being to replace all 80,000 servers in total.

edit: just noticed they sneak "and eBay" into the 80,000 total server count. Makes a little more sense now :)

Is that 80,000 physical or virtual servers though? That ratio could easily be 10:1 if it is the VM count which is more what I would be expecting.

Hell even for Windows development I still use Linux with a Windows VM for Visual Studio. Windows 8 runs really smooth in VMware Workstation even on my 4 year old Core 2 Duo

For just a general surf the internet machine sure Linux has a lot of power that just isn't needed (and a lot of the time a lot of hassle to get it working right) and Windows does a good enough job. However I really dislike Windows for development. Perhaps I am just spoilt by the Linux (and GNU) world of tools but Windows to me is a real hassle to get working "right" for a developer machine.

Honestly I don't have an issue with Firefox/Chrome for the rapid version number increases. A browser is the most updated (or should be) bit of software on your computer. Honestly I don't even think of the version of Firefox or Chrome these days. They are just "Firefox" and "Chrome". This is much better for general users IMHO as it just means they use "Firefox" and not "Firefox 4.1.2" or whatever. A consistent update schedule makes a public version number pointless and it has, at least in my experience, made extension developers better at building extensions that don't break because I have upgraded from version 15 to 16 like we had back in the Firefox v2/3/4 years.

At the end of the day when the version number isn't really known to the end user it makes little difference if you bump up the major version number or the minor.

Also I love how quickly we get new features now. Firefox has improved more in the past year than it did in the past several years before the shift to a 6 week release cycle. It isn't suited to all software I admit but for a browser it is perfect. None of this "This site only works with Firefox XX or Chrome XX". Thank god!

Unless I am doing very heavy weight development work all of my dev envs are in VMware Worktstation virtual machines. So flexible to work with and I can archive off the whole devenv with the project once complete knowing I can just load it back up in a few minutes if I need to in the future. Bliss.

I don't really see that as a plus. Qt would have been my choice but oh well.

Today is 2013-03-14 which is good enough for me :P

I wish Google would buy Digia and make it the default framework for Android 5.

This is just an advert for C++ Builder XE3. There is nothing in this article that a C++ programmer does not already know.

F# is a very interesting language and one of the best things to come from Microsoft in a long time.

It could be a very very good thing for MS in the next decade if they invest in it properly (which they seem to be doing).

Interesting times.

Agreed, by definition, you are right. However the whole "Linux is free therefore it can't be good" attitude that did exist circa 10 years ago is pretty much dead these days except for some hardcore MS customers who are blind to the real world.

Yes you get pretty much everything (current) with an ultimate license that is only for development (with a minor exception for Office) not production. So while you can fire up a Windows Enterprise dev box you still need a production license for production. This is when Windows starts to get crazy expensive. Price up a 50 physical node cluster running Windows Server 2012 Enterprise and see why people don't want to both with it for such tasks. I have only ever seen a handle of large Windows server clusters and they were all in some way "sponsored" by Microsoft to show off the power of Windows server.

I 100% agree with you on JRE performance.

The Ask Toolbar thing is a pain in the ass. Although it was Sun who started it so blaming Oracle is a bit unfair. It does not excuse Oracle not removing it ASAP though. They don't include it as part of the offline installer, only the stub installer so it can be avoided at least.

For me there was not one identicle fit to cover C# however a mixture of Java, Scheme, C++(11) and Python covers pretty much everything. Some will argue having to know more languages, libraries, tools, etc. is a pain in the ass and to an extent that is true but I much prefer using a technology that is better tuned for a task that forcing C# into lots of different domains like I used to do.

Yes. IBM, Red Hat, etc. Also there are tens of thousands of users running distros such as Debian on system much bigger than Windows Server can allow. While saying "first party supported" isn't like for like with Windows (if you are running say Debian) it has a proven track record. While Mono is very good it is still very young. Obviously this is personal opinion but if I am in discussions with vendors on what software stack we are using saying Linux isn't going to get me fired as it is pretty much know to the whole IT world, even PHBs, Mono not so much. Reputation matters a lot. Linux has a good rep in the enterprise world.

Pretty much this in my experience. C# (and .NET in general) is pretty nice to work in but it is expensive from pretty much every angle. From Visual Studio (which runs over $10k for the Ultimate license) to needing the Enterprise version of Windows Server to do any kind of serious clustering you need a pretty big budget for software if you are going to commit to Windows for your production big data platform.

Also a lot of big data farms have some hardcore kernel optimisations which are not as easily done on Windows (if at all).

Also Java runs pretty much everywhere and is supported. C#/.NET is not (and Mono is not a decent response, if it isn't first party supported it isn't supported).

While not as clean or powerful as Soulver, OpalCalc looks quite interesting http://www.skytopia.com/software/opalcalc/

Yeah Word does have a few nice new things but I wouldn't say they are worth the price of the upgrade.

The advanced embedded stuff scares me a little. I can see people adding huge videos into a word document and emailing it to 100+ people on a DL. I can see it being abused.

Excel and PowerPoint have seen some nice new features added however Word is mostly the same. The new UI is different but mostly just cosmetic over 2010. Although the ribbon has more options.

The biggest changes in 2013 are SkyDrive integration. If you don't really need SkyDrive you can probably live without it until the next version of Office.

I do find 2013 uses less memory than 2010 and generally performs better which is the reason I have stuck with 2013 more than anything else.

Sublime was never very good with large files in my experience. UltraEdit has always been the best for that (if you are a Windows user, I don't know if the Mac and Linux versions perform as well).

Thank you for all your time and hard work Alan. I hope we see you back some time in the future. Enjoy your extra family time :)

I have the same issues regarding load speed on large files. I am a long time UltraEdit user and it is the fastest editor on Windows for working with large files that I have found. Unfortunately UltraEdit has a pretty awful UX compared to modern software. It is still very much a Windows 9x app which kind of sucks. Also it has some annoying as hell Unicode issues which is why I ended up switching to Sublime Text for 99% of my work and just keep UltraEdit around for those one a month moments.

Only the Java installer stub (online installer) has the ASK toolbar prompt, the offline installer does not.

We do. They are called Cue Marks or Cue Dots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark#Cue_dots_in_television

Reminds me a lot of the MySpace redesign video a few months back.

That is a pretty spot on summary of Windows 8. I use it on a laptop (no touch screen) and really like it but it can be a little bit disjointed to use. Saying that I never use any of the Metro (Modern UI) apps and uninstalled them all as soon as I installed Windows 8. They are not the kind of applications I want to use on a general purpose computer. A tablet? Yeah ok but not with a mouse. The 'old' desktop way of doing things is far better than the new way for 'old' input devices.

Windows 7 is more like Windows XP/Vista than Windows 8 is so it is more likely easier to just drop them back to what they probably already know.

Also Windows 8 is brand new and while it works just fine upgrading to it isn't really something that needs too be done just yet. Windows 7 is still a great OS.