wcdolphin

But they did make the hard decision-- they decided two combine two experiences on the bet that these two experiences and contexts will merge moving forward. Your device should change in context with you, and you should control it. Why would I have two machines when one will suffice? I will have a surface pro, using both metro apps as well as desktop applications. I will flip the cover over when I want to really engage with my device and hold it intimately, at an angle, etc. When I get to a desk, I can plug in my peripherals and I have a fully functioning machine that can use all of the thousands of peripherals that the ecosystem has developed.

As a side note, have you used metro apps on a desktop? They work well, and generally the simplicity and hard decisions made make the experience more visually engaging.

This article seems to add no value to the discussion... Did you plan to make a point rooted in any sort of argument? Where did Microsoft not make a choice?

I think you might have an interesting point to make, and as someone who has worked on the project, I am especially interested in seeing and hearing criticism, but you have not provided any information or value to the discussion.

$100 says Yahoo is acquired by Google in the next three years. Any takers? I am imagining/hoping for a more successful version of the Stephen Elop leaves Microsoft, runs Nokia, forms a strong partnership with Microsoft. But this time, Yahoo is even more in the pits.

Ranking employees and rewarding behavior allows a company to form a culture. What actions are rewarded? What actions are not? For example, if someone delivers well, but is an asshole in the process, do they get rewarded? If they do, then that is the behavior that will be emulated and replicated throughout the company, as that is the behavior that is encouraged. If someone does a good job, delivering for their team, working well with our organizations and providing insight and value to many different projects, and this is rewarded, then this is emulated. It is classic behavioral psychology.

It isn't in your advantage to make your coworkers look bad, it is in your favor to make them look great, because they review you! You can ask different people for feedback and reviews, provdiding a great opportunity for growth. I have to agree with you in that it could create a toxic work environment, but I don't see that happening, and there doesn't seem to be much stress or strain around the process. Sure, there are worries, receiving feedback both negative and positive is not comfortable by any means, but the fundamental purpose is for everyone to get better, do better, and to have people rewarded for doing well!

Well, given how the DOJ treated MS, it is pretty clear that there was very little it could do in terms of integrating experiences without getting sued. Bundle a browser in your OS, get sued. Bundle a media player in your OS? Get sued. But Microsoft is in the middle of a huge culture shift, and it is doing things that are new, bold and targeted, unlike any company in the industry. Google is shooting blanks in every direction, hoping something won't just be a flash in the pan. Apple is cold and consistent, but given their record and how they treat developers, I would be surprised if they don't overplay their hand again. Amazon, on the other hand, is pretty awesome. Besides being a horrible company to work for, from all reports I have heard, they execute hard, fast and generally pretty well.

The way they describe stack ranking is fundamentally wrong. Currently Windows is in calibration, where we stack rank and reward behaviors that are positive for the company. This is not done on a per team basis, but on a whole organization basis. Everyone at a given level is ranked against everyone at the same level, with the goal that those who do well will be rewarded-- not only monetarily but also in terms of their position within the company. This starts at the team level, where managers push for their reports and ICs to be recognized for their successes, and it follows all the way up the chain and across the company.

Stack ranking is not simply based on what you accomplished, but also how you did it. There are three main pillars: what you did, how you did it and how you showed growth during the timeframe/milestone.

There is no perfect system, but to be frank, the calibration and review system is pretty damn fair and consistent.

In other news, #boycottApple helped Google+ realize that they need to design at least one feature correctly... If I am viewing a livestream, don't move the box that I am reading from. Goodness gracious.

And perhaps something of a report?

I guess that is exactly how it makes me feel, like I am dealing with a prototype and it is somewhat less trustworthy...

This seems to be a very poor comparison, remarkably so in fact. You are comparing a new ecosystem to that of one which required absolutely no change (and in fact, is still dominated by applications built/designed for an iPhone, but stretch miserably to work on iPads).

There are lots of legitimate challenges that Windows faces with this push, and lots of interesting interactions between these issues, but you fail to outline any of them.

To the many posters who have not yet written application for Windows 8, let me assure you that for the vast majority of applications which are currently available on Windows, building the application using the new SDK will not only be quicker, but also have much better products. You can also import almost all of your old codebase, the main changes are with respect to asynchronous IO, which creates a hugely different user experience, and of course poses difficulties to developers who are less accustomed.

@Patrick Moorhead, is there any logic behind your choice of 5K as the number of applications? It seems to have come out of the blue, and not from any analysis.

Excuse me if I seem critical, I guess coming from HackerNews I was expecting comments and insight.

My submission:

#ActiveRecord::Base.send(:attr_accessible, nil)#comment this line out to let GitHub get hacked

http://hatepaste.com/paste/e18802f3

It is too bad your example does not really convey anything interesting about the differences between clisp and Java.

The only thing I get from your essay is that Common Lisp has a REPL, which is sad because clisp is actually fun and interesting, and has a lot of VERY DIFFERENT things going for it.

Size of source code has never been a measure of the power of the language.

Being a web developer takes more than simply 'knowing RoR'. Developing is less about the code and more about the solutions you express through your code, as I am sure you know.