>From: "Ian Field" <field_ian@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: what if microsoft disobeyed the breakup?
>Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 07:36:54 -0700
>
>Phil Osborn spewed:
>
>| Funny, most of the professional developers I have known over the years
>| consider MS/DOS - Windows to be an unbelievable kludge.
>
>First of all, Windows on MS/DOS *was* a kludge, but that hasn't existed
>since 3.1. All of MS' 32-bit operating systems are *actually* operating
>systems, the DOS infrastructure is *minimal*. In NT and 2000 DOS is
>non-existent.
>
Phil spews in reply ) ) ) )
Sorry, I work professionally all day on a Win98 system. A good day is when
I only have to reboot 3 to 5 times. I had a LOT more control with 3.1, in
fact.
>MS-oriented developers are the workhorse of the development community.
>Sure, talk to Java and C developers (I was one) and you'll hear a different
>viewpoint - inferiority complex. With the advent of COM, there is not one
>real benefit to using even C++ over VB for app development (of course you
>get some performance benefit in some cases - solution, write a C++ COM
>object for those situations and call it from anywhere). With VB or any
>derived tools (i.e. ASP), a developer can be 2-3 times as productive than
>with any of the aforementioned languages. This is due in part to A) the
>APIs available to all of MS' products, which are as powerful, if not more
>so, than open source, B) the amazing cross-functional IDEs (Integrated
>Development Environments), and C) MS' excellent developer support network.
>
Right.. (spewing again) And MS didn't specifically write the code to make
the competing development platforms lag? Didn't hide the key hooks in their
OS? Who's paying you to say these things?
>The problem here is that the dot-com "revolution" has validated
>hackers-gone-"professional"-developers who believe that nobly writing for
>open source software justifies constant troubleshooting and maintenance.
>When your burn rate is over $55,000/day, you cannot afford to write things
>more than once - and we don't. The days of building amazingly complex
>scientific and enterprise applications on UNIX should be over. There are
>better alternatives now.
>
(Spew) Funny how many top systems people I know who regard that position as
utter lunacy.
> And what about the
>| market itself? It was specifically Bill Gates who pushed us into the
>| software marketing model that still prevails - where the software
>developer
>| gets a few pennies on the dollar
>
>I'm not quite sure which developers you're talking about, but I am sure
>it's
>beside the point. Microsoft's products help businesses succeed and
>consumers consume, what more can you ask for?
>
))))) How about products that work, keep working, and don't cost an arm and
a leg to purchase, and don't restrict you to their specific model of doing
things? How about simple, clean interprocess communication as was available
on the Amiga with REXX. How about multitasking for real?How about a file
manager that can remember from one instant to the next the format that you
ALWAYS want the files to be displayed in? I could go on - for probably
several hundred pages just describing all the specific idiotic things in
Windose that were/are solved in real OS's.
>, while most of the money goes to marketing,
>| and the end-buyer really has little clue as to product suitability or
>| reliability.
>
>Man - have you really spent a lot of time in X-Windows? Suitability? for
>the common Joe? Come on. I'd be suprised if you could install Linux on a
>new box and have XFree86 running in less than 5 attempts.
>
So LINUX has an initial price, because of its UNIX heritage and the fact
that it highly optimizes to the specific machine and system environment. So
you pay someone $50 or $100 to have LINUX installed with the common
applications you need. How much does Windows cost up front? How much is
your time over the next year worth, because you'll be losing a big chunk of
it to Windows crashes. (How much does a typical Windows guru charge for HIS
time, BTW.) And what about that old Mac, anyway. When I ask our service
bureau how many crashes so far with the new I-Macs, they tell me they're
still waiting for one.
>Read Steven Levy's "Hackers." We could have had a model more
>| like the LINUX - open-source, peer-reviewed system, where lousy software
>is
>| caught before it ever made it to the shelf, and the money mostly goes
>| directly to the creators, and solid products cost a fraction of the
>Windows
>| equivalent.
>|
>
>How very ideal - wake up man.
Thank you for sharing that with us... )))))
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