saurus's Profile

Since gameprix1 challenged anyone to contradict his opinion on MS Embracing Developers, I guess I'll have to chime in. You see I once was a developer, a Foxpro developer. Fox Software was one of those companies you mention, and one that went out of existence because Microsoft bought it. What did Microsoft do with it? You might suggest that Microsoft made it better by intergrating it into the whole development platform. Unfortunately that theory can't be proven since almost all US based Foxpro "developers" and software companies who used it, are now out of a job. Sad since it was such a powerful tool, only to be destroyed by a unthought-out development cycle that had to embrace intergration and OOP without any real thought for progressing existing work (doesn't VB sound like Deja-vu?). Nobody wanted to re-work everything, and there were no good class libraries to start from. We all know Microsoft's bread and butter is from Office and Windows. Their development platforms make negligable or NO PROFIT. So it's understandable that most other remaining companies have no way of making any inroads when you account for this fact. But wait, Microsoft charges a decent price for these applications right? Well when you account for R&D, and the MSDN distribution, and the support, then no Microsoft does this because it supports WINDOWS, and the intergration into OFFICE. So Balmer's sweat dancing is a facade to keep their remaining developers, and if you're still in that boat then I bid you good luck. Unfortunately, if you don't keep up with Balmer's tool-of-the-day, then the door will hit you on the way out just like many others amongst us. And from my view of the development landscape, I see more cross platform compatibility requirements from businesses I support, so don't think .NET will be your saving grace either. These mistakes that developers catch, that you mention, are chalkmarks on the wall that CTO's remember when they think about how they'll deploy their next product. Since IE has lost marketshare every month for a year so far, the "works on IE only" model is falling apart, and most companies are scrambling to catchup. So backup your claims all you want, Microsoft is obviously scrambling (take the Live demo as an indicator of that), and alternate cross-platform coding is starting to eat Microsoft-only developers up. Just read the job classified if you don't believe me. And no 95/98/NT technology doesn't need to upgrade unless/until it fails to do it's intended purpose anymore. You may be surprised just how many people still use NT 3.51 just because it was the only version of Windows that was US Government Security certified! How ironic is that. Oh and one last thing, the "bailout" money was a good guesture call on Microsofts part, mainly because (in 1997) without Apple, MS would have been considered a monopoly, and where would that leave them? Cheers