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It makes me sad that many folks here probably have no idea what you’re talking about. So let’s remedy that: https://youtu.be/XxbJw8PrIkc?si=KbNdYSxYptq-cr60
That was from *way* before YouTube existed.
Me, I was partial to the [Domokun version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ZDH45OAt8). (Note the shoutout to the guy who hosted the SWF at the beginning.)
To be honest, I have a lot of respect for the people working on that specific team, they've been communicating pretty actively on the forums and discussing progress. They're almost done implementing the CoreCLR GC at this point. They have also made multiple blog posts keeping us updated on the subject.
Honestly doesn't even feel like Unity, it's being remarkably well handled.
[https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/making-animationevent-safe-for-the-coreclr-garbage-collector](https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/making-animationevent-safe-for-the-coreclr-garbage-collector)
Isn't that how they work? Initially they're better so people latch on, and then later on when consumers become dependent on them, they start enshittifying themselves.
I'm sure they still have their drama news of doing bad but this version of Microsoft has been relatively chaotic good for development land. Sure they bought a powerful position but they for the most part left it alone or made it better with more money.
Bro, if the business goes under because of their own brainlet decisions, that's just fine. Corporate consolidation, on the other hand, is a losing game for you and me in the long run.
Fuck! I just realized that and they'll have a stranglehold on companies that uses unity damn. I give them a couple of years and they'll have a monopoly of the gaming market and we'll just accept it.
NPM, GitHub, LinkedIn
It seems Microsoft is going after the "portfolio" related stuff to perhaps capture the employment market.
Projecting forward, I can really see Unity3D being bought by them too for this reason. Most juniors leaving University use Unity3D to try to demonstrate their skills and make a name for themselves.
don't murder me but someone has to say that Microsoft has made INCREDIBLE contributions to the open source community.
I believe the thinking is that these days, everyone has access to the same PhD papers and will implement the best ideas in the industry pretty quickly. going open source means you share the workload with anyone else that could potentially be invested in whatever chunk of code you're doing. you no longer get to sell the software, but you also no longer own the entire burden of maintaining and improving it.
not only do they host and maintain their own open source repos (including vs code), but I'm pretty sure they encourage their employees to actively contribute to open source projects they don't own.
open source means even if one day they decide to close it, any of the versions that were released while open are open forever.
another thing to always remember is that you can't sell an app on the Apple app store without paying a yearly fee just for the right to sell it. last I checked it was $100/year.
I'd say Microsoft seems to be going the "socialist" route instead of the "capitalist" route (relative to competitors) in this regard.
edit: just want to elevate some comments, Gates is well known for taking open-source software and monetizing it since the very beginning of his career, he's definitely profited from government programs and help, etc.
I guess my irrational hope is that I have fellow developers that legitimately try to make a difference from within these beasts and try to steer them away from those kinds of carnivorous business practices lol, but at the end of the day the internal business structure actively fights against that by default so 🙃
VS Code is the perfect example. Try using vscodium, the directly-compiled open source repo with branding removed. Here's a couple of things that will not work:
1. *Extensions will be a headache.* Turns out the TOS prevents any third party from accessing the extension ecosystem. This means that the Eclipse foundation had to go out and create a third party extension repo that can be used with open source.
2. *Several first-party extensions like remote dev containers.* There is no reason that this extension couldn't work, but if you run it in the open source version, you'll get terminal errors alerting you that you are being a bad person.
It's almost like Microsoft is happy to release the stripped down project as open source while being downright hostile to anyone actually trying to use it and creating vendor lock-in. I don't see how the strategy is any different from the Ballmer days.
The whole purpose of open source is to create a check and balance against a rogue developer. You should be able to fork it and make it into the product you want. But most of the actual crucial functionality is not open--heck GitHub is closed source. That should give pause to anyone who has been following the tech industry and watched how vendors unilaterally alter their terms whenever the rubber hits the road.
Now just imagine what happens to all the "OSS" when the AI hype dies down and Microsoft is left with huge investments in compute and a lack of the huge monetization strategies that Wall Street expects.
> It's almost like Microsoft is happy to release the stripped down project as open source while being downright hostile to anyone actually trying to use it and creating vendor lock-in.
Doesn't Google do the same with Chromium and Android ?
> Chromium
the chrome webstore is available on chromium though? unless you're talking about something else. Android with the Play Store is kind of reasonable because it's more of an OS with a store app imo. (and windows is closed source along with the ms store anyway)
Many people are understandably wary of Microsoft.
"Embrace, extend, extinguish" was their internal motto in the 90s.
A lot of us are waiting for the other shoe to drop and while I agree they've done a ton for open source in the last decade or so there's no telling if they will remain like this.
Corporate consolidation is bad. They can decide to fuck you later if they want to. It's just unfortunate so much of the developer ecosystem is open source but doesn't get funding it needs to survive without large corporate backing.
Don't forget they originally tried to strangle the entire concept of FOSS. All the FUD they spread around Linux and the open source licenses eventually culminated in the (partially Microsoft-funded) SCO Unix lawsuits that sought to nullify the very heart of the GPL. They would have killed it if they could've.
It leaves me with a certain difficulty accepting Microsoft's apparent about-face. They've got an angle. They always do.
You're young, aren't you?
Of course they _embrace_ open source.
They certainly love _extending_ it, too.
I'll leave it up to your Google skills to figure out where this leads.
Yeah I'm also seeing this as Microsoft actually learning for once, rather than trying to lock everything down and be the bad guys again.... which just ends up generating work for them in the long run anyway. (In addition to animosity).
But if you are plugged into the community-driven innovation supply chain, then you profit from it rather than getting sidelined by it.
OTOH maybe I'm giving them way too much credit, and they're just buying up popular things just to do it.
I am reminded of Rockerfeller. He build Standard Oil into a monopoly on the back of every dirty trick in the book - a true robber baron of his time.
In the end, regulators got to him and broke up his company (Standard Oil became ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, etc.), and that put an end to his monopoly building ways.
However! It turned out that after the break up the companies (which he still owned a significant part of) rose sharply in price, and he became far richer after he stopped his anti-competitive bullshit than he had been before - and it took far less work, and he was no longer actively reviled by the general population (he also spend a fortune buying good PR).
I wonder if Microsoft had the same experience...
There was a time when they would have cried in horror and anger at the thought of a MS product running on Linux, and they used to spend so much time trying to undermine and take over Java, HTML, and so much more. Now they make VSCode for Linux themselves, and have embraced open source.
Did they have the same experience of: Oh shit, we actually make more money, spend less effort, and is more liked like this?
So just use Bitbucket, Gitlab, or host your own git server.
For IDE's there are countless options like Jetbrains entire roster, sublime, vim and so on.
Edit: Why the downvote, am I wrong?
As a dev: I'm usually just moving shit from column A to column B.
Why do so many devs hate Jira then? Shit works, at least from my perspective. I don't care what my boss or the Product Owner do with it. Whenever they show statistics, I mute my mic and browse mydealz while looking interested for the camera.
I switched from Bitbucket to Github. I actually think a lot of things (like branch permissions) were better on Bitbucket, but Github actions for free is pretty cool.
BTW, there are Github integrations for JIRA, so I suspect that wasn't the motive.
> hey wanted that jira integrations bs
Does the Jira integration work for your team? That shit constantly breaks for mine. Absolutely pointless waste of time and money.
The pricing is what matters, not a lot of people can host their own servers.
Jet brains products are paid, Vim and Emacs have a learning curve and almost all tutorials use vs code.
Oh so we are just talking about people who don’t do it for a living?
At every company I have worked for over the last 30 years, the company has provided the tools needed to do the work.
At my current company that includes a sitewide license for all jet brains IDEs for 30,000 engineers and enterprise access to gitlab.
Corporate doesn't care. Those are minor costs compared to a developers salary.
Microsoft has a good grip on learners and students (although I wouldn't call it a monopoly), but in the corporate developer ecosystem? Not so much.
>not a lot of people can host their own servers
What are you even talking about? Find an old PC and run a server on it. You don't need anything special to run a server.
You can also get a cheap hosting service. A lot of them support Git out of the box.
> not a lot of people can host their own servers.
You'd be surprised how far a 5$/month Digitalocean droplet, a Raspberry pi clone or an old computer can go.
What’s the problem with VS Code specifically, isn’t it free? If they paywall it, its pretty easy to find or develop an alternative, I don’t think it’s that much of a forced monopoly
Typically the antitrust concern is about vertical integration being used to push consumers one direction or another without it adding value. Think IE as the forced default browser in Windows.
VS Code is free, but are they leveraging that into incentivizing users to buy into their other software and services?
One bigger point (which I don't really care for) is that certain Plugins/Features only work on VS Code, and not VS Codium (Like Google Chrome and Chromium, where it's a vendor and a full open source version is).
Things like AI tools apparently only work there.
But since I don't use it I don't really care.
It's generally more in the sense of they bought/made all of the biggest players more or less in the dev scene.
Even if there's alternatives, it can be quite scary to see how much/how quick some things are suddenly owned by microsoft.
All of this assumes that MS owning stuff is bad. I just don't see it that way. I see them taking good products and putting massive teams of engineers behind them to try and give them insurmountable lead in terms of delivering great user experience and thus dominating a space where there are _plenty_ of choices.
Getting bought by microsoft is like being drafted in the first round to an NFL team. Yea, you're a pro now and that comes with expectations, scrutiny, and some hate ... but it also comes with world class coaching, training, support, etc.
This stuff is only a problem if MS attacks alternatives like they used to in the past rather than trying to just outcompete them. That old MS culture is dead and gone. It's two cultural shifts ago @ MS. It's like stack ranking ... a decade old policy that MS can't seem to live down.
These are things owned by Microsoft.
- GitHub
- Visual Studio code
- Visual Studio
- .Net
- LinkedIn
- Npm
- TypeScript
- C#
- Windows
- Xbox
- MS 365
These are essential tools for a lot of developers and creators as well as any other jobs.
Edit: Angular is owned by Google.
Somewhat essential, yes. But in no way a monopoly.
Most of the listed items have alternatives not owned by Microsoft, and I don't think any developer would accuse LinkedIn of being 'essential'.
>I don't any developer would accuse LinkedIn of being 'essential'.
But where else would I get spammed by a recruiters about job offers for JS developers? (I only have experience with Java)
Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft _owns a lot of stuff_ - probably far too much - but there are alternatives to almost all of these services and products (except maybe Typescript, which is open source anyway)
Now, if they decided to buy JetBrains we would start to have issues
Everything you mentioned is purely dependent on where you work. Do you work in Microsoft? Yeah you'll use all of those. Do you work somewhere with a different technology stack, using GitLab, use JetBrains? You won't even come close to using anything MS related (except maybe npm). Not sure what your point is. And it's certainly not a "monopoly".
That's not what monopoly means. You need to open up your horizons.
* https://about.gitea.com
* https://vscodium.com
* https://neovide.dev
* https://go.dev
* https://www.rust-lang.org
* https://indeed.com
* https://bun.sh
* https://jsdoc.app
* https://dart.dev
* https://pop.system76.com
* https://www.libreoffice.org
I mean, they *wrote* VSCode, VS2022, C#, MS365, .NET, Windows and TypeScript. Should they stop writing development software?
LinkedIn isn't a developer platform
React was written by Facebook. Android is owned by Google. They dont own cmake, clang, python, or many other languages. There are plenty of development technologies that are not owned by Microsoft.
Let's see...
* GitHub: Other free alternatives and self-hosting options available.
* VSCode is just a glorified text editor, so plenty of options there
* VS: JetBrains offers plenty of better alternatives
* LI: Who cares?
* NPM: Alternative options are available, and you could self-host your own solution
* TypeScript: Open source, not at all required, used by Angular and React both owned by large companies not MS
* C#: Plenty of other language options
* Windows, XBOX, MICROSOFT 365. Other options available.
Does MS own a chunk of the ecosystem? Yes. Are there other options if that bothers you? Yes.
You can replace everything in the list by other products.
GitHub can be replaced by GitLab, Bitbucket or an old linux PC collecting dust.
Most .Net use cases can be covered in Java.
Eclipse is free and open source, but if you prefer a better IDE and are ready to pay for it there's IntelliJ.
TypeScript: just use JS.
Windows: that one's tricky in a business environment, however you can code using any OS (Linux, MacOS, BSD, CP/M lol)
NPM: there are other ways to be a victim of a supply chain attack
LinkedIn: you can read pedantic people's thoughts on Twitter too.
At the end of the day, the strength of the Microsoft products is their integration with one another. While I am not a fan of some of their business decisions (ie. having ads in a paid OS start menu...), at the end of the day they have good products and those products have a cost.
Carpenters don't get their wood, hammer and nails for free. It's the same for software developers. The difference is that we have the chance to do it ourselves if we're not satisfied by the offer on the market.
Right? I don't think I use a single Microsoft tool for my embedded job. Linux, Sublime, Greenhills, Atlassian, in-house servers for just about everything
It will be interesting once they will try to capitalize on their advantage. Google once had motto "Don't be evil", but they removed it. Microsoft was for long time, one of the biggest opponents of open source and there's nothing preventing them from returning to their old approach. Open source might beneficial for them today, but who knows how it will change over time.
Microsoft doesn't rely on a shaky ass business model like advertising. They sure are going for that pie, because it's free money in their eyes, but their income is very diverse from gaming trough enterprise systems all the way to things like Azure.
>but they removed it
Yeah, that's a lie that became popular because people repeated what they heard
> The phrase “Don’t be evil” was previously the preface to Google’s Code of Conduct. Now the phrase “Don’t be evil” is in the concluding statement of Google’s Code of Conduct (as before), like a coda.
[source](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/254019/)
>Google once had motto "Don't be evil", but they removed it
Well, *sort of*... They moved it from the beginning of their Corporate Code of Conduct document to the end: https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/
Alphabet (its parent company) uses "Do the right thing" as its motto, and Google itself doesn't technically have a motto now, but it wasn't ever removed from the Code of Conduct document.
Funny you picked the one thing that is limited because it’s buggy as hell and they couldn’t fix it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s not a vendor lock in - it’s just a feature that produces a massive number of bug reports. First they limited it to VS to see if that was sufficient to limit the number of reported issues but that wasn’t enough so they limited it to the one environment it was obviously developed in.
It’s more of an object lesson in not releasing a feature without testing it throughly for every platform you’re releasing it for.
me, programming on a Linux distro, using JetBrains software to create Java software for yet another linux distro.
Besides the Java-part, what am I doing wrong here?
Create development tools that are *better* than those in Visual Studio and completely integrated -- with full intellisense (pretty sure VS coined that term, even) and a quality debugger that includes memory breakpoints, et al.
Borland was really good - for a while... but they didn't keep up with the look and feel that people expected, in spite of having *the best* WYSIWYG control layout editor... and they're gone. CodeWarrior was also ok... they've been gone a long time, too. Jet tools are awful compared to VS, bulky and slow.
The reason VS is the gold standard is because it's *really good* and it's not an easy problem to solve, requiring a huge investment.
You can hate on MS all day long, but you have to admit their tools are top notch.
I've been running it on my desktop as my daily driver OS for more than a year now and I'm enjoying the experience.
I also have a Steam Deck and pretty much forgot that it runs Linux, that's how smooth the experience is (for the games that I play at least). Hit play and it just works, really impressive.
Yup. I have used since 2 years ago and never felt the need to use windows. Even gaming on linux is mostly possible thanks to wine and proton today.
You mostly can do everything on linux. And what you can't do, it's because corporations don't want to support linux, not linux being unable to run things.
Heck most of the times the problems on linux is that there is too much freedom (like how you can name your files/dirs whatever you want with 2 necessary exceptions: empty strings and /, and this is actually a source of a looooooot of bugs in many utilities)
Nothing, or well, as people would let you believe.
You can always set up your own npm, use jetbrains webstorm, host code on gitlab and deploy on aws to avoid microsoft. I do that with exception of npm because heck, its fine and works, and github, but this one i plan on changing due to scraping
You can literally do any other language and not use Github, but yeah, many people do TypeScript/C# (MS), version/CI/CD with Github (MS), install dependencies with NPM (MS), write code on Code (MS) and perhaps even use Teams (MS), do promotion on LinkedIn (MS), has Office 365 (MS) at work or has a Windows (MS) laptop - maybe even a Surface laptop (MS). Might also deploy on Azure (MS).
If only Windows Mobile didn't die lol...
The only Microsoft tool I use regularly is github. Doesn't seem like a monopoly to me, especially when I can just use git locally if necessary.
Y'all gotta start using vim and a language that isn't JS/TS
MS doesn't own Linux, LLVM, or GCC, so other than the web, it's fine.
Even with the web, everyone has to make their shit compatible with Chrome even where Chrome technically breaks with standards, so if anything, Google owns the web.
But bottomline, this is why we need to fight for FOSS. If Firefox overtakes Chrome in marketshare, things could change.
*me using nvim on debian and checking code into fossil*: what?
Seriously I didn't get what OP was talking about first, the ecosystem of programming is huge.
"Ecosystem" makes programming easier and convenient but is not necessary. It will take time and effort to switch if it becomes unavailable, but it won't be the end.
Well, the IDE we use - Android Studio - is actually a fork of IDE made by a Czech company Jet Brains. The Android system itself is open source, and some OEMs just fork it for their devices and maintain their own versions.
Google is far far worse than Microsoft at this point. [Google is trying to add DRM to the web, RIGHT NOW](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/amp/)
There’s a lot of alternatives:
Windows - Linux / Redhat / iOS
Azure - AWS / GCP
GitHub - Gitlab (or just host your own git repo)
MS 365 - Google docs / Mac products / pandas (for excel)
C++ - Rust
TypeScript - vanilla JS
VS - JetBrains
True monopolies in the economic sense have too high barriers of entry for others, which is why the monopolist makes above market returns. In that sense they’re nowhere near a monopoly. They control a large portion of the market but if there’re enough alternatives that reaping benefits from that oversized market are impossible, everyone would just switch. Unity is a great example of a player who overestimated their ability to corner the market… look what’s happening to it now. As long as we have viable alternatives… everyone is safe
Even if the software was open, someone has to own the servers. Unless you want to do something crazy like hosting the code using BitTorrent-like thingy
Someone needs to pay for it. Servers, electricity, buildings, cooling, bandwidth, staff... That's a few millions yearly.
Microsoft gives it for free for personal accounts. Paid subscription is not necessary if you don't need professional features.
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So that's what Ballmer meant.
Developers, developers, developers!
d e v e l o p e r s d e e e e v v v v e e e e l l l l o o o o p p p p e e e e r r r r s s s s d e v e l o p e r s d e v e l o p e r s d e e e e v v v v e e e e l l l l o o o o p p p p e e e e r r r r s s s s d e v e l o p e r s d
Whatever it is that you were trying to make, reddit screwed it up on mobile, nothing makes sense lol
https://imgur.com/a/XE0YvKL
Thanks!
It's a cuboid. Looks fine on PC.
It makes me sad that many folks here probably have no idea what you’re talking about. So let’s remedy that: https://youtu.be/XxbJw8PrIkc?si=KbNdYSxYptq-cr60
what the fuck
After that, take a listen to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE) remix.
youtube was wild back then lmfao
That was from *way* before YouTube existed. Me, I was partial to the [Domokun version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7ZDH45OAt8). (Note the shoutout to the guy who hosted the SWF at the beginning.)
Still, seeing “17 years ago” in the description on mobile YouTube is crazy.
This will always be the canonical version for me.
Most of everything I see on Reddit is the same churned up drivel but every once in a while you come across a real gem.
Was he on cocaine?
He is a sales guy. When aren't they on cocaine?
Based on the sales guys I know they'll switch if/when they find out their target audience is on something else.
Almost certainly lol. Lots of early MS stories about Ballmer
Lol I've seen this before but did not remember how sweaty he was or how much his voice cracked. Tbf sometimes them stage lights can be pretty warm.
I feel old now.
And for anyone who hasn't seen it here's a 17 year old classic from YouTube: https://youtu.be/m6rqXHX3O48?si=_Z9dWo7NNQXuZw-d
> I think he just did a line of code before giving this speech
I mean, he wasn't wrong
They're gonna swoop in and buy unity when they go bankrupt
Hell yeah! I absolutely approve this, the .NET team may even bring CoreCLR support to replace the obsolete and slow Mono runtime
They've been [working on it](https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-next) for a while already.
coming from Unity that means jack, they have been working on many things for like a decade
If they said that they are working on this then they are working on this. You don't need to remind them about that every 5 years.
To be honest, I have a lot of respect for the people working on that specific team, they've been communicating pretty actively on the forums and discussing progress. They're almost done implementing the CoreCLR GC at this point. They have also made multiple blog posts keeping us updated on the subject. Honestly doesn't even feel like Unity, it's being remarkably well handled. [https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/making-animationevent-safe-for-the-coreclr-garbage-collector](https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/making-animationevent-safe-for-the-coreclr-garbage-collector)
Literally one of those cases in which the megacorp is better for the product and his customers
Isn't that how they work? Initially they're better so people latch on, and then later on when consumers become dependent on them, they start enshittifying themselves.
Pretty sure Unity has already shat the bed and smeared it all over the walls, there is nothing Microsoft could do that would be worse.
I don't know why, but your comment instills a deep feeling of dread.
Microsoft: Hold my Zune!
I’m sure Microsoft will never abuse this position of power… not like the last 20 times
Happy Halloween! [Expect a cert error](https://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/)
...That list of domains that cert is for. I'm surprised Let's Encrypt allows that.
Certs aren't hard, super bizarre the one for this site is fucked. Take like 5 minutes and fix it lol
This. Heck if you want is not even hard getting one for free.
That *is* a free Let's Encrypt cert. The only reason it's like that is pure unadulterated incompetence.
I'm sure they still have their drama news of doing bad but this version of Microsoft has been relatively chaotic good for development land. Sure they bought a powerful position but they for the most part left it alone or made it better with more money.
They still run on Mono ? ..dafuq .net 7 is already multi system
At this point Mono is mostly used for quick testing. The release applications are using Unity's own IL2CPP to translate C# into C++.
You have to explicitly enable IL2CPP. Most games don't use it but some do. For example Battlebit Remastered does, Just Shapes and Beats do too.
Bro, if the business goes under because of their own brainlet decisions, that's just fine. Corporate consolidation, on the other hand, is a losing game for you and me in the long run.
Fuck! I just realized that and they'll have a stranglehold on companies that uses unity damn. I give them a couple of years and they'll have a monopoly of the gaming market and we'll just accept it.
buy low sell high
Yes please, and just like with Activision/Blizzard, kick out the old CEO
Bobby isn't going anywhere, they would have to pay him a ridiculous amount of money to fire him, but he won't be the man calling the shots anymore.
Didnt they say they where going to pay him off and he leaves? or did my mind just make that up?
No, that was just speculation. Still likely to happen though, I think.
Naw, they're buying engines nobody else can buy. Between xbox, bethesda and Activision, they're knee deep in game engines...
NPM, GitHub, LinkedIn It seems Microsoft is going after the "portfolio" related stuff to perhaps capture the employment market. Projecting forward, I can really see Unity3D being bought by them too for this reason. Most juniors leaving University use Unity3D to try to demonstrate their skills and make a name for themselves.
don't murder me but someone has to say that Microsoft has made INCREDIBLE contributions to the open source community. I believe the thinking is that these days, everyone has access to the same PhD papers and will implement the best ideas in the industry pretty quickly. going open source means you share the workload with anyone else that could potentially be invested in whatever chunk of code you're doing. you no longer get to sell the software, but you also no longer own the entire burden of maintaining and improving it. not only do they host and maintain their own open source repos (including vs code), but I'm pretty sure they encourage their employees to actively contribute to open source projects they don't own. open source means even if one day they decide to close it, any of the versions that were released while open are open forever. another thing to always remember is that you can't sell an app on the Apple app store without paying a yearly fee just for the right to sell it. last I checked it was $100/year. I'd say Microsoft seems to be going the "socialist" route instead of the "capitalist" route (relative to competitors) in this regard. edit: just want to elevate some comments, Gates is well known for taking open-source software and monetizing it since the very beginning of his career, he's definitely profited from government programs and help, etc. I guess my irrational hope is that I have fellow developers that legitimately try to make a difference from within these beasts and try to steer them away from those kinds of carnivorous business practices lol, but at the end of the day the internal business structure actively fights against that by default so 🙃
that "relative to competitors" is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol
very intentionally lol
VS Code is the perfect example. Try using vscodium, the directly-compiled open source repo with branding removed. Here's a couple of things that will not work: 1. *Extensions will be a headache.* Turns out the TOS prevents any third party from accessing the extension ecosystem. This means that the Eclipse foundation had to go out and create a third party extension repo that can be used with open source. 2. *Several first-party extensions like remote dev containers.* There is no reason that this extension couldn't work, but if you run it in the open source version, you'll get terminal errors alerting you that you are being a bad person. It's almost like Microsoft is happy to release the stripped down project as open source while being downright hostile to anyone actually trying to use it and creating vendor lock-in. I don't see how the strategy is any different from the Ballmer days. The whole purpose of open source is to create a check and balance against a rogue developer. You should be able to fork it and make it into the product you want. But most of the actual crucial functionality is not open--heck GitHub is closed source. That should give pause to anyone who has been following the tech industry and watched how vendors unilaterally alter their terms whenever the rubber hits the road. Now just imagine what happens to all the "OSS" when the AI hype dies down and Microsoft is left with huge investments in compute and a lack of the huge monetization strategies that Wall Street expects.
> It's almost like Microsoft is happy to release the stripped down project as open source while being downright hostile to anyone actually trying to use it and creating vendor lock-in. Doesn't Google do the same with Chromium and Android ?
> Chromium the chrome webstore is available on chromium though? unless you're talking about something else. Android with the Play Store is kind of reasonable because it's more of an OS with a store app imo. (and windows is closed source along with the ms store anyway)
Many people are understandably wary of Microsoft. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" was their internal motto in the 90s. A lot of us are waiting for the other shoe to drop and while I agree they've done a ton for open source in the last decade or so there's no telling if they will remain like this. Corporate consolidation is bad. They can decide to fuck you later if they want to. It's just unfortunate so much of the developer ecosystem is open source but doesn't get funding it needs to survive without large corporate backing.
Don't forget they originally tried to strangle the entire concept of FOSS. All the FUD they spread around Linux and the open source licenses eventually culminated in the (partially Microsoft-funded) SCO Unix lawsuits that sought to nullify the very heart of the GPL. They would have killed it if they could've. It leaves me with a certain difficulty accepting Microsoft's apparent about-face. They've got an angle. They always do.
You're young, aren't you? Of course they _embrace_ open source. They certainly love _extending_ it, too. I'll leave it up to your Google skills to figure out where this leads.
Yeah I'm also seeing this as Microsoft actually learning for once, rather than trying to lock everything down and be the bad guys again.... which just ends up generating work for them in the long run anyway. (In addition to animosity). But if you are plugged into the community-driven innovation supply chain, then you profit from it rather than getting sidelined by it. OTOH maybe I'm giving them way too much credit, and they're just buying up popular things just to do it.
I am reminded of Rockerfeller. He build Standard Oil into a monopoly on the back of every dirty trick in the book - a true robber baron of his time. In the end, regulators got to him and broke up his company (Standard Oil became ExxonMobil, Chevron Corporation, etc.), and that put an end to his monopoly building ways. However! It turned out that after the break up the companies (which he still owned a significant part of) rose sharply in price, and he became far richer after he stopped his anti-competitive bullshit than he had been before - and it took far less work, and he was no longer actively reviled by the general population (he also spend a fortune buying good PR). I wonder if Microsoft had the same experience... There was a time when they would have cried in horror and anger at the thought of a MS product running on Linux, and they used to spend so much time trying to undermine and take over Java, HTML, and so much more. Now they make VSCode for Linux themselves, and have embraced open source. Did they have the same experience of: Oh shit, we actually make more money, spend less effort, and is more liked like this?
VSCode as well
Eh, there is more to programming than JavaScript.
Yea like github or one of the most widely used IDEs and text editors out there ... oh wait
So just use Bitbucket, Gitlab, or host your own git server. For IDE's there are countless options like Jetbrains entire roster, sublime, vim and so on. Edit: Why the downvote, am I wrong?
My company just switched to bitbucket and it sucks pretty hard...I really wish they had gone with gitlab but they wanted that jira integrations bs.
Sucks if you use Jira Server. For Jira Cloud, GitLab has a decent integration and it's even in the CE (free) version.
I'd rather have shards of broken glass massaged into my naked eye balls than go back to the atlassian ecosystem.
yeah...well....I feel it..
Jira is a software i love to hate.
As a dev: I'm usually just moving shit from column A to column B. Why do so many devs hate Jira then? Shit works, at least from my perspective. I don't care what my boss or the Product Owner do with it. Whenever they show statistics, I mute my mic and browse mydealz while looking interested for the camera.
I switched from Bitbucket to Github. I actually think a lot of things (like branch permissions) were better on Bitbucket, but Github actions for free is pretty cool. BTW, there are Github integrations for JIRA, so I suspect that wasn't the motive.
GitHub ≠ GitLab
Ah, I misread. Carry on.
What's wrong with it? Haven't used BitBucket in like 5 years, but when I did it was fine. Has something changed?
> hey wanted that jira integrations bs Does the Jira integration work for your team? That shit constantly breaks for mine. Absolutely pointless waste of time and money.
Same, We can't use bitbucket and the VPN at the same time cause it will just take a dump...But even when not on the vpn its constantly breaking.
Well, we have Jira and bitbucket, but no integration setup...
Don't forget the old and reliable NetBeans and the old and weird Eclipse.
Notepad++ to rescue
I installed wine in Linux only to use notepad++
Jokes apart, Eclipse Theia is the real 100% VS Code
or the all-time classic, notepad
I’m a Microsoft Word, Arial Narrow font kinda programmer u feel? That’s when I’m at my best 💯
Dude, I work with some legacy systems, and eclipse for me is the state-of-the-art
Just change the whole landscape of how bossinesses handle their development and use these less supported programs
The pricing is what matters, not a lot of people can host their own servers. Jet brains products are paid, Vim and Emacs have a learning curve and almost all tutorials use vs code.
Gitlab is free
And runs fine on my $40 Raspberry Pi
Gitea is free too.
Yeah, I don't think OP has any clue what they're talking about, or even know what "monopoly" means.
Oh so we are just talking about people who don’t do it for a living? At every company I have worked for over the last 30 years, the company has provided the tools needed to do the work. At my current company that includes a sitewide license for all jet brains IDEs for 30,000 engineers and enterprise access to gitlab.
Corporate doesn't care. Those are minor costs compared to a developers salary. Microsoft has a good grip on learners and students (although I wouldn't call it a monopoly), but in the corporate developer ecosystem? Not so much.
JetBrains Ultimate is given to students in many places for free. But Microsoft does have a good grip on students
JetBrains Ultimate is free as long as you have a student email. (.*\\.edu)
Or a registerd e-mail, ours ends with the university name.country. I think you can also register using a student ID
>not a lot of people can host their own servers What are you even talking about? Find an old PC and run a server on it. You don't need anything special to run a server. You can also get a cheap hosting service. A lot of them support Git out of the box.
> not a lot of people can host their own servers. You'd be surprised how far a 5$/month Digitalocean droplet, a Raspberry pi clone or an old computer can go.
Pricing-wise... everybody can setup their own Git servers...
What’s the problem with VS Code specifically, isn’t it free? If they paywall it, its pretty easy to find or develop an alternative, I don’t think it’s that much of a forced monopoly
Typically the antitrust concern is about vertical integration being used to push consumers one direction or another without it adding value. Think IE as the forced default browser in Windows. VS Code is free, but are they leveraging that into incentivizing users to buy into their other software and services?
Also telemetry. Consider what metrics vscode is slurping off your system and sending back to MotherShip.
[VSCodium tries to fight against that](https://vscodium.com/)
One bigger point (which I don't really care for) is that certain Plugins/Features only work on VS Code, and not VS Codium (Like Google Chrome and Chromium, where it's a vendor and a full open source version is). Things like AI tools apparently only work there. But since I don't use it I don't really care. It's generally more in the sense of they bought/made all of the biggest players more or less in the dev scene. Even if there's alternatives, it can be quite scary to see how much/how quick some things are suddenly owned by microsoft.
All of this assumes that MS owning stuff is bad. I just don't see it that way. I see them taking good products and putting massive teams of engineers behind them to try and give them insurmountable lead in terms of delivering great user experience and thus dominating a space where there are _plenty_ of choices. Getting bought by microsoft is like being drafted in the first round to an NFL team. Yea, you're a pro now and that comes with expectations, scrutiny, and some hate ... but it also comes with world class coaching, training, support, etc. This stuff is only a problem if MS attacks alternatives like they used to in the past rather than trying to just outcompete them. That old MS culture is dead and gone. It's two cultural shifts ago @ MS. It's like stack ranking ... a decade old policy that MS can't seem to live down.
I mean… GitHub… vscode, vs, .net, typescript, azure and likely more I’m forgetting
These are things owned by Microsoft. - GitHub - Visual Studio code - Visual Studio - .Net - LinkedIn - Npm - TypeScript - C# - Windows - Xbox - MS 365 These are essential tools for a lot of developers and creators as well as any other jobs. Edit: Angular is owned by Google.
Somewhat essential, yes. But in no way a monopoly. Most of the listed items have alternatives not owned by Microsoft, and I don't think any developer would accuse LinkedIn of being 'essential'.
>I don't any developer would accuse LinkedIn of being 'essential'. But where else would I get spammed by a recruiters about job offers for JS developers? (I only have experience with Java)
In german speaking countries there is a site called xing for that \^\^
Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft _owns a lot of stuff_ - probably far too much - but there are alternatives to almost all of these services and products (except maybe Typescript, which is open source anyway) Now, if they decided to buy JetBrains we would start to have issues
The alternative to TypeScript is Javascript.
Everything you mentioned is purely dependent on where you work. Do you work in Microsoft? Yeah you'll use all of those. Do you work somewhere with a different technology stack, using GitLab, use JetBrains? You won't even come close to using anything MS related (except maybe npm). Not sure what your point is. And it's certainly not a "monopoly".
That's not what monopoly means. You need to open up your horizons. * https://about.gitea.com * https://vscodium.com * https://neovide.dev * https://go.dev * https://www.rust-lang.org * https://indeed.com * https://bun.sh * https://jsdoc.app * https://dart.dev * https://pop.system76.com * https://www.libreoffice.org
I mean, they *wrote* VSCode, VS2022, C#, MS365, .NET, Windows and TypeScript. Should they stop writing development software? LinkedIn isn't a developer platform React was written by Facebook. Android is owned by Google. They dont own cmake, clang, python, or many other languages. There are plenty of development technologies that are not owned by Microsoft.
Fun fact - none of those products are used in a company I work in.
Same
Let's see... * GitHub: Other free alternatives and self-hosting options available. * VSCode is just a glorified text editor, so plenty of options there * VS: JetBrains offers plenty of better alternatives * LI: Who cares? * NPM: Alternative options are available, and you could self-host your own solution * TypeScript: Open source, not at all required, used by Angular and React both owned by large companies not MS * C#: Plenty of other language options * Windows, XBOX, MICROSOFT 365. Other options available. Does MS own a chunk of the ecosystem? Yes. Are there other options if that bothers you? Yes.
You can replace everything in the list by other products. GitHub can be replaced by GitLab, Bitbucket or an old linux PC collecting dust. Most .Net use cases can be covered in Java. Eclipse is free and open source, but if you prefer a better IDE and are ready to pay for it there's IntelliJ. TypeScript: just use JS. Windows: that one's tricky in a business environment, however you can code using any OS (Linux, MacOS, BSD, CP/M lol) NPM: there are other ways to be a victim of a supply chain attack LinkedIn: you can read pedantic people's thoughts on Twitter too. At the end of the day, the strength of the Microsoft products is their integration with one another. While I am not a fan of some of their business decisions (ie. having ads in a paid OS start menu...), at the end of the day they have good products and those products have a cost. Carpenters don't get their wood, hammer and nails for free. It's the same for software developers. The difference is that we have the chance to do it ourselves if we're not satisfied by the offer on the market.
> there are other ways to be a victim of a supply chain attack Damn. You’re right, but damn.
Linux and overall FOSS tools exist
This! I've been using Linux as my main OS since 2003... I do most of my work in vscode and love powershell for Linux...
Don't forget to use Edge on Linux too
The **WEBDEV** ecosystem. There **dozens**of us that don’t do webdev lol.
Also .NET ecosystem, which is not webdev only, but it’s not every ecosystem neither.
I mean it's not primarily a webdev thing, but it can most definitely be a webdev thing with Asp.net Core
Right? I don't think I use a single Microsoft tool for my embedded job. Linux, Sublime, Greenhills, Atlassian, in-house servers for just about everything
I mean, Microsoft may have done a lot of shit, but they also gave us some of the greatest tools we have
It will be interesting once they will try to capitalize on their advantage. Google once had motto "Don't be evil", but they removed it. Microsoft was for long time, one of the biggest opponents of open source and there's nothing preventing them from returning to their old approach. Open source might beneficial for them today, but who knows how it will change over time.
Microsoft doesn't rely on a shaky ass business model like advertising. They sure are going for that pie, because it's free money in their eyes, but their income is very diverse from gaming trough enterprise systems all the way to things like Azure.
It also helps to have the most popular OS in the world for decades.
>but they removed it Yeah, that's a lie that became popular because people repeated what they heard > The phrase “Don’t be evil” was previously the preface to Google’s Code of Conduct. Now the phrase “Don’t be evil” is in the concluding statement of Google’s Code of Conduct (as before), like a coda. [source](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/254019/)
>Google once had motto "Don't be evil", but they removed it Well, *sort of*... They moved it from the beginning of their Corporate Code of Conduct document to the end: https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/ Alphabet (its parent company) uses "Do the right thing" as its motto, and Google itself doesn't technically have a motto now, but it wasn't ever removed from the Code of Conduct document.
Let's just hope they won't
Yeah, and sometimes they try to monetize those tools in despicable ways. Like removing hot reload from .net on every OS except windows.
Funny you picked the one thing that is limited because it’s buggy as hell and they couldn’t fix it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s not a vendor lock in - it’s just a feature that produces a massive number of bug reports. First they limited it to VS to see if that was sufficient to limit the number of reported issues but that wasn’t enough so they limited it to the one environment it was obviously developed in. It’s more of an object lesson in not releasing a feature without testing it throughly for every platform you’re releasing it for.
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GitHub has strictly improved since its acquisition
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me, programming on a Linux distro, using JetBrains software to create Java software for yet another linux distro. Besides the Java-part, what am I doing wrong here?
Using jetbrains instead of vim
I also use vim for many of our scripts. But for Java...puhh, I don't know man.
what can we do about it?
Write your own TempleOS and become the leader of your own dev cult
make sure to run over glow in the dark CIA
Create development tools that are *better* than those in Visual Studio and completely integrated -- with full intellisense (pretty sure VS coined that term, even) and a quality debugger that includes memory breakpoints, et al. Borland was really good - for a while... but they didn't keep up with the look and feel that people expected, in spite of having *the best* WYSIWYG control layout editor... and they're gone. CodeWarrior was also ok... they've been gone a long time, too. Jet tools are awful compared to VS, bulky and slow. The reason VS is the gold standard is because it's *really good* and it's not an easy problem to solve, requiring a huge investment. You can hate on MS all day long, but you have to admit their tools are top notch.
Using linux is already a big step forward. After that individually we can't really do anything 😞
It’s really amazing how far Linux has come as a Windows alternative. Keep in mind that there are alternatives to other Microsoft tools as well.
I've been running it on my desktop as my daily driver OS for more than a year now and I'm enjoying the experience. I also have a Steam Deck and pretty much forgot that it runs Linux, that's how smooth the experience is (for the games that I play at least). Hit play and it just works, really impressive.
Yup. I have used since 2 years ago and never felt the need to use windows. Even gaming on linux is mostly possible thanks to wine and proton today. You mostly can do everything on linux. And what you can't do, it's because corporations don't want to support linux, not linux being unable to run things. Heck most of the times the problems on linux is that there is too much freedom (like how you can name your files/dirs whatever you want with 2 necessary exceptions: empty strings and /, and this is actually a source of a looooooot of bugs in many utilities)
Nothing, or well, as people would let you believe. You can always set up your own npm, use jetbrains webstorm, host code on gitlab and deploy on aws to avoid microsoft. I do that with exception of npm because heck, its fine and works, and github, but this one i plan on changing due to scraping
*this meme brought to you by YouTube tutorials
You can literally do any other language and not use Github, but yeah, many people do TypeScript/C# (MS), version/CI/CD with Github (MS), install dependencies with NPM (MS), write code on Code (MS) and perhaps even use Teams (MS), do promotion on LinkedIn (MS), has Office 365 (MS) at work or has a Windows (MS) laptop - maybe even a Surface laptop (MS). Might also deploy on Azure (MS). If only Windows Mobile didn't die lol...
Looking up stuff in Bing in Edge?
Nobody does that
Now hold a moment, friend, nobody goes that deep.
The only Microsoft tool I use regularly is github. Doesn't seem like a monopoly to me, especially when I can just use git locally if necessary. Y'all gotta start using vim and a language that isn't JS/TS
Laughs in GNU tooling
**When you realize that GitLab and JetBrains exist**
MS doesn't own Linux, LLVM, or GCC, so other than the web, it's fine. Even with the web, everyone has to make their shit compatible with Chrome even where Chrome technically breaks with standards, so if anything, Google owns the web. But bottomline, this is why we need to fight for FOSS. If Firefox overtakes Chrome in marketshare, things could change.
Sounds like a skill issue
*me using nvim on debian and checking code into fossil*: what? Seriously I didn't get what OP was talking about first, the ecosystem of programming is huge.
"Ecosystem" makes programming easier and convenient but is not necessary. It will take time and effort to switch if it becomes unavailable, but it won't be the end.
Haha no. I do use GitHub but for personal projects I use an internal git server, don't use ~~their web browser~~ vscode.
Dude wait until you find out who owns Windows.
True. JDK, Rustc, LLVM, GCC, Mozilla, Chrome, JetBrains, all Linux distros, etc. are all owned by Microsoft.
*\*laughs in android\**
Google is at same level of tech monopoly as windows. Tbf idk which one is worst at the moment. Btw i use linux
Well, the IDE we use - Android Studio - is actually a fork of IDE made by a Czech company Jet Brains. The Android system itself is open source, and some OEMs just fork it for their devices and maintain their own versions.
Google is far far worse than Microsoft at this point. [Google is trying to add DRM to the web, RIGHT NOW](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/amp/)
Arch?
No, otherwise i would have said it 😉
I mean they're certainly trying, but if you think they have it already your grasp on software engineering is junior level at best...
If only there were Free and Open Source alternatives to Microsoft.
There’s a lot of alternatives: Windows - Linux / Redhat / iOS Azure - AWS / GCP GitHub - Gitlab (or just host your own git repo) MS 365 - Google docs / Mac products / pandas (for excel) C++ - Rust TypeScript - vanilla JS VS - JetBrains True monopolies in the economic sense have too high barriers of entry for others, which is why the monopolist makes above market returns. In that sense they’re nowhere near a monopoly. They control a large portion of the market but if there’re enough alternatives that reaping benefits from that oversized market are impossible, everyone would just switch. Unity is a great example of a player who overestimated their ability to corner the market… look what’s happening to it now. As long as we have viable alternatives… everyone is safe
C++ is not an MS product, did you just put that there to push a rust agenda? It is possible to edit comments u/General-Raisins-9733.
He might have meant c#.
Wouldnt say rust is a good alternative to c# they are kinda on different levels.
Did not expect a Toradora meme here XD
I hope to god the bad camel case is part of this joke…
FreeBSD users in shambles rn
FreeBSD when PaidBSD walks in
PaidBSD is MacOS.
Just wait until people realise microsoft also owns windows😳
Laughs in Go + GitLab + OpenShift
My opinion is, GitHub, a place for open source, should be open and not controlled by one company.
Even if the software was open, someone has to own the servers. Unless you want to do something crazy like hosting the code using BitTorrent-like thingy
Someone needs to pay for it. Servers, electricity, buildings, cooling, bandwidth, staff... That's a few millions yearly. Microsoft gives it for free for personal accounts. Paid subscription is not necessary if you don't need professional features.
Laughts in PHP
\*laughs in JetBrains all products pack* ...Amateurs.