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Joel On Microsoft's API Mistakes
AceMarkE writes "Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software has posted an article entitled "How Microsoft Lost the API War". He covers why the Win32 API is important to Microsoft, what they've done to keep it working, why Microsoft's switch to the .Net platform is both a good and bad idea, and why he feels the browser will be the real future of application development. Definitely worth a read no matter what your opinion of Microsoft is."
My prophecy is that HTML and HTTP will be completely deprecated within the next 4 years, and will be replaced by an open standard, probably backed heavily by Microsoft, allowing more power and flexibility to developers. Something like that may being me back to web-development...
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
I dont follow this guy's articles/rants much, but he is basically regurgitating everything everyone has been talking about and cramming down everyone else's throats for a long time.
.NET and didnt provide a straight forward migration to .NET from VB6.0 and other crap that they built. They expected that since all their developers loved them to death, it would have been easy to just port them from the antiquated VB6.0/5.0 to VB.NET. The industry/developers didnt move fast enough for them, which is where Microsoft suffered.
(1) Microsoft Loves developers who code on MS technologies - Sure, thats why they reel them in with swags. They lost a ton to Java, and they alienated another bunch when they moved to
(2)Compatibility - This was bound to happen, one day. With the rest of the world/industry/developers willing to sacrifice backward compatibility for the sake for something new/better, MS also realized that in order for them to move forward and keep pace, they have to do the same. Sure, they will have to piss some people off, but heck, they assumed the advantages would far outweigh the negatives. Wrong! But I am glad that Microsoft decided to shake free from the outdated Windows API model and embrace the new, and thereby have the balls to sacrifice some backward compatibility. You cant keep everyone happy for the rest of their lives. Some tradeoffs need to happen. You cant survive otherwise.
So what is this guy talking about other than whats already blatantly obvious to the rest of the world?
Rapid Nirvana
Source code is not the same as quality documentation. The MSDN CDs and site provide great documentation for developers. It's much easier than sifting through the virtually non-existent API documentation when trying to develop apps for GTK or QT.
No. I said Macintosh users keep their hardware on average much longer than PC users keep their hardware, so the relative yearly *sales* percentages of Macintosh hardware vs. PC hardware doesn't reflect the number of Macintosh users vs. PC users.
Did I lie?
No.
How old is your PC, anyway? No, not your oldest PC, your most recently purchased one. You run XP on that?
How much have you spent on PC harware in the past 2 years? Really? Interesting...
Actually, if your PC is more than a couple of years old, my Macintosh is faster than your PC ( I've recently upgraded at work, replacing my 4-year-old G4 ), not that it matters much... the software is better, that's what's important.
Ok, I'm done being serious in my feeding of a windows fanboy troll, so I'll say :
I wouldn't want my penis to grow any, I'd hurt my wife... ;-)... what, you can't go 4 hours? My gal married me because I kept her up *all* night and left her walking funny the next day...
Oh, wait. I'm still being serious. oh well...
Joel Spolsky is a bigoted windbag.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.