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Gates' Replacement says Microsoft Must Simplify
Javaman59 writes "This article in The Australian newspaper describes the background and the agenda of Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates'
replacement as chief architect at Microsoft. The creator of Lotus Notes, he's
a high-calibre technologist.
From the article: 'Ray's a programmer's programmer .. He's much closer to an uber-engineer, whereas Bill hasn't been a programmer for a number of years.'
Ozzie is also driving Microsoft to simplify its software: 'Complexity kills .. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.' He's not the only brilliant programmer in the world, but he does have Microsoft's resources behind him."
I would totally disagree that he is a programmer's programmer. This is the guy that brought us Lotus Notes, and then a similar product named groove. Have you ever seen any company really using Groove? And on the lotus notes side - what a nightmare. I can't even think about that software without getting the shakes. The number of problems and issues I had when I was supporting it was crazy. On top of it all the program did not work like any other windows program... Causing tons of newbie headaches. I think Microsoft is in for a rough ride...
Windows Admin Tools
Then there are probably few survivors at Microsoft. Ozzie has his work cut out. You can brag about Lotus Notes all you want, but that was developed from scratch when you can make the proper design decisions. But with Windows being bloated and out of control, you just can't clean it up and make it more simple... can you? It seems like there putting to much faith in Ozzie... like a silver bullet. Gonna be tough to undo years and years of neglect.
http://psychicfreaks.com/Lotus Notes is more bloated and unusable than the worst Microsoft products.
He has a ton of baggage too, it is called "legacy support" the biggest problem with windows is the refusal to break legacy support once and for all, shoot for a secure and easy OS like what Apple did in OSX, then introduce legacy support via a virtual enviornment untill people fully adapt...can this guy do what Bill couldn't or wouldn't?
It's certainly true that programming these days is way harder than it ever used to be. The number of APIs, formats, interoperability options and even the number of languages a single project might encompass is truly bad for the brain of anyone that doesn't spend 24/7 keeping up with it all. Anyone that can push for simplicity gets my vote.
FWIW, any time I find it all overwhelming, I reach for my trusty copy of 'Programmers at Work' by Susan Lammers. Many of the great programmers are here along with the stories of how they created much of the basic building blocks we take for granted these days. Almost without exception, their ability to convey ideas in a clear and concise way is inspiring and after reading a few sections, I'm all fired up again and ready to cut code.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
> 1) 11 billion or so shares issued over the years. The significance of this fact seems to elude most people for some reason.
Yes, the massive number of shares they have issued to fuel growth is coming back to haunt them. As the stock continues to decline Microsoft is being forced to keep upping their dividend. Microsoft's billions in cash don't look that infinite when you do the simple math on what it takes to give a good return value every quarter to the ~10.5 billion or so shares
> 3) Revenue growth continuing to slow
This is the big one. People keep hearing that Microsoft had their biggest quarter ever, but the real health of a company is revenue growth rate. Last time I checked Microsoft's revenue growth rate was all the way down to 6 or 7 percent down from somewhere in the 20s I believe a few years ago. There is nothing to indicate that trend down won't stop and that revenue growth will turn negative for the company sometime soon. That will most likely be the most or one of the most significant days in the company's history.
> 7) Attempts to create new revenue streams have been failures like the Xbox/Xbox 360 marketplace disasters
I would imagine that whoever takes over at Microsoft will kill off the Xbox mess immediately. Should have been done years ago.
> 8) Can't attract/keep good employees now that the stock is no longer going up
Yep, Microsoft was able to avoid paying big salaries due to the massive amount of stock and the constantly rising stock price. For the vast majority of employees at Microsoft, if your options aren't going up you are getting paid pretty poorly compared to what you could be making at other places.
I think we are most likely going to be seeing a long list of people who are brought in to fix Microsoft over the coming years as the company shrinks from what it once was in the computing world. Even modest hits to the office software and OS revenue streams will bring massive changes to the company and how it operates.
When are they going to realise complexity is like the cancer they've got. It's not a small thing, something to be tided up, it is THE thing they're suffering with.
Windows is like a house of cards made from million decks, so many co-dependancies. It's why Vista has taken so long and will continue to cause problems.
The only thing to do is 'rip it up and start again' but they can't do that because of 1) time 2) losing customers by the millions along the way, so they carry on regardless and hope for the best.
Apple was in the same situation with Copland and it almost killed them too. Eventually they bit the bullet, trashed it (re-used some sections and ideas), provided the carbon bridge for transition/migration, and bought in proven code (BSD/Mach) and just worked on the GUI experience. This rescued them with literally months to spare before the big bad complexity monster ate them up. Genius, IMO.
Surely, at this late stage, they're can be no doubt that *nix won the OS wars?
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
"There are reasons why folks use Unix, TSO and DOS: most applications are textual in nature and benefit from that environment."
I'm not sure if I buy into the idea that "most applications are textual in nature" but even if I did, I don't see how the CLI interface has anything to do with how well an application can process text.
Hmm, is this quote from Microsoft after the development of Windows 2000 concluded, or when in the finishing touches of Vista.
They're confusingly similar anyway:
So... Microsoft learnt from their mistakes in Longhorn? No, wait a minute!
The next OS shouldn't be as monolithic with things breaking in their own products, or even worse, OS, as soon as they apply a patch.
So now you know what you can expect in Vista -- more of the same?
A funny thing in all this, and a constructive suggestion instead of just whining, is a request for Microsoft to offer install-time choices. Sure, there should be a "novice installer mode" like Vista (and XP) currently features where at the very start, one can say "I'm an idiot, install the OS" in prettier wording. But what about advanced users? Shouldn't they be able to exclude stuff they don't need. Maybe then, *gasp* they won't be subject to security exploits in these non-installed components either.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Even if he were a brilliant programmer (which I think he's not), he still has the extreme inertia of the Microsoft entrenched culture to deal with. This isn't the Microsoft that reacted quickly when the Internet sneaked up on them in the 90's, this is a bloated Microsoft that has as its main goal the protection of a deteriorating monopoly. This is a Microsoft that has not seen a successful, profitable new product in many, many, many years.
Yes, it would be simple. All they need to do is use that product they bought. You know. VirtualPC. All it would take is a WinXP and a Win95 preinstalled disk image, a VM that is premapped to the existing hard drive, and some tweaking to the interface so that users don't see a big difference between an emulated window and a native one.
Some difference would be fine because they could just call it 'compatability mode' and people would live with the slight kludgeness. They don't have to allow any new drivers in the images, as they have a fixed target. This would prevent people from moving the image to other machines.
The beauty of this is that VirtualPC is already semi crossplatform.
Oh sure, DOS was easy to work with. Do you remember trying to free "conventional memory" so you could run a certain app? Or trying to get access to any RAM beyond 1M? Some programs used "extended memory." Some wanted "expanded memory." Some wouldn't run with EMM386 loaded. Some required it. It is a good thing that DOS 5.0 (I think) introduced multiple boot configurations, because I needed them. I had to reboot my computer differently depending on what I wanted to do with it that day. And talk about braindead shells.. COMMAND.COM? WTF? Somebody wrote that in like 1981 and it was never updated since. Granted, I kinda got a kick out of "hacking" DOS back in the day. But I'd hardly call it easy to work with.
Well, if DOS is your model for an ideal system, Linux will be heaven for you. I'm surprised you haven't moved to Linux already.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I strongly suspect the Gates decided to bail now while Microsoft is at it's peak. I figure he knows what is going to happen in ten years.
I'd seriously consider taking that bet.
I submit two simple points for consideration.
I think it's been widely acknowledged that the biggest problem with MS is the sheer scale of what they've tried to do in recent years. There's little experience in the industry of how to develop projects on the scale of Windows or Office effectively, no handbook of how to keep the bug count down and avoid introducing security flaws, performance hits, or whatever other scalability problems in software with dev teams of the size they use.
With that in mind, I find it strangely reassuring that the first comments from the new guy at (almost) the top involved simplifying everything down to reduce the dangers in these areas.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Taking over a company that is in its decline is no fun.
;-)
Really?
Leading a company when it's going good is something anyone can do, it takes minimal effort. It's much more of a challenge to lead a company when "the shit has hit the fan" so to speak.
And some people, belive it or not, actually like challenges
DOS was still easy compared to Windows. I'd much rather hack memory limitations than fix registry problems any day. Next time somebody drops a machine on your desk and complains that Windows blue screens on boot, remember how easy it was to fix a DOS machine.
Exactly. As Ballmer once put it, when asked why Microsoft kept adding functions to Windows, "If we stopped adding functions to Windows, it would become a commodity, like a BIOS. And Microsoft is not in the BIOS business". This is called "strategic complexity". It's a very real, key component of Microsoft's strategy.