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Gates' Replacement says Microsoft Must Simplify

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the planning-the-future dept.

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."

4 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. Programmer's programmer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I bet I know what Ballmer has to say about that:

    Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers! Programmers!

    (Quit aborting my post. Abortion is unethical. Anybody ever tell you that? Geez)

  2. Can't resist by djupedal · · Score: 0, Troll

    "...whereas Bill hasn't been a programmer for a number of years."

    Years....got it. Lots & lots of years. Agreed, but when you say 'years' is that, like, say, dog years, or light years or long, hard years - as in.... never?

  3. An innovative Microsoft is good for everyone by Eloquence · · Score: 0, Troll
    Ozzie understands the power of collaboration. The versions of the Groove Networks software I looked at were bloated and overdesigned, but the thinking behind it -- making it easy to set up shared workspaces with all the essential tools you need -- is sound. With Ozzie at the helm, I think there's some hope that Microsoft might actually start innovating, rather than copying what everyone else is doing. This is good in two important ways:
    • Whether we like it or not, most people are forced to work with Microsoft products in their day to day office work. This is not likely to change in the near future. Any small improvement in Microsoft's products makes a big difference to a lot of people.
    • Open source programmers have big egos. If someone on a Windows box says "I can do this, why can't you do this?", it creates an itch that they want to scratch. Better Microsoft products will lead to more innovation in the open source sphere as well.
    Remember, Microsoft doesn't need to innovate to sustain its market share in the short term. In the long run (think 10-20 years), I think open source is going to win out anyway. But for the time being, Microsoft reorienting itself and becoming a more flexible and agile company is a good thing. I have big hopes that Ozzie is the man who could pull that off.
  4. Re:Huge Mess For Whoever Takes Over by ednopantz · · Score: 1, Troll

    >6) Linux continues to step by step become the de facto choice for computing companies to base their hardware on

    Which explains the ease of finding Linux drivers and the near impossiblity of finding them for Windows.

    Oh, wait, on this planet things are the other way around.