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18 Years in Software Tools, an Insider's View
calumtdalek writes "Newsforge (Also owned by VA) has an article on a talk given by Rico Mariani, an eighteen-year veteran at Microsoft, in which he speaks to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club, sharing his unique take on the history of, and controversies surrounding, Microsoft and the industry in general. Particularly illuminating are his responses to advocates of free/open-source software. The talk can also be download from the csclub's media server"
Is this "Unique" in terms of "unexpected, enlightening and nuanced" or "Unique" in terms of "The 'Unique' Opinion Held By This Guy As Well As Everyone Else Who Has Been Immersed in Microsoft's Corporate Culture For Two Decades!"?
It's kind of hard to tell. Since this talk is, unhelpfully, only available as an audio download, (1) I can't easily listen to audio where I am right now (2) I can't skim it (3) it's slashdotted. In other words, I have no idea what this talk says. A transcript would have helped a lot.
This said, I can't help but shake the suspicion if I could listen to this talk, we'd come to the altogether shocking and unexpected discovery that veteran Microsoft executives don't actually think that Microsoft is the bad guy! Who woulda thought? You mean Microsoft doesn't internally hold the opinion that they're evil, world-dominating bastards? Wow! And here I always thought that bad things were only done by people who go home at night, polish their monocles, and cackle gleefully at their own evil while murdering cats.
I'm not a psychologist, but surely 18 years in a single organization is going to brainwash you to some limited extent. You will either be (a) the corporate lovebug, touting everythign you do as infalliable, or (b) the corporate naysayer, whose sole response to anythign the company puts out is "it isn't read" or "this won't work".
makes for an interestign thought though -- how would one get objectivity (or a close approximation). Someone outside the organization could never truly understand the internal workings, but someone exposed to the internal workings would always hold a pretty strong bias (one way or the other).
"I'm not a psychologist, but surely 18 years in a single organization is going to brainwash you to some limited extent. You will either be (a) the corporate lovebug, touting everythign you do as infalliable, or (b) the corporate naysayer, whose sole response to anythign the company puts out is "it isn't read" or "this won't work". "
God I love the cynical attitude early in the morning.* One (+5:insightful) for calling someone a shill.
*The thing about cynicism and hate is that they both get into your bloodstream and poision your entire outlook on life.
Looking back from today, Windows 95 looks like a hack, and not in a good way.
But it was a tremendous accomplishment. At the time, Apple was adrift and Windows 3.1 sucked and was looking very old. In that environment, Windows 95 provided a pretty good alternative to Apple: A usable desktop, A 32 bit API, a decent class library, good developer tools, darn good hardware detection, even for the many devices for which it had to be ad hoc.
Or look at it this way: Windows 2000 was a "better" OS, but normal end-users could not install it and run it. Without Windows 95, Microsoft would have left the field open for Apple or some other alternative.
I wrote parts of this stuff
>> He also points out that though it wasnt the best OS they knew how to make at the time (points at NT) it was the best release of Windows that Microsoft ever did (in his opinion).
Maybe he meant "release" literally, as in the marketing extravaganza and all the hoopla and parties that ensued when Windows 95 was first released. No other product has since been able to match the long lines, desperation, and tremendous hype^H^H^H^Hexpectation of that version.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
That when you objectively listen to what *real people* from Microsoft are actually saying (and look at what they're doing), rather than apply biased feelings to out of context soundbites and "media analysts" with chips on their shoulders, they're just a bunch of geeks writing the best software they can.