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18 Years in Software Tools, an Insider's View

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the learning-from-history dept.

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"

14 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by bgog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Good talk but man that guy is whiney. He sound's like my four-year-old.

  2. Unique, huh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Unique, huh. by kjart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!"?

      I'd say it's unique in that's it's a fairly candid hour and twenty minute discussion (used loosely since he does most of the talking) with an (allegedly) bright developer who has worked for Microsoft for the past 18 years.

      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.

      Yup, that's actually one of his points - people in Microsoft don't think of themselves as evil and don't have "World Domination" on their todo lists - they're too busy doing their jobs. The people responsible for the whole IE debacle (he actually uses this as an example) didn't integrate IE that way because they wanted to destroy the competition - they made an engineering decision at the time that they thought made sense and ended up causing a big brouhaha.

      Since then, he says, people have obviously tried to be more careful with stuff like that, but the bottomline is that the people that do the bulk of the work at Microsoft are not bent on World Domination - they are bent on programming.

      By the way, I like how you disclaimered yourself saying you didn't watch it at all and then went on to blast it. If it was because he was black, I'd call you a racist; since it's because he works for Microsoft, I'll just call you a Slashdot reader :)

      Cheers

    2. Re:Unique, huh. by OnanTheBarbarian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right, because we hear frank talk from people who have been at _any_ tech company for 18 years all the time, this is obviously a non-event (this means that this guy was cutting code when a good proportion of Slashdotters were still crapping in diapers or watching Saturday morning cartoons). Face it, 18 years of actual activity (not just a few good years followed by 15 years of pontification or management or both) is a long time in this business and perhaps you should shut the hell up and at least listen, before shooting off your mouth. Even if the guy is from (shock, horror) Microsoft, and even if only you think that this guy is only useful as an insight into the enemies' camp.

      You're awfully free with your criticism of a talk that you haven't actually listened to. I too prefer transcripts for the same reason, but generally don't feel the need to critique content that I haven't actually heard. I think that it's interesting - but not entirely surprising - that you can get modded "Insightful" on Slashdot now for commentary on a talk that you didn't hear.

  3. 18 Years? Wow... by demongeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).

    1. Re:18 Years? Wow... by kjart · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Actually, so far he seems to have a relatively objective perspective. Obviously he likes Microsoft (he does work there) but his perspective on OSS is interesting (somewhat paraphrasing):

      I like open source..I'm a great fan of Stallman's....I think open source has definitely a place in the world and that linux has a place in the world and I hope linux continues to do a great job, and do you know why? Because to the extent that Linux does a great job it forces my guys to do a great job.
    2. Re:18 Years? Wow... by killjoe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All religions have words that mean "not us". It could be heathen, infidel, goyem or whatever.

      I find it interesting that he uses the phrase "my guys". He doesn't say "us" or microsoft or "commercial software manufacturers" or anything else.

      Maybe I am reading too much into it but that phrase really struck me.

      What about the other commercial vendors though? Don't they force "your guys" to do a great job? I mean the development efforts of MS have been driven by apple and google more then anything else. Like clockwork windows implements two year old apple technology and adopts the latest apple GUI paradigms. These days it's virtually impossible not to hear an MS executive talk about implementing something google is doing. It seems to me MS is much more focused on chasing apple and google then what OSS is doing.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    3. Re:18 Years? Wow... by kjart · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I find it interesting that he uses the phrase "my guys".

      I don't really find this odd at all. If you like your company/friends/coworkers you tend to identify them as "yours". I wold imagine since he has worked there for 18 years there are probably many people there that would be like family. Anything that is part of so large a chunk is bound to become personal - heck, you'd probably refer to "my wife/husband" instead of Mr/Mrs Doe after a much shorter period.

      What about the other commercial vendors though? Don't they force "your guys" to do a great job? I mean the development efforts of MS have been driven by apple and google more then anything else. Like clockwork windows implements two year old apple technology and adopts the latest apple GUI paradigms.

      Yes, that is his point entirely. He wants to have healthy competition because he feels that Microsoft does it's best work when they have serious competitors. The part I paraphrased was specifically about open source software, but he does discuss competition in general and the whole "healthy ecosystem" (and makes fun of himself for using that term) thing being good for business.

      Also, just to give them a little benefit of the doubt, I think Vista has been in development for more than two years. So it's conceivable that they aren't "stealing" Apple's ideas, for example, but that Apple just beat them in releasing those features. I'm not saying that it's necessarily the case, but I don't think people should be so quick to condem - good features are good features.

    4. Re:18 Years? Wow... by zootm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also, just to give them a little benefit of the doubt, I think Vista has been in development for more than two years. So it's conceivable that they aren't "stealing" Apple's ideas, for example, but that Apple just beat them in releasing those features.

      I think that, in more cases that not, you'd be right here. A lot of the features Vista has been lauded for "stealing" from Apple have been obvious advances for a while (prevalence of search over browsing, 3D-accelerated desktop systems, etc. are all fairly predictable). Vista steals very few design ideas from Apple, in any case (search? that was obvious - it's stolen from Google as much as anyone; desktop widgets? available for Windows and Linux as third-party systems well before Dashboard made people think that Apple "invented" them). As much as I like OSX, I hate the fact that Apple are hailed as so "innovative" to the exclusion of other hard-working companies who do work just as good, simply because they market themselves so well. I feel a lot of companies and organisations doing good work (and I'm gonna controversially include Microsoft here) are being a little hard done-by in this regard.

      More widely, though, I'm not opposed to "idea theft" in the IT field. There's a reason so many people are opposed to software patents.

    5. Re:18 Years? Wow... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Funny

      My guys. My friends. My paisans. They're very smart guys. Wise, even. You could call them my wiseguys.

      Now, Don Stallman, he's a very smart guy too. And you know, me and my guys, we got respect for him and his guys. Cause you gotta have respect.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    6. Re:18 Years? Wow... by RedOregon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not really. I spent 20 years in the Air Force, and I (and most retirees for that matter) turn into neither. Generally speaking, after that much time you know the organization well enough that you can both call BS on the BS parts, and support the good parts.

      --
      Skivvy Niner? Email me!
      HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
  4. Rico writes the most interesting blog on MSDN by jeswin · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of you who are new to .Net, Rico Mariani used to be the performance architect in the .Net team. His blog Performance Tidbits, will give you tons of insight into making that .Net application run faster. For the naive, it also tells you when performance matters (which is not all the time). This feed sits right at the top of my subscription list.

    --
    Life is a conviction.
  5. Interesting talk (and not just about tools) by kjart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Still in the process of watching it, but he has interesting perspective on Windows 95 and it's role as a bridge from 16bit to 32bit programs. 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). Whether you agree or disagree, it's an interesting look at Microsoft over (nearly) the past two decades.

  6. No transcript, media download by Betabug · · Score: 4, Informative

    There seems to be no transcript, nothing to read.

    The only option is a couple of media files to download - at least they have options that should work on a variety of platforms.