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Windows 8: Do I Really Need a Single OS?
gManZboy writes "If you skip Windows 8, you lose the appealing opportunity to synchronize all of your devices on a single platform — or so goes the argument. If you're skeptical, you're not alone. OS monogamy may be in Apple's interest, and Microsoft's, but ask why it's in your interest. Can Microsoft convince the skeptics? 'If the hardware and software are the same at home and at work, one can't be "better" than the other. It would help if Microsoft convinced users like me that their platform is so good, we'd be fools to go anywhere else,' writes Kevin Casey."
To me, having multiple operating systems on a computer is like having multiple wives--there's no tangible downside to it, but it just feels wrong.
I would much rather have a variety of operating systems or platforms which use common protocols and formats so that I can switch between them. Technology evolves, operating systems change. Locking one's self into one platform at the exclusion of others is not a good idea. At least not for the consumer, it just makes it harder to switch when the existing platform falls to provide the quality demanded.
Single source OSs or anything else. If they manage to get it right, the perfect OS that satisfies every user, meets all of our needs. Then what happens? Does the world stagnate, or do they go ahead and produce something that may be totaly crap, and we are all locked in, so we all adopt the crap. No thanks, I like variety, choice, and options. I like being able to decide what I want, and what I do not want. I hope the patent situation around the world does not kill inovation, and I do not want this, as it would do the same.
Except that on Slashdot it's: "If it's not Linux, it's crap!"
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
You are arguing with a well known "ad troll"... which makes me curious, shouldn't the government be going after this shill for monopolizing the first post on Microsoft related articles? ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Eclipse is garbage.
Emacs.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
At least we can see the source code in the Linux camp.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Now Redmond wants to assimilate our computers!
Wait, maybe MS isn't Borg Central after all. Maybe it's Brainiac!
Is Bill Gates from Krypton?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Infoweek blog crap. Everyone has opinions; most aren't worth listening to. Especially true at infoweek, pcworld, and others.
Some kind of devices and activities are better suited for some kinds of interactionl. Screen size, to have or not touchscreen, keyboard, mouse, that you must hold it or use it on a surface, are between the factors that make one user interface better suited than others. In Linux you have a lot of different user interfaces, is not the same playing with Meego, Unity, KDE, Android or Sugar, but is all the same OS (or at very least, kernel and basic toolchain) with different user interfaces that are meant to fit to certain range of hardware.
I don't see Eclipse's problem being that it lacks features.
Eclipse has TOO MANY features.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Notepad.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well, aside from the obvious risks of everyone being beholden to the same OS if a security hole suddenly arises (but I'm sure that won't happen with Microsoft) there are reasons to build your skills with other OSs on your own.
Where I work I am already the Windows goto guy for light IT support because calling Bangalore is like going to the dentist only less productive.
However recently I changed groups and lo and behold, the designers use both Windows and Red Hat Enterprise. They already have a dedicated Linux support guy who is really good but it's almost a certainty that I'll be doing work in Linux before too long. The fact that I've been using it at home for years will really help me to adapt quickly.
Of course, since you can now run vi in emacs then emacs is not just an operating system but can also be used as an editor.
I second that.
Not really... what I need is x86 hardware in a tablet form factor that uses the same amount of power (or preferably less) than current ARM tablets, with a decently bright high contrast display, a decent stylus and a big battery. I'll still be carrying my laptop (Windows 7) and smartphone (Android) around in addition though...
Have you tried the new Xcode and Eclipse releases? They're fantastic and have won all kinds of awards.
Coincidentally, they're both used to create software for the fastest growing operating systems, iOS and Android.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Most of the people don't even bother to wonder: they buy something they've known for a long time / from the office, i.e. a PC. And what OS comes with it? The last Windows == 8. It reminds me of the recent iphone 5 discussion: despite iOS6 and Maps problems, lack of innovation and a satellited price people just buy it. It's a trend which path takes years to get affected. Unfortunately, slashdotters are, by far, a minority.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
What you're spouting on about is what management thinks is ideal. Any real, experienced developed knows that "write-once, run-anywhere" or even "write-once, run-everywhere" is nothing but a massive load of bullshit. Any user of such software knows the same.
How many fucking times do we have to go through this? For crying out loud, it's the same each time we do it! It doesn't matter if it was BASIC in the 1970s, or C in the 1980s, or C++ in the 1990s, or Java in the 2000s, or JavaScript today.
The end result is that the software is really fucking shitty to write, and it's really damn shitty for the users who have to use it. The developers still get stuck dealing with cross-platform issues, even when it's just the same OS running on different devices. The users get a really half-assed experience, because the developers had to cut corners all over the place just to make the software run on all kinds of different OSes or devices.
Yeah, management loves it, but that's only because they aren't actually creating the shitheap, nor are they the ones who get stuck using it day-in and day-out. They see some great cost savings in the short term, but then things get really fucked up in the long term since the existing users and customers will flee as quickly as they can. You can't run a software business when all the customers left because your software became a raging pile of donkey turds thanks to embracing WORA hype.
No I don't! I'll just use another platform for them.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
If I want a single OS platform, I'd go with Apple. For all the handwaving Apple fanbois do, Apple actually does the unified experience pretty darn well. I'd own an iPhone, MacBook and an iMac to keep things concurrent.
If I wanted to, that is. I don't , and will stick with the mix thats's proven to be effective for me
If you skip Windows 8, you lose the appealing opportunity to synchronize all of your devices on a single platform
Linux(Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch/etc+Android)
I would say while developers love USDP, that does not mean it is actually a good thing. It draws on people's egos, dovetails with the 'my language+OS+toolchain is the one right solution for everything because I am so much smarter then people who use other languages/OSes/tools' religious wars you see so often in tech. It works for social and marketing reasons, not technological ones... and it could be argued that it has been a bad thing technologically. Just look at all the languages competing for 'one twue language applicable to all tasks' spot.. and what it has done to those languages... all the extra crap added to them till they all look like half of them is a poorly implemented clone of some other language.
You must be delusional. VS is easily the best IDE on the market. Everything else I've used feels about a decade behind.
Please ignore the above ignoramous , obviously he doesn't know how to post on Slashdot.
You know, I have often said that emacs makes a reasonably good OS and all it needs is a good text editor ^_^
Just to point out here the assumption of the question is wrong. Apple is proposing the exact opposite of ubiquitous computing. They instead have two products iOS and OSX which evolve semi-seperately so that data can pass between similar applications but that the applications are quite different.
Microsoft conversely is proposing a shift to ubiquitous computing that applications and devices can alter themselves based on the way they are used, the form factor of the human. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 ).
What the author is proposing is different from either one of these, the current situation where there are loose standards for moving application data and different applications.
current: loose standards
apple: seamless data portability
microsoft: seamless application portability
Apple's views and Microsoft's views shouldn't be confused.
Just how many sock puppets do you have, Pie?
>new account
>similar to other Pie based accounts like PieDode and PieLala - used and then abandoned.
>used to shill Microsoft
>first post in thread
>buzzword bingo
PieMasters (2751119) is all alone in the world.
Indeed.
--
BMO
That's not necessarily true. There's love for BSD here, too.
Since now you can get everything running Linux (phone, palmtop, netbook, nettop, notebook, blah blah blah up to server, cluster...) you can actually live the dream
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Notepad must die.
How do you know? A friend of mine's colleague has a sister who's done it and from what I hear she wasn't too impressed.
This message was brought to you by VMWare
that the argument is more for the developers than the users. There is a bit of overlap with things like iWork on iPad and Mac, and Office on an ARM tablet and PC but for the most part the argument from MS at least has been: learn metro run your code everywhere. So why does the user care? Does a user really want a 20"+ screen that is primarily geared towards touch (sounds like a good idea until work starts feeling like a workout)? Does it make sense to lobotomize a desktop app to make it interaction friendly for someone poking at it with a finger in a moving car (big buttons, few controls etc) on a 4" screen? I don't think so.
Eclipse is total garbage. I'd rather use vim to code java than use eclipse.
Don't confuse strategic vision with ability to execute.
The reason he managed a list of 4 things, and god knows the list is a lot longer than that, is that MS recognizes what the strategy should be, and they've managed 'good enough' but they're constantly trying to find better. Each of their products in isolation is viable but not spectacular, and the changing vision of what the 'next big thing' should be hurts them a lot. But someone at the top at microsoft understands that their real customers for windows are developers and they've been trying to give them the tools and platform to make interested connected products. They've failed spectacularly a few times, and windows 8 seems like it's a clusterfuck before it hits store shelves, but that doesn't mean their heart is in the wrong place on connectivity, they just suck at getting it out working and on time and understandable to users.
The API are going to need to mature and stabilize before their can be an abstraction layer. Right now what we want is to get these APIs to be feature rich, which means rapid changing and evolving, which is best achieved by each of these agents evolving their products as quickly as possible. Once the evolution has mostly stopped then is the time for standardization. Far from we should have put this to rest a decade ago, we are probably at least 2 decades off from this being the right time.
On the other hand for functionality that is needed cross platform the best solution is a single purpose application which ports across the systems. To use your finding friends example foursquare.
Wt..... troll, or wrong as hell for a joke?
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
And it still doesn't. Microsoft has for decades tried to sell us on the idea of one bloated, legacy-crap-filled OS on all devices, it was just a matter of the hardware catching up with their requirements. When they were finally convinced that a KVM interface didn't work on touch devices (giving us wonderful mind-numbing features like a "Start" button and walking menus on a 3 inch phone screen) the solution was obvious -- run a touch interface everywhere, using ideas, rebranded, that have already been successful on other platforms (example, "tiles" instead of "widgets") and convince the computing public that they will love a touch-based interface with huge sliding tiles on a 1920X1200 screen, unless they're some kind of communist.
And a few people will buy into it enthusiastically, as always, and some people will put up with it because it's a requirement for whatever they need to do, and because of Microsoft's lock on PC manufacturers, some people will put up with it because they bought the computer like that and they don't know what to do about it, and that might be enough to maintain their 60-odd percent market. And the rest of us will use something else.
I do have to use windows for some things I do. But I'm just now migrating to 7 from XP, and I have no intention of buying another copy of Windows until I see what 9 looks like. And maybe not even then, if a few companies get off their collective butts and port their products to some other platform.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So, make it easy for developers at the expense of users? Sorry, I don't have a windows phone, don't like tiles, and don't want to run a shitty tablet/phone interface on my desktop machine.
I write desktop apps for work, and use Visual Studio 2010 instead of 2012, because I don't care about the phone crap. At work, and pretty much everyone I know will be using Window 7 at least until 9 comes out.
If you had a large business database you'd be using SQL Server, not access.
The reality was of course that MS Windows was not a single OS, but a number of related OS with similar user interface. In the days before MS WIndows XP took over the world, there was chaos. MS did two things to alleviate the chaos for developers and users. The first was Visual Studio, which provides what MS calls cross platform, meaning runs on various version of MS Windows, and cross language. The second was IE, which allowed a consistent application front end for the various versions of windows, and for a time Mac OS.
The both show what users want is run programs and a consistent user interface. MS has does a good job providing this. But Apple was also brought up, and the links between OS X and iOS are not as tight as the versions of MS WIndows 8. MS is radically changing the desktop experience to fit the mobile platform. OTOH, Apple is allowing the applications to be different, while focusing on the underlying data protocols, most of which are standard and open. The applications and user interface is different, but the data is the same. This is the lesson of the Newton.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How come nobody has really used / know IDEA (IntelliJ IDEA)? I think IDEA just rocks! many features in netbeans and eclipse are poor copies of IDEA's features. Plus jetbrains - the company that makes IDEA still manage to turn up a profit in the face of free tools such as Eclipse and Netbeans and JDev etc - that means something, doesn't it?
It sounds like you haven't done much programming.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
No, actually, you probably use VS only as a IDE, it's much more than that but you will never know.
True enough.. imho the best appliance distros (NAS & Firewall) are BSD based...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
So if I run linux on three laptops (ubuntu, fedora, redhat), and my (android) phone, is that one single OS?
Windows 8 is far more powerful than windows 7, and runs twice as fast.
According to who? All the benchmarks I've seen indicate that Windows 8 actually runs the same as Windows 7, or sometimes even slower. It boots faster, but then again, that's hardly terribly important unless you boot your machine a dozen times a day.
See e.g. http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-vs-windows-7-benchmarked-7000002671/
It is also much harder to pirate, and this point more than anything else has the Linux crowd in a panic.
Why would they panic over that? What relevance does that have to Linux or why would Linux-users care?
Linux will have to find a way to work under Windows 8 from here on, since it wont be able to rely on Windows 7 being readily available anymore.
Huh? Linux doesn't use Windows for anything, so why would this have any relevancy either?
Linux may seem like a good alternative to Office
Linux is an OS, Office is an application. The proper comparison would be e.g. LibreOffice vs. Office.
It still needs the drivers and software services in order to run, and in most cases - that happens WITHOUT a valid windows licence.
I have no idea where you've gotten that idea. Linux doesn't use Windows, Linux doesn't use Windows-drivers, Linux doesn't use Windows-services, and Linux works just fine on a computer without Windows on it at all.
Anyone that supports the continuation of Windows 7 in place of Windows 8 surely has a hidden agenda .. and you will surely be caught out.
Atleast in my case the agenda is simple: Windows 8 doesn't do anything that I can't already do with Windows 7 and therefore I can just keep using Windows 7 and save the money.
Don't worry bmo, I still believe in the time cube.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
You're fucking delusional.
I've been forced into the JAVA world for the last two years and VS is light years ahead of Eclipse or XCode. It's not even close.
Cool! you just filled my Bullshit bingo card!
I don't want to run the same OS on my phone, desktop, laptop and hypothetical tablet, set-top box and server. They each have distinct uses, and each require (or at least, would benefit from) a slightly different OS.
Hell, I don't even use just one desktop OS. I run Windows/OS X on my desktop - OS X is a good desktop Unix, but it's weak on gaming so I have a Windows disk as well. My laptop is currently Windows + a blank partition I haven't gotten around to slapping Linux on. Windows for light work and gaming, Linux for quick-boot, low-power stuff like media playing.
Now, what I would like is better cooperation between systems. Get read/write drivers for all the major file systems on all the major operating systems.
I like writing java with vim. :)
IntelliJ is a fantastic IDE.
I tend to use Eclipse more because of the gigantic user base and community it has.
But IntellJ is definitely tighter and better in a lot of respects. The only thing that I really dislike is the Swing-based UI, even though the jetbrains people have performed miracles to make it better than you're run of the mill Swing app.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
This is such self-serving BS. Microsoft needs a single, unified OS, not you. Microsoft did what they needed to do, for themselves, and this argument was invented after the fact to make it look like it's good for the consumer. What I need is an operating system that doesn't have to reboot every month on Patch Tuesday.
Do I really need TWO OS'es?
Unless you're a programmer or a hobbyist, I don't see why anybody would need two. Just pick one and get on with more interesting things.
I don't respond to AC's.
That post makes even APK sound sane.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Are they trying to imitate Apple like with the Apple TV, the iPad, iPhone and the MacBookPro? Pity windows stinks...
That's like saying "why buy insurance, you rarely ever get in a car accident!"
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
You're really going to use shitty ass Microsoft products as an example of how this works well?
You don't know what you're talking about. I still use Visual Studio 6.0. Nobody else has a more unified platform over a longer period of time than Microsoft.
I don't respond to AC's.
it is a system that is tied in with the internet instead. Just have a look at Vista with Aero for an example of this done right.
Aero has nothing to do with the Internet.
You need the outlook to connect in with the mass of email flowing around us every day.
Why would you need Outlook for that? There's hundreds of different e-mail clients and services.
Voice over IP, internet enabled 'surface' computing, and voice command interfaces - all tied together with .NET and the Aero interface.
VoIP, Internet, voice-enabled applications etc. are all perfectly possible without .NET and in fact most of them ARE done without .NET. Also, again, Aero has nothing to do with that.
And so, we will see more and vendors of the Linux remit their legal obligations to Microsoft, and then benefit by getting onboard the .NET revolution
Hah.
I use VS at work a XCode at home. I've used Eclipse at work back in 2005-2006. In my opinion:
Visual Studio:
This is the best IDE IMO and has been for a while. This could change of course. I develop the fastest with this IDE. This might be biased since I use it the most. Delphi was great in it's day (5) and VS took a lot of cues from Borland's IDE. Microsoft started as a developer tools company, and I think they still have a soft spot for it.
XCode:
XCode was a little cumbersome back in 3.x but is getting much better with every release. It's picking up a lot of cues from VS and Delphi IDEs.
Eclipse:
This is a juggernaut and it shows. I haven't used it really since 2006, but at the time, it was huge and a little cumbersome. I would have liked to see Apache/Tomcat configuration be a little more automated, because when I first set it up, it took too much time. This may be different now.
Netbeans:
As an aside, my GF used it for some MIS class projects. It's not a bad little IDE, but I haven't used it extensively.
IntelliJ IDEA:
We switched to this for our Java IDE when I used it in a previous live. This was a nice IDE when I used it for 6 months.
Long live Edlin.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Butterflies
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm sure MSVS is a god dev tool but for gods sake it's not better than sex.
If you're using sex to develop code while you may be more satisfied than me but I susect I'm getting more done. Having used many different IDE's for many different platforms including embedded development I can say that MSVS is a great platform, for developing code to run on windows. Too bad, I could really use an IDE that makes sense to me. My test is how often I need to refer to the docs to do things in an IDE. MSVS just made sense to me, I only had to run to the docs to figure out how to automate things or get a grip on the command line options when I wanted to nmake projects. With Eclipse I'm constantly running to the docs to figure out the most mundane things.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Imagine if Toyota had a near-monopoly on passenger cars. There would be other makers selling specialty trucks and busses, but most people would be driving Toyotas. On top of that, Toyota would be producing a single model every few years, like Corolla 95, Corolla 97, Corolla 2000 and people would feel like getting a new car is a requirement. Now suddenly some smaller maker Kawasaki releases a new model of a motorcycle that everyone enjoys driving and sales go through the roof. The controls are very different than those of Corolla – the shape of steering wheel, how you switch gears with your foot, several brakes, and it is a significantly more fuel efficient than any Toyota. New uses for the motorcycles are discovered – they can be driven on pedestrian walkways, or can even be taken into the offices. There are talks how everyone will be driving motorcycles in the future, how we are entering a post-car era, and how, if you want to be current, you need to make motorcycle-friendly roads.
At the same time Toyota remembers how it tried making motorcycle in the past with a round steering wheel and no one bought it, so it needs a new plan. It develops its own version of Corolla-Moto that has a new set of controls where you switch gears with your elbow. Some people saw a test model and had different opinions – some liked it, some hated it. Toyota plans to start producing motorcycles that mimic the Kawasaki, but it first needs to teach users how to shift gears with the elbow and other oddities of motorcycle controls. Since nearly everyone is driving Corollas, Toyota comes up with a plan to install motorcycle controls in the new version of Corolla alongside with the regular controls. And it allows switching controls while driving! Yes, the shape of the steering wheel changes, the gear shifter moves from the right hand to the left elbow, etc. All that while you drive!
Since everyone already knows how to drive Corollas, Toyota needs to make the existing car controls a little bit more inconvenient so that users are forced to use the motorcycle controls. For example, the only way to start Corolla-Moto is to rev up the engine by twisting the right handlebar. No one ever needed to twist anything on any car model before. So the plan is to beat Kawasaki, and has nothing to do with making the car better for the driver. Many start blogging that “motorcycle is the future” and if you don’t buy new Corolla-Moto (which gets renamed to Corolla-Toyota-Style in the last minute) you will be left in the past. Very few question true Toyota’s motives and quarrel about little details of the new interface and discuss how they intend to skip the Corolla-Toyota-Style and keep driving their existing Corolla-2007. Once enough people learn how to shift gears with their elbows, Toyota plans on introducing more motorcycles with similar controls and driving Kawasaki out of business. That’s the nature of business.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
What does typing java have to do with what co-workers think of my ass? I work out its actually doing pretty well. I hope they enjoy the view of it.
Well put.
The MS approach is quite different from Apples. I'm not crazy about the extra mouse clicks required to get some things done under Windows 8, but a seamless experience across all my devices (or screens) feels like a net productivity gain. I ve tinkering with Linux and even OSX, but I still use Windows everywhere I want to get things done. Linux has some great components, but 2 copies of the same distribution aren't even guaranteed to be binary compatible let alone sharing a common structure. At the end of the day I want to be able to log into my profile, launch solidworks, office, or whatever program I need, and get work done.
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
GREETINGS!
You write much phishing e-mails? Or are you trying to win the buzzword bingo?
When you actually get paid to code, sometimes the people signing the check pick the language.
For C++, Creator is awesome, has even the same feature set as visual assist , and it works everywhere (Win, X11 and OSX).
"Oh man, you mean you hate being required to learn how things work?" Why do you say that (at least I took it as such) in a sarcastic way? If I'm being employed by COMPANY XYZ to make a product, they don't want and I don't want to spend 3 months trying to figure out all off the bullshit to get my job done. Software is one of those unique things that can be molded into a tool that is BOTH functional AND easy to use. I've never quite understood why the FOSS crowd (and I do love FOSS so we're clear on that) INSISTS on making things stupidly complex. WYSIWYG and "Point-Click" Wizards are not bad things, even for those of us who CAN sit down and figure everything out. There are days that I look at a piece of FOSS and go "that is so cool", but if it'd take me 3-4 hours to set it up JUSt to get it working I might just be turned off on it. FOSS should be more than just "you can customize it", it has the capacity to BE better than Commercial software from a non-technical standpoint. All too often I feel like developers forget the human element of your target audience.
QtCreator is awesome.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
But it's not even the best for *nix because Intellij Idea exists.
I do not want to 'synchronize' my devices. Ever. It's a primary reason why I went with an Android phone over an iPhone originally (though since then, I have amassed more reasons - I like the Android interface). It's also why I would never buy an Apple TV device. I never have to plug my Roku into my computer. I want my media and data real-time. Are we still using POP mail too?
iTunes is a pile of shit. I just want to download my content directly to my device. I should never have to plug it in to a computer, and I don't ever need to synchronize. Duplicate files are duplicate files. Why is it even an app that you have to install on a computer, unlike Google Play? You'd think in the age of cloud storage my devices could be completely autonomous. It's like we're in the dark ages of PDAs without wireless connectivity.
Apple and Microsoft have this wrong, and Google has it right.
Nobody ever had that opportunity, so they can't lose it. Besides, what devices are we talking about? My car? My television? My guitar amp? Sure, I have a few computers, but only a small minority of those is running some form of windows and only because of legacy reasons, not for anything current or a current windows version. My phone has a battery life of a week and is not hindered by rogue apps or illegible screens in bright sunlight, because that's what it is, a phone. This is trying to blackmail people with a possible loss of something they never had before and never will have, nor should they ever want it. You don't want to lose all your computing power if for some reason there is a vulnerability in the thing they all have in common or a vendor goes belly up.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I'm pretty sure it's called UBUSDP - Unifying Barely Useful Single Developer Platform. By locking developers into a single developer platform, no matter how creaky, redundant, inconsistent, bloated, and self-contradictory, a single manufacturer maximizes penetration and profits. Why change something that is crazy profitable and can sometimes be used to create somewhat clunky applications? And you'll get new technology when we think you need it. Now shut up and code. We have ribbons now. You love them. Tiles are coming out in a month. You will love them, and you will forget about ribbons and icons and walking menus because we will tell you to.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The 'joke' is that Java isn't an acronym. So you've basically proved the poster's point.
We all know Apple, Microsoft etc try to keep you on their platform by providing exclusive services that only works on their platform. By patenting these solutions, they effectively block competing platforms from their services. E.g. they can block Skydrive-integration on Linux if they want to. I find it kinda strange that they are allowed to do this, as one might say that "-hey, why can't I access this service from an Apple computer?". A question comes to me, why is this allowed? Patents was about having monopoly on an invention that gives exclusive right on selling this invention. So, if I program an OS and would like to connect to some of the services from Microsoft, they are allowed to have exclusive rights on selling me this service. But this is not happening, they refuse to sell the service to us, because they say they only license the usage to partners whom they choose.
Well. This is where patents have derailed from the ideal runway. The thought of patents was never about exclusive rights on refusing to sell an idea. It was the other way around.
Patents should not be about blocking competitors from your platform. It's like requiring Nike shoes only on some sports courts.
So, ideally in my world, if e.g. Microsoft cannot make a fully compatible Android-client for a service they provide, then you are no longer breaking if you program a competing solution.
fuck vi, emacs, etc
I've used pico since 1995 and still do :)
easy peasy fast to move around and it highlights it all for me :)
it's like linux notepad but on steroids
Been using 8 for over a year. Took me about 3 weeks to quit looking for the start button. Tight coupling between devices and services makes for a better experience. Yes they are copying apple on this but I can't wait for my computers, phone and living room console to all work together.
Most non-techy people I know, seem to think "Windows" is a synonym for "Computer".
The logic being presented here is very flawed. The root of the argument is this quote:
"There's a productivity gap when [users] come into the workplace and have to switch operating systems to work with 'in house' software versus 'mobile' software. Windows 8 bridges that gap. Same device at home as at work. Same software. Same cloud back end. Same identity system," wrote reader "moarsauce123."
This post is wrong on so many levels.
- Odds of most large corporations upgrading to Windows 8 any time in the next 2-3 years is slim to none. Windows 8 is a huge paradigm shift and there is simply zero reason for them to endure that kind of re-training cost.
- Odds of most large corporations allowing you to cloud-sync your work machine with your home machine is also slim to none. I can't even plug in my own USB thumb drive at work, you think they are going to allow me to cloud-sync my OS? Crazy town.
- Your company does not want you using the same 'identity system" at work as at home. You think my company wants me logging into Windows with my hotmail address?
Wow, stating a reasonable opinion based on personal experience. No wonder you posted anonymously.
#DeleteChrome
It would help if Microsoft convinced users like me that their platform is so good, we'd be fools to go anywhere else.
Metro was created to convince you to go anywhere else.
First and most obvious: a single set of consistent APIs whether it be for a mobile phone or a 32 core server. There are differences of course but the TCO of developing apps drop dramatically when you only have one kernel to worry about.
Also: consistent user experience. If you can navigate an Xbox, you can navigate any PC, tablet, phone, whatever. There are differences of course but the feel is the same.
That should do it. If you don't see value in the above you are a fool IMO.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Give me Android OS for my pc's and my world will be complete >.>
Virus developers especially.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is Microsoft really better? Or do so called "fans" of it just prefer not to learn a new OS, and stick with what they are used to? I believe it is the latter.
Vi!
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
That's like saying "why buy insurance, you rarely ever get in a car accident!"
Buying car insurance is like going to a bookie and betting against your favorite sports team in order to ease your suffering when they lose.
"His name was James Damore."
wordpad
notepad++
emacs
I don't see any issues on using a single OS from a single vendor for every device and every task I perform.
It's not like MS is going to develop close-standards, or closed-services which will keep me from moving elsewhere, or choosing my own service providers later on.
Java can be used to write true cross-platform applications for Linux, Windows, and OS X. It is also the primary language for development on over two-thirds of the world's smartphones and nearly half of the world's ARM tablets. I do know Pascal, but haven't used it in ages. I also know C, but again, rarely use it since I'm not a Linux kernel developer. I once coded something in Zilog Z80 assembly (and you didn't specify!), so I guess I have my trifecta of pretentious covered. And yet when I have to actually do work, I use Java. Like everyone bloody else.
Windows 8 is far more powerful than windows 7, and runs twice as fast. It is also much harder to pirate, and this point more than anything else has the Linux crowd in a panic.
It wont be long until Windows 7 is no longer supported, and when that happens, what is Linux going to do ?
Linux will have to find a way to work under Windows 8 from here on, since it wont be able to rely on Windows 7 being readily available anymore.
Linux may seem like a good alternative to Office, but all that is happening in linux is that the windows interface is cleverly hidden away. It still needs the drivers and software services in order to run, and in most cases - that happens WITHOUT a valid windows licence.
This is just plain piracy.
Windows 8 will finally put an end to this blatant abuse of intellectual property, and linux should decline, taking the pirates with it.
Anyone that supports the continuation of Windows 7 in place of Windows 8 surely has a hidden agenda .. and you will surely be caught out.
Haha, love it! Had forgotten about that one. ;)
Yup. QtCreator or KDevelop. KDevelop is a bit more lightwieght and better suited to generic programming, but QtCreator is pretty cool.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
good post: insults, baseless opinion and complete lack of examples. i think you covered everything.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
I think the idea is that the user will have the same experience on any device, and in the background available sub menus have more classic device specific apps and controls. e.g. on a PC you can still bring up a command line or control panel. The deskop menu is the same though whatever device you use, and since they require a Microsoft account you also have access to the same data. Of course, in the interest of supporting so many devices and user scenarios most people end up with a great deal of processes and applications they don't need. This is where Apple has traditionally excelled. They control the hardware, and are able to streamline their kernel and drivers for a much smaller subset of devices which are optimized for their OS. Microsoft is taking advantage of the cloud market cupertino has created and gotten people used to. Of course, there's no real need for this in the desktop market. Windows 7 is fine, but only recently ready to be put into a production environment where a variety of applications are in play. Windows XP is where the inertia of the business place still lies. Microsoft is trying to drag us along and get us to be subscribers, generating yearly and monthly revenue streams so that we won't wait to upgrade our OS until we need to. They will lock us out if we don't. e.g. XBOX 360.
Garbage is Everything
Kinda makes ya rethink your priorities, doesn't it?
Same applies to GGP post and, in fact, your own post.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Sounds more like he's saying that learning *an* assembly language does wonders for your perspective on other, higher-level languages, which I would agree with. Does it really matter which chip you learn the assembly for?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
With memory costing about $35 for 8GB, I damn well *WANT* my IDE to use a lot of memory to speed things up, and give me functionality.
Still, in my experience, VS stays at less than 500MB, and usually in the 350MB range.
Instability is often because of plug-ins. They're powerful, but bugs in the plug-ins can cause the IDE to crash or behave strangely.
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Would you care to give examples of how VS prevents you from editing code freely, and what "common, modern code editing features" it lacks?
I will bet you that it either doesn't lack them, or is easily available with a plug-in like Resharper. In fact, Resharper + VS is the most powerful IDE I've ever used (and I've used a lot).
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Is it not possible to have a different front end while maintaining binary compatibility with the backend when deploying across multiple device types? Of course it is.
I can see the appeal of having everything unified. I just don't want it to feel like I need a shoehorn to perform actions that I am already accustomed to doing.
Yes, Microsoft will have Office available for Windows RT and Windows Phone 8, which includes Access.
The question is, will you WANT to?
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If by "classic desktop" he means Win32 in general (not just the UI), then there are a ton of improvements.
Things like Client Hyper-V, Multi-Monitor improvements (individual wallpapers, taskbar on every monitor, etc..), File History, Update Windows Defender (now with anti-virus, and it's pretty damn good actually), Storage Spaces, Windows-to-go, etc...
But i'll grant you, many of these features won't be usable to someone that just surfs the net.
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open the start menu, and start typing... System Information, it shows up for me.. but if you're talking about an RT device then I don't know if it's included or not.
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Unified and shitty are not mutually exclusive
Finally, someone else who does this :P. I can't stand IDEs after I saw this: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/32490/writing-programs-without-graphical-ide Only Vim now. Albeit, my Vim install is so tricked out that it has more features than Eclipse.
Best. Post. Ever.
Dear person who modded me troll: Troll is not a proxy for 'I disagree with reality.'
Nobody cares what the CAPTCHA for your post was.
Yes, I would argue that technological platform standards are bad things since then always are created by groups with some particular use case as 'the one that matters' and then every other one gets shoehorned in.
If you want a car analogy, notice there are more cars around then sadans, or even 4 wheeled passenger cars.
Within reason who cares about 1GB of ram on a dev machine? Dev machines should be high speced so that by the time the product ships the dev machine is the mainstream and most/all customers can run your code. I'd rather spend $200 on RAM and have Intellisense, fast debug info, etc than have a low footprint and have to hit the command line all the time to fire up debugers,web browsers and servers, databases etc as separate steps.
Java can be used to write crappy applications for Linux, Windows, and OS X.
There, fixed that for you.
As for your statistics, 52% of all tablets currently are iPads, and they don't allow Java on the platform, so 66% is impossible. I would also like to point out that since iOS (XCode specifically) has 4 times the number of developers, it would seem to indicate that java for mobile use is a minority.
And yes, I know assembly (6502,680x0,80x86,IBM 3x0), pascal (also not used in decades), and C. And C++, C#, pilot (not used in decades), basic, cobol (not used in over a decade), vb.net, javascript, PHP, and a handful of others.
If you're using sex to develop code while you may be more satisfied than me but I susect I'm getting more done.
If you believe this, you need to see the movie swordfish for the proper way to have sex while coding. In some cases, it really can improve your coding speed!
I'm a game developer. When I write a game I need to know:
Resolution. You can jam a lot more text on a computer screen than a phone.
Input Devices. A phone's touchscreen can do a lot of things that a console's controller can't, and vice-versa.
Target functionality. If my game is going to be based around location services, an Xbox isn't the best place for it to be.
Target architecture. On a basic level, which chipset am I compiling for?
Monetization system. Are we talking web ads? Retail software in a box?
Write-once-run-anywhere software for most developers is a years-old pipe dream. Functionally, it's Write-a-dozen-times-then-package-them-together. And while it's a nice pipe dream and worth pursuing, releasing a hydra OS with two incompatible user interfaces is a horrible way of doing that. By definition, even your single platform isn't a single platform.
The ______ Agenda
Eclipse is a crashing IDE simulator :)
It all depends on the size of the project/solution. There are certainly scenarios which can push VS over the edge, especially if you also have a lot of different designer windows open etc.
I have to note that Eclipse today is very different from where it was back in 2006.
Also, you should try out Qt Creator. It's rather narrowly focused, but for what it does, it does it really well.
Anyway, the premise of the question - that there must absolutely be a single best IDE - is wrong. Different IDEs are good at different things. Java IDEs tend to be better at code refactoring than VS (at least without Resharper), and other ways of manipulating or browsing the code (e.g. structural search in IDEA). VS tends to have better visual designers where they matter (and sometimes where they don't).
Then there are language differences. Java and C# can be kinda sorta compared side-by-side in that sense because they are similar enough and cover the same niche, but beyond that? VS, for example, has awesome C++ syntax highlighting and code completion engine as of VS 2012 - meaning that you can throw any C++ code at it that it can compile and it will give you 100% correct design-time experience, even with insane template metaprogramming tricks or macros. I don't believe that Eclipse CDT can boast that, and of course it's not even a goal for IDEA. But how important it is to you depends on what language you need.
BRIEF by UnderWare FTW!
I also had Sourcerer's Apprentice, very nice little VCS for its time.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
A poor workman blames his tools.
Haha, noob. Emacs isn't an IDE, it's a universe simulator.
No, it's the usual "[insert name of other product] is good, but, wow, this [insert name of Microsoft product] is great" spiel. Older than Slashdot itself. Noticed the "XCode taking cues from VS" bit. Nice flourish there. The smarter shills have started posting anonymously, or with suspiciously high UID's. Because a reasonable sounding opinion becomes less so once you read they said basically the same thing about Windows ME.
So, make it easy for developers at the expense of users? Sorry, I don't have a windows phone, don't like tiles, and don't want to run a shitty tablet/phone interface on my desktop machine.
I write desktop apps for work, and use Visual Studio 2010 instead of 2012, because I don't care about the phone crap. At work, and pretty much everyone I know will be using Window 7 at least until 9 comes out.
What if your users want their apps to work seamlessly on their mobile devices? Sounds like yet another developer telling users what they should or shouldn't be doing...
It has? When has the Windows OS ever enjoyed success beyond the PC OS?
Microsoft's thinking is still in the ActiveSync era - where mobile devices were slaves to the master PC, with propriatary synchronization between them. Apple started moving away from that model with iOS5, and Android was never constrained by it in the first place. Mobile devices are first class clients in their own right - they sync to wherever the data lives (generally in "the cloud"), using industry standard protocols. The PC is just another device in this modern world, with no more restrictions on what its OS should be than a mobile device.
XCode is night and days better than it was just a few short months ago. But about the only thing it has going for it is a better auto complete than VS. It still has a long way to go.
Not sure what you mean by streamlined approach. Our company just finished an 18 month push into 64 bit with .NET. Our Java products were ready right away. No fuss - no muss - single binary. Gotta love it.
Yes, to be honest, Eclipse is probably actually the worst of even the Java IDEs - IntelliJ Idea, JDeveloper, and NetBeans are all much better.
Eclipse's basic architecture doesn't even work, it's plugin system is so fucked that if you want to do any multi-language, or multi-framework development then you ofted outright need two completely separate installs of the IDE for each plugin.
It's also slow as fuck often making things like intellisense style autocomplete less than useless because you've typed the line of code before it figures out what you might have wanted.
It's workspace system of managing projects is just completely unintuitive and extremely awkward if you work on more than one project/have multiple clients etc.
Honestly, it's just bad, objectively so. The only people who seem to defend it are those who have the misfortune to have not had any experience of any of the other much better IDEs out there, anyone whose used any of the other mainstream IDEs like Visual Studio, JDeveloper and so forth to a decent extent know full well what a complete fucking joke Eclipse is in comparison.
Eclipse just isn't the best for anything, it's just outright bad with it's only redeeming feature (and hence why it has a fanboy following) being that it's truly FOSS. Unfortunately, contrary to the beliefs of people like RMS, simply the virtue of a piece of software being FOSS doesn't make the product inherently any better than it's competition, especially when some of it's competition is itself open source and simply better.
I've run both Windows and LINUX of various flavors for many years in both dual and multi boot (with multi I just select the boot disk at boot time). All I care about is that the computers can talk to each other over a network. I could care less about what they call "syncronized". I also avoid "The cloud" as much as I possibly can. I also plan on skipping Windows 8. I can see no advantage in going to it. There are multinational corporations still running XP because it does what they want. Particularly large corporations with their own IT departments only care about whether the OS and software does what they want. They are not going to spend millions of dollars for new hardware, the OS, applications, training programs, and lost productive time just because some one says a new system can do things they don't need. They have the backups and don't really care about updates or whether MS still supports it. Many of them also avoid the cloud for their operations. If the govt wants to sneak a peak they'll at least have to work at it a bit instead of just telling a supplier they want to take a look. IF and I emphasize the IF, an OS does every thing you want and you have the ability to fix it should it get wiped out it makes no sense to upgrade. These same companies allow *some* workers to work from home. When I was a sys admin and then project manager, I did at least half of my work at home and/or logged in from home.
My problem with VS (which has existed for many versions) is that once you run the wizard, declare your wishes, out pops 38,000 lines of code that you become instantly responsible for. If that code wasn't buggy things might be better, but if I coded 38,000 lines of code without testing it, I would call that a "Major Hack".
Exaggerate much?
First, Visual Studio hasn't used "Wizards" for close to a decade. There's a create project dialog, but that's a far cry from a wizard.
Second, I don't know of any project template in Visual Studio that auto-creates more than a few hundred lines of code. And those tend to be empty do-nothing files (like an empty dialog, or an empty class.
If you're talking about Web development, then both asp.net and MVC projects include common libraries, like jquery (which can be pretty big) but you're completely free to uninstall it if you want, and there's always empty projects. In fact, you can start with nothing but a blank solution of you want.
So I really don't get your point. Maybe you haven't used Visual studio in 15 years.
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After many years of MSDN Universal, I just got tired of amorphous collections of fading API's mixed with massive amounts of deprecated tools from five of more versions back. After buying thousands of dollars of version specific Microsoft Press books that were almost obsolete by the time they were printed. A friend at Microsoft told me about shopping carts full of hard disk drives so when developers blew up their development systems, they could pop a new drive in and be back up and ready to continue coding. There is a cost to eating your own dog food. The constantly changing directions that Microsoft recommended for development caused continual need to re-architect applications. VS may be the best IDE for coding Windows apps, but that isn't saying much. What pisses me off the most is the fact that VS will practically write the app for you if you hit the right combinations of keystrokes, but the inability to back up caused me a lot of heartache. And Petzold gives me a stomach ache, from resting to book on my stomach while reading it.
Hint : Anders Hejlsberg designer of Delphi moved to Microsoft to work on C# .NET and VS ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
except my post contains no insults, only facts and references your post (freely available above) as an example
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
If you don't like change, then perhaps technology is the wrong industry to make a living in.
While there's truth in some of what you say, it's not like the change of pace is daunting. In most cases, it's 3-5 years between technology shift, and the old technology is supported for 7-10 years or more.
You can absolutely still write code that uses ADO (the non .net version) and it will still work with the latest version of SQL Server. But why would you want to when the latest tech is so much more productive and less frustrating?
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Then my users would be fired for using a medical image analysis program on a monitor that isn't calibrated correctly.
Ed's mentally challenged brother Edlin.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
"Oh man, you mean you hate being required to learn how things work?
LOL, this is all i get from you types. When I have managers breathing down my neck for why something is behind schedule, YEAH. I'm offended that I need to figure out how tool X works. I simply don't have the time to appreciate all the ins and outs of every peice of OSS I need to use. Sorry, but yeah. Got actual work to do.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
More like comatose than mentally challenged.
Please, someone with with mod points mod the parent funny, not insightful.
gedit rocks yeah!!!!!
canada isn't a real country either :)
.net)
java is what you get when c takes a shit
pascal is nice... long time delphi programmer here (stopped buying new versions after 8 when they introduced
assembly is for embedded... anyone who programs x86 in asm is a douchebag
who cares about 1GB of ram on a dev machine
is there any wonder why windows is full of shitware... if you can't get a responsibly written IDE, it can't do much to inspire those who use it
It is exactly because it is responsibly written that it takes so much ram. Real time compiling syntactic analysis, intellisense, build in web browser, web server emulation etc are not free. They need RAM. I'd rather spend $200 on a developers machine than $50/hr while they fiddle around every compile getting things over to the right place by hand or waiting till "compile time" to find syntactic bugs etc.
Real time compiling syntactic analysis
cmon... just compare ram usage of visual studio at design time vs compile time... not much difference... its always bloated
and compile-as-you-type is the most annoying pile of crap anyway (dialog boxes just because i want to move the cursor to copy/paste from somewhere else... geez). how hard is it to code something that you think should at least compile and press F9 (as in delphi)?