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Microsoft Program Manager Mistakenly Tweets Office 365 Will Be Rewritten in JavaScript (thurrott.com)
"A Microsoft employee claimed publicly that 'all of Office 365' was being 'completely rewritten' in JavaScript," writes Paul Thurrott, adding "And then all hell broke loose."
First things first. It's not true. So if you were freaking out that Microsoft was somehow abandoning C# and C++ for its most mission-critical offerings, freak out no more. It's not happening. So what is happening? A Microsoft program manager named Sean Larkin perhaps got a little overly-exuberant on Monday... he tried to clarify things in follow-up tweets when his original missive exploded intro controversy. Which shouldn't have been a surprise. And yet, somehow, it was...
[H]e finally corrected himself on Reddit, blaming Twitter's character limitations for his many factual errors. "We are not abandoning C++, C#, or any of the other awesome languages, APIs, and toolings that we use across Microsoft," he clarifies. "Nothing [in Office 365] is converting to 'all/completely' JavaScript/TypeScript."
Thurrott, a long-time Windows blogger, concludes that "getting something this big this wrong is inexcusable."
[H]e finally corrected himself on Reddit, blaming Twitter's character limitations for his many factual errors. "We are not abandoning C++, C#, or any of the other awesome languages, APIs, and toolings that we use across Microsoft," he clarifies. "Nothing [in Office 365] is converting to 'all/completely' JavaScript/TypeScript."
Thurrott, a long-time Windows blogger, concludes that "getting something this big this wrong is inexcusable."
Like when Wordperfect was rewritten in Assembler?
"Sean Larkin" = 7-7-5 = "accident looking for a place to happen"
...Office will be rewritten in FORTRAN, but they did not want to trigger panic.
And yet, Windows soldiers on.
Have gnu, will travel.
Because of many issues like that, my impression is that Microsoft is sloppily managed.
I care whether your programs suck. You can write good stuff in JavaScript. You can also deliver lazy-ass applications in JavaScript. That isn't determined by your language, it's determined by your management and commitment to quality.
[This isn't specific to Microsoft in any way.]
His correction sounds like nonsense too. Can't Microsoft just let someone jump in that has a clue what he is talking about?
If there one thing I've learned about the internet, it's that the dumber the idea is, the more likely it'll be done anyway for shits and giggles.
Microsoft isn't going to recreate office in JS. but as soon as the idea circulates through the dev and OSS community, someone will actually hack something together just for shear horror value.
If nothing else it'll get parodied on xkcd somewhere.
in whatever the hell language systemd wants to use and you'll damn well be happy about it
It will be updating itself soon, whether you want it to or not
That is all
Microsoft was never effected by single personality decisions like Apple , they use wide range of technologies and only person who is not familiar with scope of problems they solve and complexity of their system designs may think that somebody can decide that writing everything in JavaScript makes sense for them. Yes, they can rework some individual products or subsystems into new language of their choice, but it is not the case when we speak about all around redevelopment into single language like c# or JavaScript.
People make mistakes, this one is miniscule in the scheme of things, I hate MS but I don't give two fucks about this. Win10 being a shitty spyware POS is a bigger concern for me as a PC gamer.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
This illustrates the main problem with JavaScript - (ignorant) people seem to think it can do absolutely everything in terms of coding and will be the wave of the future.
The word has to get out that JavaScript has its place but any kind of sophisticated app/webpage requires a lot of server support which is written in !JavaScript.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
From what I can collect, the UI for O365 and other browser based tools in the future will be rewritten with a React/Electron/JS focus.
They're already in JS and HTML obviously or they wouldn't work in the browser. But right now those things are a mess.
I'm sure, and I don't know who assumed, that the server-side would be completely rewritten with a UI-oriented framework.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
So, MS outfitted good old Program Manager with AI and made it into a Twitter chatbot? No more just "This will end your Windows session"? Cool.
...blaming Twitter's character limitations for his many factual errors...
A good carpenter never blames his tools.
One would also think that "a long-time Windows blogger" would be accustomed to these kinds of errors by now.
My daughter eventually convinced me that Twitter indeed could be put to meaningful use. The best was broadcasting status from environmental sensors - taking it out of the hands of idiots.
Sounds to me like the truth slipped out. This is the actual plan or he wouldn't have been talking about it, especially when it's about work and you have signed nda's and your job is on the line.
It was legitimate enough for him to think he was okay to talk about it. Besides it was entirely written in JavaScript they can actually sell it to Linux users.
Oddly enough it sounds like an acceptable solution and my case at least running Gentoo. I have to use a Windows VM just so I can run the stupid Excel spreadsheet with all of its macros to do my timesheet. Yes my company uses Excel for their timesheets, but hired me as a Linux developer to work on tensorflow.
If I could just go to a webpage to get office working, that would be preferable to actually running a spyware in a VM solution. At least in a browser, I'm compiling the source code for chromium and could do whatever I want to limit their telemetry or firewall their data feeds.
So my two cents is that this was an actual strategy that slipped out. Partly because it actually sounds kind of intelligent, hardly anyone wants to run that damn OS these days but we're locked into some of their office software.
Would've been a great tweet on April 1st.
And not one geek on here thought of ProgMan.exe?
Because if that tweeted by mistake, Microsoft were more forward-thinking that I thought.
Being a "long-time Windows blogger" is already an error in life choices.
Apparently progman.exe still exists, and has become self-aware. Or at least learnt how to use Twitter.
And it backfired.
Oh yes, since forcing updates that break programs all the time or even bricking computers is excusable. Microsoft has a perfect OS and never needs to be fixed, riiight. The amount of downtime and work repairing Microsoft's mess is amazing.
I've never worked for a program manager worth a shit in my life.
I'm not a hard core developer. I spent many years as a Software QA Engineer. I say this only to convey that I'm NOT as closely involved with programming languages and technologies as most people here are. When I read this article my reaction was "So what if MicroSoft is using Javascript to rewrite their apps?" If they can make their apps work to their satisfaction (and I'm not saying they can, that's not my point) using JavaScript, then what do we, as users, care? And for that matter, what do you, as C, C++, Java, or whatever programmers care?
Those questions sound rhetorical, but I ask them rather seriously. Why do programmers identify with languages they like so strongly that it becomes important to them which one is used, even if it's not a project they are working on or a language that they are being forced to use?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this phenomenon, but I don't think so. It seems that everytime one of these kinds of stories leaks, whether it's true or not, they always seem to generate a big reaction on forums such as this.
This is a PROGRAM MANAGER. They are always wrong! Their job is not to know technology, their job is to keep schedules, sell products, and be blowhards. Very often that "sell products" thing means they sell products that don't yet exist ("sorry guys, I'll add one week to the schedule to make up for it"). They know just enough technology to fool other people who don't know much about technology, and their hobby is collecting new buzzwords and paradigms.
(to be fair, I acknowledge that theoretically there may be a competent program manager somewhere in the world and the existing lack of evidence is not proof that one does not exist)
In a world where uncertainty is ripe, it's good to know that one can rely on MS and Mercedes drivers to do the stupid thing.
The “correction” seems rather carefully worded using broad statements which don’t actually counter the specific original statement he made. This leads me to believe
1) His original statement is mostly true; and
2) Microsoft is very concerned that major news like this leaked out; because
3) They’ve got a lot of third parties who are completely dependent on their existing dev environment
This seems like a bigger deal than when MS decided it would start releasing its own laptops and mobile devices - which was, in its own right, a significant betrayal of its partners (or so it seemed at the time).
#DeleteChrome
It will be written in java, running on a VM written in java, running class libraries written in java, running on a VM written in java.
More recursion == more speed!
ASSembly is slow, C++ is slow, C is slower, and everything else is just a toy programming language.
Java is secure, Java is fast, Java is the future.
I've wondered if that's why recent versions of Microsoft Windows, and Office, are so buggy.
It's certainly annoying, needing to edit the registry just to prevent the dreaded "hover cover" mouseover events as one is, for example, furiously trying to finish a Word document and accidentally moves the mouse over the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and suddenly half your document us covered by a pop-up listing all the windows you have open.
Or, if you're trying to enter a new entry into Microsoft Office's calendar and you slightly scroll over an existing long calendar item and now what you're trying to type in is covered over by yet another stupid mouseover popup.
Microsoft software needs way LESS scripting, not more. It's not a freaking browser.
"And then all hell broke loose."
O.M.G. Literally tens of, even a few dozen, people were up in arms over such a scurrilous idea! OH, The Horror!
-> I dislike sigs...
Their app would be faster, it would run cross OS without needing to write multiple versions, updates could be done silently by simply updating the site offering more control to microsoft in terms of updates (something currently which is a contentious issue as they attempt to take remote control for updates rather than ask permission).
Google docs works really amazingly well, I really do not see why having an online version of docs would be anything but a smart move.
To all the naysayers, if it wasn't in javascript what the hell else would it be in? The closest to some form of client side logic would be java but for many reasons we do not use java anymore. From a user experience point of view javascript is going to get the job done silently and smoothly across all platforms and devices where as any kind of compiled solution will hit hiccups trying to shoe horn a compiled solution into a script solution only space.
Simply fat-fingered the pad. What he really meant to say was "Office will come pleated with deep steak covfefe Hillary. Occlusion!"
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
There is a big push to retire VBA for the new hot Javascript approach of writing extensions, which is probably what confused the fashion concious PM. But this is actually a disaster.
Consider the one line of VBA
sub CopyVal()
[A1] = [B1] + [C1]
end sub
A trivial program that any *NON-PROGRAMMER* can write. Most management accountants can write a bit of VBA which is very useful to them. And then it is trivial to deploy. There is even a macro recorder that can write outline code for you.
This same program requires about 50 complex lines of their Javascript. Not because JavaScript is that much worse a language, but because it is all wrapped up in design patterns -- you need to use futures etc. which are way beyond non-developers and confuse a lot of professional developers when they go wrong. You need to install Visual Studio. And to deploy you need to set up an IIS server and navigate the security model!
It is not about End If vs {} (End If is actually better because miss matched ends are easier to locate). Or even the optional Static typing in VBA that Javascript still lacks. It is about the idea of end user computing that Microsoft is doing its best to destroy. When they eventually succeed, most people might as well use Google Sheets.
And making major announcements on a shitty microblogging service like Twatter... THAT is what is really inexcusable. Get a real web site to post official announcements. Duh.
RE: #Thurrott. Killing someone is inexcusable... Fake News on the Internet / Twitter is not just excusable, but apparently enough to make you a world leader. Not to mention, this was a Twitter post (twit? twat? tweet? that's the one!) not an officialdom public announcement; untwist your panties. Also, it's not like this would have been the first atrocity Microsoft has unleashed hell on the masses...