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."

Comments

Getting something this big this wrong is inexcusab

[PPH]

And yet, Windows soldiers on.

I don't care what language you use.

[shess]

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.]

Not a mistake

[guruevi]

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.

He blamed twitter?

[QuietLagoon]

...blaming Twitter's character limitations for his many factual errors...

A good carpenter never blames his tools.

Re:so???

[Actually, I do RTFA]

"So what if MicroSoft is using Javascript to rewrite their apps?"

Microsoft has invested heavily in .NET (which has many flavors, the most popular of which is C#), going so far as to purchase and make free .NET compilation to Android and iOS. It's a language that gets a lot of use (it's their answer to Java). They've also invested heavily in TypeScript, a language that compiles to JavaScript.

And by "invested heavily" I mean invented the languages, write tons of articles and software in them, and far more.

(Required Car Analog) Microsoft rewriting a major area of their business in Javascript would be equivalent to the news Ford was purchasing a fleet of Chevy trucks to move their parts around and all the execs were getting new Chevy cars. A profound shift away from using their core product line that would make everyone question what the fuck was going on. This would be especially troubling to anyone who invested in their core product line, such as dealers of Fords or owners worried about replacement parts. And as I mentioned, there is a huge codebase in C# and other MS languages right now.