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Microsoft Program Manager Mistakenly Tweets Office 365 Will Be Rewritten in JavaScript (thurrott.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the MS-to-JS dept.

"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."

8 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Actually... by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...Office will be rewritten in FORTRAN, but they did not want to trigger panic.

  2. Getting something this big this wrong is inexcusab by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And yet, Windows soldiers on.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  3. I don't care what language you use. by shess · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.]

    1. Re: I don't care what language you use. by sg_oneill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh I think that horse bolted the stable long ago. It became pretty obvious Microsoft was wavering on dot net and win64 when that hellworld that is windows universal apps was unleashed. There's a reason everyone's flocking to languagss like Python. Anything but JavaScript

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  4. Not a mistake by guruevi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
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  5. Re:Getting something this big this wrong is inexcu by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)

  6. Re:Microsoft is sloppily managed? by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are people who are good at working, and people who are good at managing, but very few people who are really good at both. Technology people managers are sometimes not very good at understanding details of technology; but when you get out to project, program, and product managers, they are often very far removed from technology and are extremely apt to mishear what the team is saying.

    This is not just Microsoft, this is company. Every employee has a role they are good at (or presumably so) but they are never good at multiple roles at the same time. At the level of program manager, there is no reason at all that they should know anything at all about how things are implemented, they've got so many diverse teams to be coordinated that they can't afford to know little bits of trivia about them at the same time.

  7. Re:so??? by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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.

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