Fair enough. To be clear, the site is not for Pro devs although some may go up and create what they call "application blocks" - essentially little components that others (non developers) can hook together to create mash-ups. I think their target is more non-developers who want to create little apps/mash-ups/gadgets and share them with friends. Imagine the users of MySpace or FaceBook who might want to use this kind of thing to trick out their sites. People like that "borrow" code all the time and make small modifications and re-use it. I think the "vision" is pretty cool - shouldn't anyone be able to build applications by dragging and dropping components onto a surface and hooking them together in ways that they find interseting? It's the future of software development in the long term... You'll always need the hardcore coders to write the core code but most apps will just be made up of pre-existing code put together in ways that users want.
I'm not on the Popfly team but I can assure you that they're super small, "lightly funded" by any standard and definately outside of the bounds of the traditional MSFT brand. Maybe once you have the chance to use the site you'll have a more informed opinion on whether the app is cool or not, huh?
I can assure you that not only is the duck imagery NOT the logo for Popfly but that any resemblance to "Tux" is completely coincidental. Me thinks the Tux fans are a bit paranoid. The duck image is just a photo that the team thought was a fun way to illustrate how people can express themselves by doing whatever they want with Popfly...get it? The one duck has a style unique among the others? It's just a ducky picture! Me thinks the Tux fans are perhaps a bit paranoid.
You are not interpreting my comment fairly. The original posting was about the lack of a singular vision for Microsoft...where they want to go in development. That was what I addressed. I can tell you that there is a huge focus from the bottoms up and the top down to improve quality and process. Building large and/or complex software applications is a hard thing. This isn't a Microsoft only problem. It's a problem for anyone writing software. Is the answer to dumb down our expectations (make everything with javaxcript! Wow!) or try to find better ways to build more powerful software using modern tools and platforms?
If the originator of this post visited Microsoft expecting to hear a single voice expressing a singular vision then he's looking at the wrong company. For that he should go visit an electric company or a phone company. They'll give you a singular vision (more subscribers!).
I can confirm that Microsoft is, indeed, in many ways a set of disconnected fiefdoms that are not moving in the same direction. The irony is that this both one of Microsoft greatest strengths and one of its greatest weaknesses.
It seems that many in the "outside world" (whatever that is) seem to think that Microsoft is this menacing machine being driven by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and a small number of leutenants to nefarious ends. The reality is that it is a large company made up of...how many?...75K employees with lots of different ideas and philosopies of life and interests who are given a lot of freedom to pursue thier interests and goals. Sure...there's some top down strategy but in many cases those strategies are obvious (find a way to have the best of the Web in terms of ubiquity and ease of application deployment and management and the best of full fledged client applications). But overall the management at Microsoft seems to recognize (or are resigned to) the fact that the company and the people will be better off if they let the workers pursue lots of different ideas...often competing and conflicted...and see what the result is. Sometimes the result is...Bob or Windows ME. Other times the result is good work like Word or Excel or Encarta or.NET or SQL Server. The losers quickly disappear and the winners eventually...after lots of hard work and lots of revs...eventually become good and sometimes great.
The fiefdoms at Microsoft have downsides. They spend huge amounts of money developing projects that in many ways complete. They spend too much money on bad ideas because the exec in charge has power or inflence. But I think the people who run Microsoft and most employees are willing to live with that because the internal competition is best for the long-term.
There are some huge examples of blunder that result from this approach. Although I was far from the inner circle at the time, I have the impression that people like Brad Silverberg (who ran Windows 95 development and marketing) tried to convince Bill and Steve that Microsoft should make a bigger bet on the Web before it was trendy to do so...before Netscape existed. Before the guys who founded Google were out of middle school. For whatever reason (maybe hundreds of billions of reason$) the powers that be decided to stick with a Windows-centric approach for longer than they should have. C'est la vie. That is ancient history. How...more than 11 years later...the real excitement and innovation at Microsoft is in developing very cool platforms and infrastructure for service-oriented applications and Web-enabling (jargon alert) "old school" products in intersting ways.
Will MSFT be as successful and relevant in the future as they have been for the last 20 years? Hard to say. Maybe unlikely. But I'd be willing to bet a reasonable sum that the inefficient and frustrating and random and sometimes stupid darwinistic approach that MSFT takes to software development will keep the company relevant. Do I dare say...mark my words?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm...well, that's a well thought out and constructive comment. Or, maybe just stupid.
Fair enough. To be clear, the site is not for Pro devs although some may go up and create what they call "application blocks" - essentially little components that others (non developers) can hook together to create mash-ups. I think their target is more non-developers who want to create little apps/mash-ups/gadgets and share them with friends. Imagine the users of MySpace or FaceBook who might want to use this kind of thing to trick out their sites. People like that "borrow" code all the time and make small modifications and re-use it. I think the "vision" is pretty cool - shouldn't anyone be able to build applications by dragging and dropping components onto a surface and hooking them together in ways that they find interseting? It's the future of software development in the long term... You'll always need the hardcore coders to write the core code but most apps will just be made up of pre-existing code put together in ways that users want.
It's not the logo. It's just a silly picture of ducks. You're taking this way too seriously.
I'm not on the Popfly team but I can assure you that they're super small, "lightly funded" by any standard and definately outside of the bounds of the traditional MSFT brand. Maybe once you have the chance to use the site you'll have a more informed opinion on whether the app is cool or not, huh?
I can assure you that not only is the duck imagery NOT the logo for Popfly but that any resemblance to "Tux" is completely coincidental. Me thinks the Tux fans are a bit paranoid. The duck image is just a photo that the team thought was a fun way to illustrate how people can express themselves by doing whatever they want with Popfly...get it? The one duck has a style unique among the others? It's just a ducky picture! Me thinks the Tux fans are perhaps a bit paranoid.
You are not interpreting my comment fairly. The original posting was about the lack of a singular vision for Microsoft...where they want to go in development. That was what I addressed. I can tell you that there is a huge focus from the bottoms up and the top down to improve quality and process. Building large and/or complex software applications is a hard thing. This isn't a Microsoft only problem. It's a problem for anyone writing software. Is the answer to dumb down our expectations (make everything with javaxcript! Wow!) or try to find better ways to build more powerful software using modern tools and platforms?
If the originator of this post visited Microsoft expecting to hear a single voice expressing a singular vision then he's looking at the wrong company. For that he should go visit an electric company or a phone company. They'll give you a singular vision (more subscribers!).
.NET or SQL Server. The losers quickly disappear and the winners eventually...after lots of hard work and lots of revs...eventually become good and sometimes great.
I can confirm that Microsoft is, indeed, in many ways a set of disconnected fiefdoms that are not moving in the same direction. The irony is that this both one of Microsoft greatest strengths and one of its greatest weaknesses.
It seems that many in the "outside world" (whatever that is) seem to think that Microsoft is this menacing machine being driven by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and a small number of leutenants to nefarious ends. The reality is that it is a large company made up of...how many?...75K employees with lots of different ideas and philosopies of life and interests who are given a lot of freedom to pursue thier interests and goals. Sure...there's some top down strategy but in many cases those strategies are obvious (find a way to have the best of the Web in terms of ubiquity and ease of application deployment and management and the best of full fledged client applications). But overall the management at Microsoft seems to recognize (or are resigned to) the fact that the company and the people will be better off if they let the workers pursue lots of different ideas...often competing and conflicted...and see what the result is. Sometimes the result is...Bob or Windows ME. Other times the result is good work like Word or Excel or Encarta or
The fiefdoms at Microsoft have downsides. They spend huge amounts of money developing projects that in many ways complete. They spend too much money on bad ideas because the exec in charge has power or inflence. But I think the people who run Microsoft and most employees are willing to live with that because the internal competition is best for the long-term.
There are some huge examples of blunder that result from this approach. Although I was far from the inner circle at the time, I have the impression that people like Brad Silverberg (who ran Windows 95 development and marketing) tried to convince Bill and Steve that Microsoft should make a bigger bet on the Web before it was trendy to do so...before Netscape existed. Before the guys who founded Google were out of middle school. For whatever reason (maybe hundreds of billions of reason$) the powers that be decided to stick with a Windows-centric approach for longer than they should have. C'est la vie. That is ancient history. How...more than 11 years later...the real excitement and innovation at Microsoft is in developing very cool platforms and infrastructure for service-oriented applications and Web-enabling (jargon alert) "old school" products in intersting ways.
Will MSFT be as successful and relevant in the future as they have been for the last 20 years? Hard to say. Maybe unlikely. But I'd be willing to bet a reasonable sum that the inefficient and frustrating and random and sometimes stupid darwinistic approach that MSFT takes to software development will keep the company relevant. Do I dare say...mark my words?