"Matt" <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:yR1dl.87281$JA5.84901@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Ezekiel wrote:
>> "Matt" <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:C0Tcl.22089$1k1.698@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Ezekiel wrote:
>
>>> I don't expect it would take much to know more about OS than nearly all
>>> the senior execs at Microsoft.
>>
>> That's why there's often people who manage "business" and other people
>> who manage the technical aspects of a company. But it's ridiculous to
>> believe for one second that there aren't some very, very smart technical
>> people working at Microsoft.
>
>
> Oh, I wouldn't dispute that. For instance I find now that Allchin has
> some very impressive technical accomplishments, also that he came from
> poverty, also that he didn't much want to work at MS but was convinced by
> Gates to join.
It ended up working out pretty well for him. Years ago (early 90's) my
company sent me to a week long C++ training course over at IBM. The guy
teaching the C++ course (forget his name) once worked for Microsoft. He
would talk to us during the break and told us that he was something like
employee #18 or employee #24 or something like that so he worked there right
when MS was getting started. He didn't work there very long and ended up
leaving because he didn't think the company had much future potential and he
got a better job with some other company (that nobody ever heard of.)
> Another one was the Turbo Pascal guy, who joined MS and designed .NET or
> something.
If it's the guy that I'm thinking of then (no wikipedia peeking) it's an
ex-Borland guy who designed Delphi.
> I don't see that their occasional technical excellence justifies their
> habit of attacking standards.
I don't agree that developing new technologies and products is attacking
standards. Windows NT (back when Cutler wrote it) was a new product. Delphi
was a new product. .NET is a new product. Back when only "C" existed the C++
was a new product. Computer technology evolves. You can't just sit around
and not develop anything new because of some imaginary attack on standards.
> The Turbo guy was a perfect fit because he already had a history of
> extending standards so as to create lock-in.
Companies extend standards to provide additional functionality that doesn't
exist in the standard. Firefox has non-standard features in their browser.
The gcc/g++ compiler has non-standard compiler features. MySQL has it's own
set of features that aren't part of the SQL standard. What's the point in
developing a language like Python.... what "standard" does Python adhere to?
Clearly Python exists to create lock-in and to attach languages like Perl.
Once again... computer technology evolves and changes over time. Things
would be extremely stagnant if nobody released any features until they were
officially part of some committee approved standard that took months or
years to approve.
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