Wow Microsoft is tickin' all the cool boxes under Nadella. Never seen such a radical, and it seems, effective, corpo image turnaround. Open source? Check. Ubuntu on Windows? Check. Contribute to BSD? Check. Progressive on pot? Check. Defeat the bots? Check. Gates on chickens? Check. This company is sick/dope/ice cold cool.
Microsoft has always been far more progressive on social issues than most corporations. They were a huge supporter of the gay marriage movement here in Washington State a few years ago, and that was before Nadella was CEO.
Actually, couple of things I forgot. First IMO Microsoft has always been properly credible on programming languages. Right back to MASM. There were 20 years of awful behaviour, but the languages side was always a highlight (I forgive VB but even that was okay for its use case).
Also, little things. Anybody looked at Babylon.js? Brilliant, brilliantly documented, and the sense that this Open Source "side project" by a few MS employees is really being given enthusiastic support by the parent, the feeling that it's not going to wither. Strength to strength. I love it.
Fuck that. The Microsoft under Ballmer was a car crash. I was running a .Net development house at the time and we seriously considered switching tech stack off the back of Microsoft's attitude to everytihng.
fair enough. But let's compare them to the competitors, Facebook, Google, Apple. Only the last can legitimately be said not to pollute your life with more ads than Microsoft. MS is benign by comparison with the first two.
I think it's just as legitimate to compare Microsoft's product to the previous version of itself as it is to compare it to what's offered by other companies. And that comparison doesn't make Microsoft look benign.
