Channel 9 - Discussions by Charles

Coffeehouse - Build 2013 Reg Re-Opened

Charles — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:16:18 GMT

@Harlequin: Well, it's actually a 3 day conference and registration is not $3,500. I assume you're including travel and expenses in your calculation.

Coffeehouse - interesting XBox Next (or Next Next) rumors that link to Drawbridge ??!!

Charles — Mon, 20 May 2013 01:49:59 GMT

Thanks for the link. Very interesting (less so, the future product conjecture, but the problem space is vibrant and innovation is clearly happening. Great to know!).

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:23:37 GMT

@blowdart: Sorry.

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Wed, 15 May 2013 02:08:31 GMT

@blowdart: You can't ban me, can you? If so, we'll need to fix that

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:56:16 GMT

@exoteric: Now we're talking.

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:34:30 GMT

One can imagine some operational hierarchy among watchers. Some watchers watch some non-watchers and some watchers watch some watchers.

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:45:11 GMT

2 hours ago, Sven Groot wrote
But... who watches the watchers?

The Watchers.
C

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:23:27 GMT

Actually... Lenn left first, to be historically accurate.

Coffeehouse - "This actually is a place for you to talk. But read the fine print, we are watching you."

Charles — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:34:41 GMT

Yeah, that was the first and only tag line for the Coffeehouse. Bryn Waibel wrote it.

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:49:59 GMT

Here's the most recent round of conversations with the kernel team: http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/inside-windows-8

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Mon, 13 May 2013 01:15:53 GMT

@felix9: I don't think any of these axioms are not in motion today across all teams inside Microsoft with large code bases, with some amount of external enlistments (minus the OSS realities)... Windows is the canonical example, of course, but it's not the only large and complex code base maintained by multiple teams of engineers with varying levels of seniority and expertise.

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:41:24 GMT

@Bass: I didn't say it was the solution to any problem... I stated only that it is the appropriate response to his voluntary action.
C

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:16:26 GMT

46 minutes ago, Bass wrote
Why stop there? I know lets fire all the Microsoft employees talking crap on MiniMSFT's website too. Obviously to accomplish this Microsoft needs to institute a McCarthy-like investigation of all the company's employees.

Because that would be stupid. We're having an intelligent conversation here.

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:14:34 GMT

@Sven Groot:

In any job, one experiences periods of doubt (self-doubt, doubt about any number of things related to what one is working on or where one works), unhappiness, remorse, anxiety, sadness, anger, confusion, happiness, fulfillment, excitement, deep focus, joy, satisfaction, success. When the bad stuff happens, you only make things worse by crapping on your coworkers (who, in this case, probably aren't his coworkers) and making your company look like it's run by spoiled children... No, I have no interest in helping this individual.

That said, at Microsoft, we continually evaluate our culture, which is the only way to change what doesn't work - you have to understand what the issues are and then come up with practical solutions. Over the years, we have made changes to fix problems with our operational models and we've invented new problems, too, but this doesn't mean when things go wrong for you, for whatever reason, you anonymously post your criticisms to the Internet and cry foul in a sensationalistic way. And then to top it off you assert that Windows kernel developers somehow don't spend quality time on performance and optimization (of existing and new code)? That really pisses me off.

Imagine if we all aired our personal grievances, say, with our personal relationships (well, some do, I guess, but most of us don't...). What if I posted here on C9 about problems I'm having in my personal life and that the problems stem from how screwed up life really is (as of course I get what life is all about) and how everybody around me doesn't get it and they're all just a bunch of half-crazed monkeys wandering aimlessly through time? What if I chose to blame my problems on people that have little to do with the problems I'm facing, if anything, blaming them for the failure(s) at hand, even if they have nothing to do with it? "Damn crazy apes!"...

I don't speak on behalf of Microsoft. I'm comfortable with my real identity, with nothing to hide. I think this employee is not somebody that should work for Microsoft. We need people who want to work here, who want to help us succeed in this new age of personal computing, who are passionate about technology and respectful of their peers and fellow employees, are smart enough to know the difference between sending a well written, balanced, intelligent email to your GM or VP expressing concerns in a rational way, versus airing half-truths and what amounts to slander as an anonymous entity on the Internet...

So, to answer your great question, Sven, the problem is not what to do after something like this happens, it's about learning how to be a mature employee and know that if there is something really wrong going on around you related to work, a solution is easier to find internally rather than on reddit, Slashdot or Mary Jo Foley's blog... If, after you try to solve the issues in a responsible and respectful way inside your group, you fail to make progress, then you'd be better off moving on to something new, perhaps somewhere else. Life is too short.

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:55:46 GMT

@wtfhIsMicrosoftDoing: That's my sentiment, not Microsoft's... C

Coffeehouse - Who needs Windows when you have Android?

Charles — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:38:43 GMT

This thread has spun its course. Move along.

Coffeehouse - “Why Windows is slower” - a 'rant' from within WinDiv

Charles — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:03:05 GMT

Having had several conversations with kernel developers over the years (and you've seen many of them in video format right here on C9...), it's clear to me that this person is junior and also not a member of the Windows kernel engineering team. I suspect he's some junior program manager (or developer) working in some other part of Windows. I hope we find him. I look forward to hearing the news of his dismissal from Microsoft.

His post is (I have to assume this person is a male of the species, so I will...) full of BS as it relates to what kernel developers spend their time working on. There is an enormous investment in performance and optimization, from schedulers to power management. With each iteration of Windows there are significant improvements in the kernel - related precisely to performance (and security and reliability, of course). If you've spent any time listening to actual Windows kernel developers over the years here on Channel 9, it would be quite obvious that the person blogging this BS doesn't write code that ships in the Windows kernel. He said so himself, in fact: "While I have read and write access to the Windows source and commit to it once in a while...". Yeah, you may be a junior dev (at best) working somewhere in Windows (or some other team that checks code into the Windows source depot), not a member of the kernel team. They only hire very smart people.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out...

C

Coffeehouse - Marked as answer - by a moderator before OP

Charles — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:48:59 GMT

@davewill:

Yes, it was rude. I think mods should wait a bit longer, but then again when is too long? When is too short? Lots of subjectivity here.

Coffeehouse - There is no end-of-life XP problem

Charles — Thu, 09 May 2013 02:36:34 GMT

Wow, XP still receiving so much attention... Proud of the OS

That said, hardware has evolved dramatically in addition to how people use computers. Not sure why XP should live forever, but it will be interesting to see how long it does live...
C

Coffeehouse - Marked as answer - by a moderator before OP

Charles — Thu, 09 May 2013 01:28:42 GMT

Or... Perhaps the idea is to limit the possibility of endless threads or threads forking inside of themselves, spinning endlessly, away from the answer to the original question... That said, some amount of conversation should be allowed, well, encouraged. So, maybe the mod of the particular forum you're referring to needs to slow down on his/her draw. Mods are human.

Coffeehouse - Charles: what is Anders Hejlsberg working on ?

Charles — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:49:58 GMT

@felix9: Of course...

Coffeehouse - Charles: what is Anders Hejlsberg working on ?

Charles — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:35:44 GMT

@figuerres: I'll see if he can tell us Anders loves Channel 9, so I'd imagine he'd be happy to talk about something. However, given that there is nothing to disclose right now, I'm not sure he'll be able to talk about what he's working on, exactly... That said, to answer your question in broad strokes, you can imagine that he's working on:

1. C#/VB.NET
2. Roslyn
3. TypeScript

C

Coffeehouse - Direction?

Charles — Sun, 05 May 2013 21:12:22 GMT

42 minutes ago, bondsbw wrote
So I feel like we have invested, and continue to invest, tons of energy, time, and money into LOB development on a desktop platform that is dead. (And by dead, I don't mean it has been removed. I'm just saying it has no life, and to me little hope of breathing again.)

Dead? What does desktop (Win32) have to do with WinRT? WinRT apps are designed for touch-first experience, to run in a sandbox with a very different execution model (and underlying management infrastructure), predictable user safety (sandbox...). Windows Store apps employ a very different installation and update model, too... Windows Store apps are different than Win32 apps. Is that the problem?

Are you really talking about WPF - which has always been about the Windows desktop? Last I checked, we shipped a new version along with .NET 4.5 that includes several new features, performance improvements, etc...

What can't you do on the desktop in Windows 8 (x86) that you could do before? Can you provide some specific information? Otherwise, we're just talking in generalities which means we're getting nowhere fast...

WPF 4.5: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613588.aspx

Coffeehouse - Direction?

Charles — Sun, 05 May 2013 19:38:08 GMT

17 hours ago, bondsbw wrote
The focus has been removed from developers. I don't know where .NET is going, or where the Windows desktop is going.
Why is Microsoft suddenly being so secretive about their direction?

.NET is now at version 4.5. It continues to evolve, with a fully loaded development team pushing it forward... What do you want to know? The next set of .NET features? That's not something that gets shared publicly without the .NET team being ready to commit to delivering them. It's a basic rule of thumb in any software company - don't share product roadmaps that you're not going to actually deliver. When we broke this rule in the past, it bit us - but more importantly, it bit our customers. It always does... It's not obsessive secrecy as much as it is intelligent - or mature - public disclosure strategy.

I don't see how building and shipping the world's best IDE is an indication that we aren't focused on developers. Further, our commitment to a large swath of developers (not just .NET developers) is concrete evidence of precisely the opposite of your assertion. We're in the business of AND, not OR. Perhaps there is a marketing/messaging problem (especially around .NET), but there is no lack of commitment to developers on the engineering side of things... Look at what Guthrie et al are doing in Azure. Then there's Windows 8 and Windows Phone - there is a tremendous amount of developer investment and execution going on. We're embracing open source, delivering innovative APIs and tools (hard to keep up with all of it...) across programming languages/runtimes, working as hard as possible to help developers - not just .NET developers - be as productive as possible when targeting our platforms using more than a single tool chain...

I get the sense that for some, if we only focus on .NET then we love developers, else we're simply lost and wandering aimlessly through the forest. This is just plain wrong. .NET is one model (which continues to evolve and is a first class citizen on all of our platforms), then there's everything else...

AND,

C

Coffeehouse - Case for Bill Gates To Focus on Microsoft Not Foundation

Charles — Sun, 05 May 2013 19:14:10 GMT

8 hours ago, ZippyV wrote
Why is this idiot not banned yet?

For what offense(s), exactly? We don't ban people for posting random content in the Coffeehouse, a place where much randomness takes place... It's up to you to ignore this stuff, not for us to ban users whom you find annoying. Also, calling a Niner an idiot breaks one of our basic rules of engagement: don't be mean.

Play nice, Zippy.

C