[wright]

> I also a lot of dumb people that can't program worth a damn. What's your point?

Try to keep up here, Freddo. Try following the context :) Smart is orthogonal to skilled at a particular endeavor.

> Yeah, that's just an outright dumb move.

Funny how you twisted "lacking in the taste department" into "dumb". It's a computer industry truism that MS lacks taste, whereas Apple has good taste.

This is also amusing: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/05.html

[yters]

I think an emphasis on taste can be good, but not when it leads to a holier than thou attitude. Not only in terms of decency, but it also means less efficiency and aesthetics.

Say efficiency and aesthetics are two sides of the same coin. So, if you put them at odds with each other you won't ever reach the epitome of either.

[wanorris]

Taste is also orthogonal to skill at programming. Apple had better taste then Microsoft even when their code was absolute crap under the hood.

[wright]

You can have taste without being able to program well, but you can't program well without good taste.

The original point was that MS had smart people so a lack of smarts couldn't be the problem. The salient points are 1) smarts don't guarantee programming skill, and 2) smarts don't guarantee taste.

[wanorris]

> You can have taste without being able to program well, but you can't program well without good taste.

Fair enough. In that sense, then, I wouldn't say that programmers at Microsoft lack taste by definition.

There are things at Microsoft that have demonstrated solid taste: the original NT kernel comes to mind, as do early iterations of Word and Excel (starting back when they were primarily developed for Mac). LINQ. WCF. The DLR. There are also smaller pieces of tools that seem elegant, even when there are issues with the larger design. Active Patterns in F#. Attributes in C#. The ADO.Net CommandBuilder and DataAdapter.

I'm not convinced that it's that everyone at Microsoft is individually defective as much as that their methods of collaboration, like those of most large corporations, usually yield results less effective than good individuals or small teams could have produced with sufficient autonomy.

[raganwald]

"I'm not convinced that it's that everyone at Microsoft is individually defective as much as that their methods of collaboration, like those of most large corporations, usually yield results less effective than good individuals or small teams could have produced with sufficient autonomy."

Which brings this thread from the religious fervour of "what it means to be smart" right back to the subject at hand: Why MSFT would pay M$20+ for Xobni rather than write a kock-off in-house.