[wilsonnb2]

I think they're cool. The Surface Pro and Surface Book are the only computers since the iPad first came out that I actually wanted to buy.

They also put Linux in Windows, released visual studio for free, created one of the most popular text editors ever, and created 3 programming languages that are generally well liked (C#, F#, and typescript).

I'm not sure how cool they are compared to Google, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and Facebook but I personally tend to compare them to enterprise companies like IBM and Oracle. Microsoft wins that coolness contest easily.

[0x4f3759df]

You left out that .NET Core is just as fast as Node.js [1] and .Net runs on linux. Its pretty cool that I can write Linux programs now even though I am terrible at c (to my neverending shame).

1 https://stackoverflow.com/a/44093694/73804

[Yetanfou]

Being bad at C (and family) does not mean you can not write 'Linux programs', just pick any other language of choice and start writing. Recently the .Net family has been added, before that Mono made a valiant attempt at supporting it but those have been preceded (and might be succeeded) by a lengthy list of languages in which 'Linux programs' can be written, from BASIC to Haskell, from Python to Ocaml, from Fortran to Lisp, take your pick.