[short_sells_poo]

I wonder how much inertia an organization like MS has. I never worked there, but the anecdotes I read/hear indicate that MS is really 4-5 semi-independent competing power structures. E.g. there's sometimes (often?) adversarial relationship between them even, which then projects into baffling end user experiences. The windows shut down menu or the highly schizophrenic situation between the new and old control panels comes to mind.

Steering something like that is not even analogous to captaining a single large ship, it's more like trying to steer a flotilla where each captain hates the other bunch and they are all continuously pulling in different directions.

Satya may be doing his very best to improve the culture, but management has to change or be replaced on multiple levels below him to make things stick. He has to do this in a way that doesn't unite the leaders of the sub-groups against him in mutiny.

Again, I'm not trying to excuse MS's behavior in any measure, just highlight that even with the best of intentions it may take decades to change firm like MS to give up it's old ways.

[pooper]

> Steering something like that is not even analogous to captaining a single large ship, it's more like trying to steer a flotilla where each captain hates the other bunch and they are all continuously pulling in different directions.

I'm sure this is a constant struggle even within the dotnet umbrella. Remember the whole hot reload mess?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972431

I don't get it. Why can't they simply open source the common code between visual studio and visual studio code? Who cares if Visual Studio makes an extra million dollars in revenue? Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish. Spending all these resources to get developer mindshare and constantly tripping over themselves because oh we must protect visual studio revenue.