[jamespcole2]

I don't think people hate MS, they just don't even think about them. Whenever I am at tech events(usually web related ones) MS isn't openly criticised, they're not even discussed as an option.

I spend about 50% of my time developing .net apps and the other half on linux/web stuff so I'm pretty familiar with the MS tech stack and it always feels very clunky and outdated.

MS hasn't created a really compelling consumer product since the Xbox and they have just totally lost consumer mindshare, they are the slow, clunky old thing you use at work because you have to, not the thing you buy when spending your own money.

In my view the future is(at least in the medium term) Linux on the server and mobile devices, Unix on the laptop/desktop in the form of OSX and maybe MS on the console and Windows running legacy systems and some servers.

I'm not a particular fan of Apple either(I've never purchased any of their products) and only use Linux(Ubuntu) and Windows in a VM but it seems to me consumers just don't care about MS any more and I'm not sure that MS has the skills to change that.

[_random_]

"it always feels very clunky and outdated." - can you elaborate? And please don't mention Java, JavaScript, C++ as those are all old and barely evolving. Web - maybe (Ruby is quite good at one specific thing). I would like to hear about something that makes e.g. TPL and Rx "clunky and outdated". I would like to see something that beats Visual Studio + R#.

[jamespcole2]

It's mainly things like the lack of a good package manager for provisioning, inexplicably large installers, sub-par automation, inscrutable GUI's packed with useless features, having to RDP into a server to perform basic tasks rather than just using SSH, massive bloat(why is everything so huge?), a general disregard for dev ops.

Also I find the licencing really irritating when creating VMs and servers. In the end thinking something "feels" old and clunky is a subjective perception but every time I use MS products it feels like they were created with little or no insight or knowledge into what anyone else is doing, leading to a lot of NIH syndrome.

Absolutely garbage browsers are also a big problem, I know IE 10 is passable but in 4 years when it hasn't been updated and people using Win7 and 8 are stuck using it, it will be the IE6 of its day.

Don't get me wrong, I used MS products basically exclusively for the first 5 years of my developer career, and still use them a fair bit now, and thought it was amazing, it's not until you move outside that bubble and start using better tools and methodologies that you realise how far behind they are.