Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 09:31:30 -0800 From: "Jeremiah Gowdy" <jeremiah@sherline.com> To: <darklogik@pittgoth.com>, "Giorgos Keramidas" <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> Cc: <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Advocacy help for CS professor Message-ID: <001101c1d1c7$67cf4ae0$a700a8c0@cptnhosedonkey> References: <20020322013138.A87120@xor.obsecurity.org> <20020322111245.GA26042@hades.hell.gr> <3C9B571F.1090101@pittgoth.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> This right here, and I don't really understand why, really really > upsets me... Why doesn't MS have Marshall Kirk McKusick? I mean, this > guy is smart! Simple, because many of the so-called best programmers do > not really want to work for MS... Hell, even I outsmarted the MS tech > support many times over... And if the hire the ``best'' then why was > their DNS software misconfigured? Their OWN software!!! By their OWN > trained technicians!!! Surely you remember the 3-days of downtime that > hit a few months ago where Microsoft admitted that they misconfigured > their own software... And it took them how many days to get it working, > they finally gave up and sent it over to another company, who has been > running it perfectly fine since... Read more at Wired.com, just search > for Microsoft, and it was a few months ago... There is a big difference between admins and programmers chief (except for those of us who are both). Poking holes in Microsoft's administrators and tech support reps doesn't say very much about their programming staff. The truth is, Microsoft picks up quite a bit of the world's best programming talent. Whether they use that talent wisely, that's a management issue. However, I don't think you're in good standing here when you knock on very talented people, who have completed excellent Computer Science programs at respectable universities. I know that's not all there is to being a good software engineer, but I believe you need to give them the benefit of the doubt and not accuse them of incompetence based on their unrelated other-department coworkers. And as for any incompetence you can point out, keep in mind how much management influences coding (depending on where you work). If the management of their software engineers sucks, they're going to have a hard time putting out good code. But to be honest, Microsoft DOES put out awesome software sometimes. The Age of Empires series of games was flawless and made a mockery of the pathing engine in most other overhead strat games. Office 2000/XP is the cornerstone of a majority of businesses today. Whether you like the program or not, you have to admit, some powerful coding went into that. If Microsoft's programmers were as stupid as everyone tries to make them out to be, they wouldn't have any successful products. I just don't like to see people blindly bashing the _programmers_ at Microsoft, for what are most likely management issues. I like to think I'm a computer scientist first, and all of the people in the computer science field are my colleagues. Other computer scientists are worthy of some respect until you find some real evidence that they're not. That you outsmarted MS Tech Support, and that they outsourced their DNS, are not very good reasons to knock programmers. There are some valid reasons to bash Microsoft programmers, and I'm sure someone will point them out, but you haven't found them yet. I don't mean any personal offense to you, but I just find empty bashing of software engineers to be very distasteful. If software engineers were the beginning and the end of all software development, then you could knock on them. However, with management, marketing, design teams, etc etc etc, it's a group effort. > I don't eat meat, but lets have some fun... WOW!! I guess we should all > eat ball park hotdogs cause that one basket ball player eats them, and > tells us that they are great... I'll tell myself whats great thank you > very much... And apologies that this is a more american product > marketing scheme, but this is the point i'm trying to make: > > Microsoft has a huge popularity with many of my In Real Life friends, > mainly you hear them associated with things like ``money hungry'' and > ``unknowledgeable technicians'' and of course ``monopoly'' but the list > goes on and on. Hahahha. Thank you, you've just brightened my day with a little humor. In one paragraph you are refusing to be a follower and allow marketing techniques to make you eat a certain brand of hot dogs, but in the next paragraph you're spouting what you hear Microsoft associated with. That would be sad if it wasn't so funny. You'll decide for yourself what hot dogs you're going to eat, but you'll let people tell you that Microsoft is "bad." At least you have your priorities straight. (hot dogs > software) > >>- OSS programmers could not possibly be as good as Microsoft programmers, > >>because Microsoft sponsors such things as nat'l programming competitions > >>and hires the winners/hires the best of class from top universities, etc. The statement (not made by the person I'm responding to), is obviously false logic to anyone who is educated. You're making a statement, "OSS programmers could not possibly be as good as Microsoft programmers", and then backing it up by stating how Microsoft acquires good programmers. At no time do you describe why that means OSS cannot have equally as good programmers. I'm not sure if this is ad Ignorantiam or False Cause. Anyone smarter than I am care to point out the fallacy of inductive logic in this sentence? > Backward compatibility!!! Where I work they wanted to throw XP on my > main workstation (this one) which currently and unfortunatly has > Windows 98. I'm scared to have XP on here, not just because its > a resource hog and insecure, and the interface bugs me, but what if > say, a boring day comes along and I want to play doom? Will doom work > on XP (I've never tried it), will other windows programs that i've > grown used to sigfaulting, sigfault in the same way on XP, or will it > be worse... I know thats sort of a humorous answer, but hell... Well, since you're speaking somewhat out of (admitted) ignorance there, I'll tell you, Windows XP is far more stable than Windows 98, and it will run Doom just fine. Have a blast. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?001101c1d1c7$67cf4ae0$a700a8c0>