0xDECAFBAD - Tag: microsoft

Why proprietary?

2005-11-02T20:29:25+00:00

Hell, while I'm at it, I've got an expanded question to follow up my last one:

Why would anyone developing a web application today sink any money whatsoever into a platform with any degree of proprietary technology?

The latest Scoble dispatch is asking about Microsoft, but what about all the other closed-world web development environments out there? Really, it's been awhile since I've heard much about anything other than Microsoft versus Open Source in the web development world. And, when I have heard about the other guys, it's usually in a scenario where someone got roped into the technology sometime in the dot-com boom days and have since built everything around it.

It seems this far out from the initial adoption that decisions are made less and less from technical merit, and more from monetary and political merit driven by the sales force. The momentum of the platform maintains lock-in, despite any resulting impedance mismatches or inefficiencies which may crop up as the platform matures or (less charitably) ages.

Finally, consider one of the main routes for finding support for Open Source platforms: Google. Have you run into a cryptic error message? Google it. Need to find docs for an API? Google it. So many of these wholly proprietary platforms have locked up a lot of their docs and forums behind for-pay password walls that Google never sees.

Now, for now at least, it seems Microsoft has avoided these things. But, my suspicion is that they're only able to do this as a commercial venture because of the sheer number of people and the wads of cash they have. Eventually, I expect even they will be overrun. I couldn't imagine a new closed-world web development platform taking off today.

Archived Comments

Roger Benningfield
2005-11-02T20:26:22

"Why would anyone developing a web application today sink any money whatsoever into a platform with any degree of proprietary technology?"

Because I like 'em?

I use Win2k3/IIS because it is stable, easy to administer, and doesn't cost one dime more than a similar Linux/Apache server. I use Coldfusion because it's stable, easy to administer, gives me the option of using Java and COM stuff when necessary, and has a great group of folks at Macromedia supporting it.

Meanwhile, I use MySQL because it's stable, cheap, and has a smaller footprint than SQL Server. Googling for support is actually quite annoying, but I take a "you get what you pay for" approach to these things.
l.m.orchard
2005-11-02T20:37:17

Roger: Thanks for responding! For what it's worth, I actually do want to see comments from people who've had good experiences with proprietary platforms, so as to balance out my leanings.

Since you mentioned Macromedia, I realize that I wasn't thinking of them in my post. They're basically semi-open proprietary (not unlike Microsoft), but I do like their stuff. Well, Flash at least. But ColdFusion...? Admittedly, I haven't used it much since the arrival of CFMX, but I tend to think PHP's a better deal. No offense, though, since I'm willing to blame my own ignorance.

It's interesting that you say a Win2k3/IIS server is cost comparable to a Linux/Apache server, though. Do you own your own server? Lease a dedicated box?
Gordon Weakliem
2005-11-02T21:59:04

Roger's reason is basically the reason I was going to give. People are most productive in an environment they know best. This is especially true when it comes to operational support. Any environment is going to get hairy at high loads and under "normal operating conditions", so when the poop hits the fan, you're better off in an environment that you're familiar with. MySql may be a better DB, but if my DBA knows SQL Server inside and out and really knows how to use the tool, then you'll get better results with SQL Server over MySql. And anyway, according to Joel Spolsky, Google beats MSDN for support in most cases. Actually, my experience bears out Joel's comment. All support devolves into Googling, in most cases. I use the MSDN support only for the real killers - those support incidents cost money, you know. Great work on the book, BTW.
Roger Benningfield
2005-11-09T00:16:17

Sorry for not getting back before now.

"Admittedly, I haven’t used it much since the arrival of CFMX, but I tend to think PHP’s a better deal. No offense, though, since I’m willing to blame my own ignorance."

I'm happy to sing CF's praises, but I'm not one of those people who get offended when someone prefers something else. Don't worry 'bout it.

I just love CFMX. I love how the day-to-day stuff is really easy, and the esoteric stuff can be addressed by leveraging Java. I love that the fundamental language structure makes sense to someone who taught himself to write code on a C-64 and an Atari ST. I love that it (mostly) handles Unicode for me. I love that it allows me to play with a little OOP while primarily sticking to procedural stuff.

"Lease a dedicated box?"

Yup. I could have gone Red Hat or Win2k3 during setup, and to me, it was a no-brainer. If nothing else, my wife has spent the last fifteen years as a network engineer, working mainly with Windows networks... free, in-house, 24/7 tech support cannot be ignored. :D
l.m.orchard
2005-11-09T00:54:35

Roger: Oh yeah! I keep forgetting about the Java side of CFMX, and just keep thinking it's still only a funky-tag language. I should check it out sometime

And for my part, I learned to program on a C-64 and an Amiga :) (Oh yeah, and there was an Atari 800 in there, early on.)

Why Microsoft?

2005-11-02T20:11:53+00:00

Given the recent discussion, I'll ask the inverse and naïve-sounding question:

Why would anyone today sink money into a Microsoft solution for developing a web-based service or application?

I mean, if you're already up to your eyeballs in Microsoft contracts, I could see momentum being on their side. But, assume you're just starting today fresh from a good idea. What would Microsoft give you today?

The only thing I can really think of is support. As in, someone to call and bug for answers or blame for problems. Because—and maybe this is just a demonstration of my own ignorance—I can't really think of an area where Microsoft's offerings really blow any Open Source platforms out of the water, especially not once you've considered cost and the loss of flexibility.

Archived Comments

Brock Tice
2005-11-03T02:12:59

Hiya, I wanted to write a post about this myself with a trackback, but despite this being WordPress I can't seem to find a trackback URL.

Anyway, I agree. And yet, people will still tie their own strait jackets on with Microsoft or whoever else. It used to be because it was easier or better-made, but I don't think that's necessarily the case any more. Do you have any speculation?
Bill Seitz
2005-11-03T15:35:53

I certainly can't see it for a public-facing system, but if you're building internal-enterprise apps, maybe it gives you integration into other stuff (e.g. Exchange for authentication, easy Office-doc publishing, etc.).

I suspect that really only applies to a tiny slice of microsoft customers, though they're big shops (e.g. finance houses).

For most MS customers I think it's mostly a conservative "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" mentality.
Jessica
2005-11-04T00:30:08

Yea why anyone would choose Microsoft platform over opensource would not make much sense today.
Al
2005-11-04T19:29:19

As Jamie Zawinski said a few years ago (loosely) "Open source is only free if you don't value your time."
Aristotle Pagaltzis
2005-11-06T08:24:37

Oh, please. For a developer? It's different with making things on an end-user system work, but for a developer, big-vendor systems are about the biggest timesink I can imagine.

Les:

Support isn't a good reason. Report a bug with an MS product and see how long it takes them to react; whether you get any means of tracking what's being done about it; if at all; and when you'll get a fix. You think they're going to compare favourably to open source projects?

As for having someone to blame---not much consolation. Most software comes with no warranty whatsoever. The software vendor's liability extends about as far as guaranteeing that you can read the bits on the media you received with your purchase, and that's it. They certainly make not the least promise that the software works as advertised. Blame them all you want, they still won't owe you anything.
Mark
2005-11-29T05:44:14

As I understand it from friends of mine who are smarter than me and choose the all-encompassing Microsoft universe, the #1 answer is the quality of the developer tools. I've never been one for IDEs, but lots of developers swear by them, so they must be doing something right.

Also, developer documentation, specifically MSDN. The aforementioned friends swear by MSDN-on-DVD and its tight integration into the aforementioned developer tools.

This is all hearsay; YMMV.

Linux Just Works

2005-11-02T06:03:00+00:00

But I’m a developer. I want more. I want ruby. And subversion. And cvs. And build tools. Each is only an apt-get away. There even is a convenient GUI for this. Ray’s vision of the future, I have today. And whereas Windows Update kept the OS and selected Microsoft tools up to date, the Debian packaging manager keeps everything up to date and in synch. Without ever needing to reboot.

Source: Sam Ruby: It Just Works

This is why I always try to have a Debian netinst CD within arm's reach. Given a working high-speed internet connection, I can go from a random PC, tabula rasa, to a fully functioning and useful server or workstation in under 20 mostly unattended minutes. And as a server, that little thing can jump right into handling files, email, authentication, and a whole pile of other office-related necessities.

Given about 10 more minutes, I can have a Subversion repository, Trac install, and a full suite of collaboration tools available. And then...? It all just keeps working, mostly. And for the most part, an apt-get upgrade from time to time keeps things up to date.

I've never, ever had this experience with Microsoft technology. On the other hand, I suspect that I should give Ubuntu a look or two, from what I've been hearing.

Archived Comments

Carthik
2005-11-02T09:01:52

Ubuntu fits entirely on one CD. Of course, you can install other software from the "universe" and "multiverse" components of the repository with a live internet connection, but it is rather uncommon that a good OS fits on one install CD, as opposed to 5 or 12.

You should try it - I am hooked!
Srijith
2005-11-02T11:31:54

Having used Ubuntu I would say that it is a good distro for an everyday use average user ( a big achievement) but it does fall short when it comes to developer needs.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that a typical install of Ubuntu 5.04 did not install perl-doc! Along that same line, a lot of apps are in the Universe which means they are not updated in a timely manner.
Sean Conner
2005-11-02T21:46:49

In my experience, it only works if you constantly (like say, every 90 minutes or so) do an apt-get every-damn-thing-in-the-world. We have a few older servers here, maybe a year old or so and the automatic package management is just broken. Perhaps it's a Fedora Core or Gentoo thing, but even on a moderately old system, the package management stuff just breaks (mainly because it's not OMFG-I-need-to-upgrade-every-minute up to date).

I don't upgrade just to upgrade. Things break. Things change. For instance, there's a showstopping bug in Apache 2.0 that would keep one of my sites from working properly (although it's such an obscure bug that I suspect it only affects my site) and an automatic upgrade in that instance would be devastating. So I upgrade only when absolutely required. Which means “not often.” And in the meantime, the maintainers of the package managers (apt-get, emerge and yum to name a few) break older installations.
l.m.orchard
2005-11-02T21:54:24

Sean: This might be a half-benefit from Debian in particular, since they're so slow to release new versions of the distro. Debian has usually seemed pretty stable and solid to me, unless I switch over to a different branch or I build & install something by hand.
John Manoogian III (jm3)
2005-11-03T03:14:38

btw, can u please install netatalk on mudpit? al_x needs a weird mac-friendly font-server...
James
2005-11-03T13:23:41

Sean: The package managers in Fedora and Gentoo are pale imitations of the true power of the Dark Sid^W^W^WDebian (and since it's built on Debian, Ubuntu). The real heart of Debian is not just dpkg and apt, it's the Debian policy that ensures all packages work the same way, and the huge development community that tests all sorts of upgrades continually.
Sean Conner
2005-11-03T22:44:30

I tend to have better luck with tarballs anyway (my only complaint there is chasing down the dependencies)—I've even had problems with the CPAN auto-install Perl modules module (it has just never worked for me).

If it's any indication, I'm still running RedHat 5.2 at home (only with the latest SMB, Perl, Apache 1.3 and 2.0, &c.). My system at home works, and if it ain't broke, I don't fix it.
Kenneth
2006-11-29T22:35:58

hell yeah! debian rocks, I'm on Sarge for a production server, and it is so nice to be able to add new functionality with a simple aptitude install some-application-here...