Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10
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A random thing I stumbled upon on reddit:
He dropped just enough juicy details to make the rant believable.
If half the things revealed are true.... holy shit.
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The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.
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@cartman82 said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
If half the things revealed are true...
I can't comment on most of them, but the one with the battling managers probably is true; I've heard extremely similar things from my contacts that work there.
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Those that have seen it...
Are invariably driven to lunacy.
Windows 10 is pretty much Vista 2.0. Supposedly some things are broken, or worse, so people are avoiding Windows 10, creating yet another legacy support Hell.
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@Sumireko said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Windows 10 is pretty much Vista 2.0. Supposedly nothing works, so people are downgrading or otherwise sticking with 7, creating yet another legacy support Hell.
I'm curious: What exactly is this "nothing" that's not working?
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@Sumireko said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Windows 10 is pretty much Vista 2.0. Supposedly nothing works, so people are downgrading or otherwise sticking with 7, creating yet another legacy support Hell.
Right and if you install it a troll comes to your house a midnight and rips your nuts off.
Seriously?
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@cartman82 , so searching for a well known uuid such as ba8bfde0-5ab3-11e4-8ed6-0800200c9a66 (first one I found) will get false positives in the registry?
for the others reading this and tempted to google it - happy hunting; it leads back to here when we were on discourse apparently
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@Rhywden said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Sumireko said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Windows 10 is pretty much Vista 2.0. Supposedly nothing works, so people are downgrading or otherwise sticking with 7, creating yet another legacy support Hell.
I'm curious: What exactly is this "nothing" that's not working?
A whole lot of things aren't going to work if it bricks your computer. And the OP image even stated that it breaks many drivers. "Nothing" is figurative. But I'll go ahead and edit that.
Right and if you install it a troll comes to your house a midnight and rips your nuts off.
Seriously?You forgot this:
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Right and if you install it a troll comes to your house a midnight and rips your nuts off.
Seriously?Yeah, I installed Windows 10 last year and my spending on peanuts has gone through the roof.
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@Sumireko said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
A whole lot of things aren't going to work if it bricks your computer. And the OP image even stated that it breaks many drivers. "Nothing" is figurative. But I'll go ahead and edit that.
You and I have very different definitions of the word "bricking" (which your Google search even acknowledges).
Secondly, I don't care about the OP's image. "Breaks many drivers". Yeah, I'll book that under "FUD".
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@Rhywden said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
"Breaks many drivers"
It's probably referring to the shittier drivers (or maybe driver installers?) that only barely worked in the first place. My experience with drivers and Win10 has been relatively pleasant; only my graphics card really needed anything fancy. (There are real problems with the Metro UI though; it needed a great deal more usability testing than it got, and with a wider range of users. And the push to upgrade older systems has really hurt their perceptions with users.)
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@dkf said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
There are real problems with the Metro UI though; it needed
a great deal more usability testing than it got, and with a wider range of usersto get laughed to scorn at the first design review, which unfortunately has yet to be scheduled
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at microsoft, you aren't ALLOWED to fix bugs unless they are high priority
I like to contrast this with my present situation, where I can fix and refactor things as I see fit and nobody questions me. Hell, the project I've been working on the past few months has been a management-assigned refactor.
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I got in trouble while at microsoft because I spent two weeks refactoring the code
Yeah, no fucking shit.
I had a whole rant lined up in my head but I'm too tired for it now. Suffice it to say that these are the types of rants I've heard from new hires in just about every large company-- most often from college hires who are just now realizing that they're not in an ivory tower anymore and the objective of business is to keep doing business.
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@heterodox Yeah. This strikes me as the rantings of an inexperienced grad type who is just finding out that commercial software development isn't anything at all like hobby projects. At a minimum, they just don't understand WHY things are like that.
At one point, it clearly references translation resources and building translation resources as if those were a bad thing.
A few rough edges in custom toolchaining is inevitable - it literally isn't worth the effort to polish them off. 1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
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@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
A few rough edges in custom toolchaining is inevitable - it literally isn't worth the effort to polish them off. 1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
Right, and I think it also exposes a misconception that comes from academia and from the OSS community-- that developers and maintainers are end users. They're not.
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Right and if you install it a troll comes to your house a midnight and rips your nuts off.
I'm sorry this happened to you, but I'm afraid it (probably) had nothing to do with your Windows 10 installation.
Filed under: Unless you pirated it.
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@heterodox Usually, anyway. When they are the users, though, they are inevitably the biggest pains in the ass imaginable.
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@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@heterodox Yeah. This strikes me as the rantings of an inexperienced grad type who is just finding out that commercial software development isn't anything at all like hobby projects. At a minimum, they just don't understand WHY things are like that.
At one point, it clearly references translation resources and building translation resources as if those were a bad thing.
A few rough edges in custom toolchaining is inevitable - it literally isn't worth the effort to polish them off. 1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
I'm more disturbed by the description of the following process:
- Track down a 2000+ line class similar to the one you want
- Copy that class as a new class
- Do a few replacements on the code to wire it up correctly
Test
Filed under: Not DRY; it's wet.
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@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
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@error said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
I'm more disturbed by the description of the following process:
- Track down a 2000+ line class similar to the one you want
- Copy that class as a new class
- Do a few replacements on the code to wire it up correctly
Test
Filed under: Not DRY; it's wet.
The end result of this strategy is ~1000 very similar classes with subtle differences between them (and the exact same bugs in about half of them), and nothing in the application can ever change for fear of breaking one or all of them.
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@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
What if the IPU fixed your code while you are not looking? What if, man! What if!
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@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
When they are the users, though, they are inevitably the biggest pains in the ass imaginable.
Just ask Jeff!
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@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
I find myself doing this with the little shims and things I use only for myself. At first, life is awesome, because a major pain point was reduced. I hardly even notice the new rough edges. After a while, it occurs to me that there's still stupid repetition or painful copy/paste or whatever. And then I fix that, and life is awesome again...
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@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
If it was a P2 bug, your manager explains to you about priorities. And clearly it's not a data loss bug or causing any kind of catastrophic behavior, so obviously it's P2.
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#windows7untiltheendoftime
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@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
Then you've completely changed the equation, so it may have a new answer.
What is purple elephants live on the moon and drop ice cream from the sky!? Would it put Ben & Jerry's out of business? WHAT IF!
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@Rhywden said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
What if the IPU fixed your code while you are not looking? What if, man! What if!
Then it gets the reprimand instead of me. All is fine at that point.
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@anotherusername You see this same fucking bullshit every goddamned time Microsoft releases a new version of the OS.
"XP is awful, I'm going to use 2000 forever. Vista is awful, I'm going to use XP forever. Windows 7... etc etc."
Fucking sick of these morons.
No what you're going to do is eventually actually use the new OS, and say to yourself, "hey, this isn't bad" and start using it, like you've always done in the past. So why not just skip the fucking whining and move on right away?
Life cereal: Mikey likes it! – 00:30
— panbiscuit
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@blakeyrat Vista was awful. And 10 is a festering pile of feces.
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@anotherusername Ok fine. It's the worst thing ever. It's Hitler and Satan combined. Whatever.
Just don't tell me about it. I'm sick of hearing the whining.
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@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Weng said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
1000 high-end developer hours to polish up a custom toolchain is way more expensive both directly and indirectly than telling every entry-level kid about the wrinkles and rough edges for the rest of time.
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
If it was a P2 bug, your manager explains to you about priorities. And clearly it's not a data loss bug or causing any kind of catastrophic behavior, so obviously it's P2.
Yeah, I got that. I've worked in shops where following that strategy of inaction would get you a reprimand, as you were expected to be proactive in fixing bugs. "Haven't you ever heard that it's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission?"
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ITT: @blakeyrat yells at people for not talking to him.
Just don't tell me about it.
I didn't.
I'm sick of hearing the whining.
Go someplace where you don't.
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
Then you've completely changed the equation, so it may have a new answer.
What is purple elephants live on the moon and drop ice cream from the sky!? Would it put Ben & Jerry's out of business? WHAT IF!
Not according to management. I can't do my job until it's marked a P1.
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@Groaner I wish I worked for some place like that. This place, I'd get in massive trouble because it could take up to a month to test some changes...
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@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
Vista was awful
Arguable. There were security fixes that had to be made, and that broke things. 7 was not that different to Vista, but had a much better reception. Why? because hardware manufacturers were doing drivers for the new security model, so there was much broader hardware support by then.
@anotherusername said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
And 10 is a festering pile of feces
I have to disagree there. I really like 10
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@boomzilla said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
I find myself doing this with the little shims and things I use only for myself. At first, life is awesome, because a major pain point was reduced. I hardly even notice the new rough edges. After a while, it occurs to me that there's still stupid repetition or painful copy/paste or whatever. And then I fix that, and life is awesome again...
Filed under: Rosie'd
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
I'm sick of hearing the whining.
Learn to read without moving your lips?
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@Magus said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Groaner I wish I worked for some place like that. This place, I'd get in massive trouble because it could take up to a month to test some changes...
Of course, there is some discretion involved. If the fix is a ~2 hour job and can be easily tested and bundled with some other relevant changes, nobody bats an eye. If the fix involves changing half the application, you're going to get asked some questions...
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
What is purple elephants live on the moon and drop ice cream from the sky!? Would it put Ben & Jerry's out of business? WHAT IF!
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/harry-caray-space-the-infinite-frontier/n11002
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
"XP is awful, I'm going to use 2000 forever. Vista is awful, I'm going to use XP forever. Windows 7... etc etc."
At my school, my process was more like
98 is too crashy and it's about time this school had some new PCs. Replace all the workstations still running 98 with new ones running XP.
(three phases of workstation replacement go by)
Vista: what is that steaming pile? This halfbaked shit should never have made it out the door. It's Windows ME 2006. I'ma stick with XP schoolwide until they push out something tolerable.
Windows 7: still loads of weird Vista warts but meh... waddayagonnado. Let's stick that on the lab computers, and if it works OK there I'll push it out in the classrooms as well. Holy fuck, what is this overcomplicated shitpile they call a Deployment Toolkit? Ain't nobody got time for that. (rolls own cloning solution)
XP end of life coming up next year. New computers are now being supplied with 7 licenses and the first service pack is out. I've got workarounds for the worst of the Vista split token craziness. Upgrade whole school.
Windows 8: AGH MY EYES
Not touching that shit, even if there was any way I thought any of my users might cope.Windows 10: Not as good as I'd hoped. Let's leave that one to mature a bit longer before fucking with what is now a reasonably stable Windows 7 fleet.
Oh look, the principal wants a new Surface Pro. Comes with 10. Rejig a few scripts here and there... turn off all the phone-home-to-mother-ship bullshit... join it to the curric domain... yeah, that mostly works. Still no compelling reason to jump from 7 for the wider fleet. Re-evaluate in 2018.
...and that's where we are.
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@flabdablet You're clearly just a M$ hater.
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@flabdablet said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
...and that's where we are.
That's where we are: 1000 words of whining to random people on a forum.
I don't think you people understand the problem here. I don't care what you think about Windows 10 .
I'm just sick of hearing the whining. It's like a forum full of 2-year-olds. Just grow up and cope with the world around you.
If you're not going to switch to Windows 10: fine! Don't! But stop whining about it.
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@blakeyrat said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
That's where we are: 1000 words of whining to random people on a forum.
I don't think you people understand the problem here. I don't care what you think about Windows 10 .
I'm just sick of hearing the whining. It's like a forum full of 2-year-olds. Just grow up and cope with the world around you.
If you're not going to switch to Windows 10: fine! Don't! But stop whining about it.We're sick of you whining about our whining. It's kind of what we do here. You don't have to read it if it's not entertaining to you.
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@error said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@boomzilla said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
@Groaner said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
What if it isn't 1000 hours to fix an issue in the toolchain? What if it's 2 hours? And what if the fix removes an issue that has to be addressed every time a new Widget is built?
I find myself doing this with the little shims and things I use only for myself. At first, life is awesome, because a major pain point was reduced. I hardly even notice the new rough edges. After a while, it occurs to me that there's still stupid repetition or painful copy/paste or whatever. And then I fix that, and life is awesome again...
Filed under: Rosie'd
Microsoft in a nutshell (after Longhorn.)
EDIT: NodeBB ate my "n"
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@error said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
For sure funny, but this shouldn't happen when you try to create an UI designer for buttons and dropdown boxes.
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@cartman82 said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
A random thing I stumbled upon on reddit:
He dropped just enough juicy details to make the rant believable.
If half the things revealed are true.... holy shit.
Sounds like the ranting of a greenie...
started job working in UI
was told a simple method for adding controls to the UI without getting explained the why it's done this way because everyone else is too damn busy to hold the persons hand through it
person interprets lack of hand holding as 'no one knows what they're doing'
can't figure out why his copy pasted code doesn't work, but never bothers to read said copy-pasted code
shows to more experience colleague, said colleague points out issue with code. It's that the indexing is buggered because a new entry was inserted. Colleague knows how to solve problem, evidence that they DO know how things work.
must then run code through custom toolchain to compile (pretty normal... you ARE building a fucking OS afterall)
None of this sounds all that weird to me.
Frustrating for the new guy? Oh hell yeah! I've gotten frustrated in the first few months at a place trying to figure out wtf is this or that while everyone else is too busy to hold my hand so I just have to dive in and read lines of code hoping that I trip over some documentation on the way.
Does this suck? Oh fuck yeah it sucks.
But it's not completely bizarre.
This is the nature of a large product like a fucking operating system.
Digging around any other operating system isn't any god damn easier!
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@Grunnen said in Anonymous ex-Microsoft coder on what it's like to work on Windows 10:
For sure funny, but this shouldn't happen when you try to create an UI designer for buttons and dropdown boxes.
The real trap is that developers like interesting problems. Automation is always a more interesting problem than what you're automating (or the task wouldn't be suited to automation).
This is more a danger of OSS and CADT, where budgets and timelines aren't factors.
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@error Still, it happened anyway and created Vista.
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@Weng The bigger a product is, the most important the foundations are. Windows is a very big product. So I can't imagine how any problems in the toolchain wouldn't be worth solving.
Specially when you consider that the GUI part of the control panel is almost trivial. There's no reason why adding a menu should take more than a couple lines.
