Microsoft Dependency Has Risks

Everything feeds everything else. If Apple had a stack and a business model that worked for game developers, you’d see a different stack.

Microsoft is where it is because they are viciously competitive at different layers of the stack. Apple wants a piece of every nickel, Microsoft wants a piece of every computer. They license windows for every Mac user in a company.

Well. this is clearly just a example of a hard problem where MS tools are good for.

The MOST common developer that work on MS stack is in business apps and web, data, integration stuff.

There is much better fit for MS and there is NO good counterpart in OSX or Linux.

One of the major shocks I get when starting to work on OSX is how much less developed EVERYTHING is outside the ms stack.

The only good reason you have a life working in OSX and less in Linux is because the web lower the playing field.

But if this were a contest of "native" vs "native" is clear MS stack is ahead.

(Much more before, because of course the web change the equation so you can claim things FOR THE WEB are better on linux and even osx)

I think you misunderstand- game engines are complex beasts and visual studio and/or .Net (in any of its incarnations) have the best debugging workflow I've seen.

Typescript is also Microsoft. So is ONNX.

To paint a picture: I’ve worked with Microsoft technologies almost exclusively for decades but recently I was forced to pick up some Node.js, Docker, and Linux tooling for a specific app.

I can’t express in words what a giant step backwards it is from ASP.NET and Visual Studio. It’s like bashing things with open source rocks after working in a rocket manufacturing facility festooned with Kuka robots.

It’s just… end-to-end bad. Everything from critical dependencies developed by one Russian kid that’s now getting shot at in Ukraine so “maintenance is paused” to everything being wired up with shell scripts that have fifty variants, no standards, and none of them work. I’ve spent more time just getting the builds and deployments to work (to an acceptable standard) for Node.js than I’ve spent developing entire .NET applications! [1]

I have had similar experiences every few years for decades. I touched PHP once and recoiled in horror. I tried to get a stable build going for some Python ML packages and learnt that they have a half-life measured in days or hours after which they become impossible to reproduce. Etc…

Keep on assuming “Microsoft is all bad” if you like. You’re tying both hands behind your back and poking the keyboard with your nose.

PS: The dotnet SDK is open source and works fine on Linux, and the IntelliJ Rider IDE is generally very good and cross-platform. You're not forced to use Windows.

[1] The effort required to get a NestJS app to have barely acceptable performance is significantly greater than the effort to rewrite it in .NET 9 which will immediately be faster and have a far bigger bag of performance tuning tools and technologies available if needed.

It really depends how far you go. The basics - they're pretty good. But for the more complicated things they just ignore all context and pretty much restate the names of functions/arguments without explaining how/why things work. See for example https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/tsvirtua... and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/tsvirtua... What does the terminal services renderer do? "It renders bitmaps you dummy, just look at those arguments!"

I would sure want to dine in a restaurant were vegetables were grown out of love and not as a profit making machine above all else.

No, I'd never use a 2-person startup, that's silly and irresponsible. I'd keep my services in-house and use multiple companies to store backups as I've done for decades—as we all used to do before the renting/leasing software (ripoff) model.

Nor would I ever use software that lives on a remote server that I've no direct control over.

Let's hope Trump does more blocking, it's the only way to wake up a lazy sleepy world.

BTW, isn't 'infinitely' somewhat of an exaggeration?

It really depends on the size of the business. With smaller businesses it is easy to use alternatives. However any business beyond 1000 employees will give in to shareholder pressure and adopt distrust as its core value.

Microsoft Active Directory has excellent tooling for middle-management-heavy businesses. For better or for worse it provides the most integrated solution to reduce a desktop PC to a perfect thing for repetitive, boring, soul crushing office work. No other software solution comes close.

While I like Windows as a desktop platform, the reasons that it was designed as it is are very clear. To make cheapest laptops as dystopian as possible, you need systems that can run the same boring software for decades. Not for the good for the environment but for profits.

Windows provides all APIs to deeply integrate with Active Directory and MS Office. All engineering, accounting and finance software are deeply integrated with them. They literally run entire countries. I have seen engineering software that used Visio diagrams for designing factory pipelines. It is near impossible to pull the bigger businesses and governments out of this trap without completely upending entire sectors worth trillions. I think only very determined regimes like China can pull it off.

Right, it’s stuff like Active Directory and how everything’s tied together. Once you’re using that for auth, it’s really tough to back out without a lot of effort.

We’ve looked into FreeIPA and similar options, but honestly, nothing really holds a candle to Active Directory yet.

I wasn't aware of any major Trump-era policies that significantly reduced Microsoft’s dominance. Curious what you're referencing?

DOGE’s influence is wherever the administration wants it to be.