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    168 points okeumeni | 13 comments | 16 Oct 10 16:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.197s | source | bottom
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    thought_alarm ◴[16 Oct 10 19:26 UTC] No.1798654[source]▶
    But the iPhone and iPad aren't priced at a premium.

    Anyway, it's a mistake pit Google against Apple. The real battle will be between Google and Microsoft for the exact same hardware manufacturers and sales channels. (Meanwhile, you can buy an iPad from an Apple Store or from Walmart without any carrier involvement).

    Google hasn't managed the fragmentation problem very well, they haven't done enough to control the quality the Android OS between carriers and manufacturers, and they've utterly mismanaged the Android Market. I'm no fan of Microsoft or WinMo 7, but I expect Microsoft to do a much better job at addressing all of those issues.

    Microsoft can also leverage their Zune desktop software.

    And Microsoft's development tools are generally very popular with developers. I've done some work with WPF and I found it very impressive and I would expect their Phone SDK to be of similar quality. On the other hand, even though I generally like Java I'm finding the move from iPhone development to Android development to be a depressing step backwards both in terms of the dev tools and especially the SDK.

    Then again, it is Microsoft we're talking about. It may take them another 3 or 6 years to get it right.

    replies(8): >>1798742 #>>1798747 #>>1798749 #>>1798777 #>>1798838 #>>1799040 #>>1799286 #>>1799969 #
    1. naner ◴[16 Oct 10 20:03 UTC] No.1798742[source]▶
    And Microsoft's development tools are generally very popular with developers.

    Yes, very popular with .NET developers. That's the problem with Microsoft, everything is coupled together and isolated from anything non-Microsoft. You're usually either a .NET developer or an everything-else developer. Everyone else has free development tools/environments. Everyone else has vibrant online communities. Everyone else shares and collaborates with open source projects (strategically at least).

    replies(2): >>1798834 #>>1798908 #
    2. akho ◴[16 Oct 10 20:48 UTC] No.1798834[source]▶
    StackOverflow is somewhat .NET-biased, and it’s probably the most vibrant online community available. Mono provides a free development tool/environment built around skills easily transferred to .NET. Microsoft even occasionally collaborates with Mono.

    Also, “everything is coupled together” occasionally becomes a feature.

    However, what do I know — I haven’t ever used a Microsoft OS on a computer I control. .NET seems nice, though.

    replies(1): >>1799049 #
    3. _delirium ◴[16 Oct 10 21:26 UTC] No.1798908[source]▶
    Apple is fairly similar on that front. If you want to develop iPhone apps, you have to buy into the whole stack: XCode on OS X on a Mac.

    (Well, technically it's possible to target the iPhone via other methods, but they're not easy or supported, or in some cases even legal.)

    replies(1): >>1799391 #
    4. redthrowaway ◴[16 Oct 10 22:39 UTC] No.1799049[source]▶
    As a CS student, I'm a bit surprised that our curriculum contains no .NET whatsoever. We learn Java, C and C++ (both with gcc), Python, Perl, Bash scripting and ARM assembly, plus others depending on electives. While some of the lab computers run XP, all of our work has to be platform-independent. We work in *nix, and most of the professors use MBPs. It seems to me that the program really might be selling some of our students short by not covering something as huge as .NET, but I'm not complaining.
    replies(2): >>1799146 #>>1799357 #
    5. MrScruff ◴[16 Oct 10 23:33 UTC] No.1799146{3}[source]▶
    I'm sure you've been told this before but it really matters very little what language you are taught in your degree. During the course of your career you'll learn many languages and APIs. It's the principles of sound software engineering that will stand you in good stead.
    replies(1): >>1800991 #
    6. jallmann ◴[17 Oct 10 01:36 UTC] No.1799357{3}[source]▶
    No. The .NET you have to "learn" is just a set of class libraries and interfaces, the gist of which you will get in a weekend hacking together your first C# project.

    Unix is the platform to teach in CS , if you should even teach towards a platform at all. Not only because *nix common in industry, but its set of small and reusable tools is well suited to the software engineering philosophy.

    My CS department had a course in .NET. It also had a course in XML. Why anyone would take those is baffling.

    Also, if all you're extracting from your CS classes are new languages to pad your resume with, then you are missing the forest for the trees.

    7. naner ◴[17 Oct 10 01:58 UTC] No.1799391[source]▶
    Well... Microsoft is a little more weird. The company still freaks out over open source. And when they "officially" started endorsing some open source, it was in the context of their own open source licenses and their own open source hosting website.

    Then they try and develop web technology, Silverlight, that is better than Flash by technical standards but is so entrenched in Microsoft-land that hardly anyone wants to do anything with it. You can't author anything for it when using Apple and Linux doesn't even get a runtime (Mono doesn't count, can never be feature-complete).

    Apple doesn't seem quite the same. A lot of Apple developers are active in other developer communities. Microsoft developers seem to stick to Microsoft technologies. Perhaps this is because Microsoft has their own implementation of almost everything.

    replies(2): >>1799965 #>>1800087 #
    8. bad_user ◴[17 Oct 10 08:59 UTC] No.1799965{3}[source]▶
    > "Silverlight, that is better than Flash by technical standards but is so entrenched in Microsoft-land that hardly anyone wants to do anything with it"

    This is more to do with Flash being a defacto standard than anything else. I've been a Linux user since 10 years ago, and I haven't forgotten the piss-poor support of Adobe for Flash on Linux.

    Heck, they finally decided to start porting Flash to Linux because of competition with Silverlight.

    > "Mono doesn't count, can never be feature-complete"

    Of course Mono counts, and compared to open-source Flash clones, it is in a far better shape.

    replies(1): >>1800151 #
    9. nailer ◴[17 Oct 10 10:54 UTC] No.1800087{3}[source]▶
    Sorry,, modded you down accidentally. Totally agree about moonlight, silver light content won't even point your browser to moonlight plugin on linux.
    10. metageek ◴[17 Oct 10 12:04 UTC] No.1800151{4}[source]▶
    I've been a Linux user since 10 years ago, and I haven't forgotten the piss-poor support of Adobe for Flash on Linux.

    Hard to forget it when it won't go away. No 64-bit plugin, no accelerated video. (Their explanation that there are too many video acceleration APIs was pretty weak: if they adopted one, it would become the standard.)

    replies(1): >>1801000 #
    11. spacemanaki ◴[17 Oct 10 18:23 UTC] No.1800991{4}[source]▶
    That being said... I resent my school using (almost) only Java for its curriculum. When I started learning JavaScript, Scheme, and Common Lisp this past year and discovered languages with first class functions and closures, my feelings of resentment only grew.
    12. _delirium ◴[17 Oct 10 18:25 UTC] No.1801000{5}[source]▶
    There's finally a 64-bit plugin (for all 3 major OSs), though it's still an "Adobe Labs" offering rather than part of the main product: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/
    replies(1): >>1803709 #
    13. metageek ◴[18 Oct 10 14:56 UTC] No.1803709{6}[source]▶
    Thanks, I'll take a look. I'd love to be able to do without npwrapper.