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Microsoft Dependency Has Risks

(blog.miloslavhomer.cz)
151 points ArcHound | 2 comments | 25 Jun 25 20:08 UTC | HN request time: 2.176s | source
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bob1029 ◴[25 Jun 25 21:41 UTC] No.44382065[source]▶
The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones.

Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it.

There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situations. There's a reason every AAA game engine depends on it in some way.

Azure and Windows are where things start to get bad with Microsoft.

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duped ◴[26 Jun 25 00:15 UTC] No.44383037[source]▶
Microsoft, for all their warts, has the absolute best documentation for every public API in Windows. I'd go so far as to say it's better on average than manpages in Linux and BSD and light years better than the actively hostile bullshit from Apple.

Submitting a bug report though, you gotta know people or know where to ask.

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1. viraptor ◴[26 Jun 25 00:34 UTC] No.44383132[source]▶
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!"
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2. pimeys ◴[26 Jun 25 07:27 UTC] No.44385056[source]▶
Some of the advanced stuff has great docs. E.g. SQL Server and its wire protocol. When you need to write client to a language that doesn't have one, the TDS doc from Microsoft is amazing. Compare that to e.g. Oracle and you know what I mean.

In general SQL Server is such a great product. If you cannot choose PostgreSQL for some reason, make sure your buying manager plays golf with the Microsoft sales people, not with Oracle.