Microsoft Should Ditch The Windows
I love to hate Microsoft. I hate them with passion. For this reason I get to read many of the posts about Microsoft so I wouldn't miss any opportunities to hate them. Recently I read the email Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new CEO, sent to their employees.
This time they got a CEO who can complete whole sentences. He writes lots of noise but at least the noises are complete sentences. I can even see some verbs in there! That alone feels so fresh. Here's a sample from the mail:
As we look forward, we must zero in on what Microsoft can uniquely contribute to the world. The opportunity ahead will require us to reimagine a lot of what we have done in the past for a mobile and cloud-first world, and do new things.
I don't know what it exactly means. But there's "uniquely contribute" and "do new things" in the middle of the paragraph. One thing by which Microsoft could contribute is by ditching Windows operating system family and move to supporting Linux and other industry standards.
Why not open source it instead?
You might wonder why I'm not proposing to open source it? That's because I wouldn't use it even if it was open sourced. Windows used to be modern 15 years ago. Now it's just a piece of manure with lipstick, poor design and bad standards. Just think about non-posix compliant directory paths, '\r\n' or global registry. The standard way to clean registry in windows is to reinstall the whole operating system.
I also think nobody else should use Windows. If Microsoft dropped the support it would force the existing customers to move into better standards or wait for ports of their useful software to a proper operating system such as Linux or BSD.
Standardize for portability
During the history of Microsoft they've introduced standards nobody of their competitor can use. Just look at DirectX, win32 API, ActiveX, windows phone series, .NET or Internet Explorer. If Satya really is onto something then he should turn this trend.
Sure I wouldn't propose Satya should ditch the Windows tomorrow. They should first port every one of their software to other platforms and start introducing and patronizing open standards that actually work for others as well. After that, elimination of one excessive platform would be rejoiced. Especially by people who program computers.
What does this has to do with Steam Machines?
Nothing.
I promised earlier to devote my blog to steam machines and programming, but this is something that I felt relevant to say now. I have some coding related posts that still need little bit of work. I also have had my game project coming on. I'll try to post them all with frequency of one or two, once in a week.