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Techies especially have reason to bash

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by goseecal 1 view

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We've been doing it for 20 years. Even back when
the Mac looked like some toy with a black and
white screen (they were late to the color game)
we were cursing MS.

We saw the memory leaks and the buffer overflows.
We watched the performance degrade as the system
lost track of the limited RAM we had. We watched
as the DOS 'kernel' and the Windows GUI were
upgraded over the years and many of the same
problems continued to persist, even to this day.
We watched as the internet bloomed, everyone got
connected and then suddenly, malicious coders
found ways to use all these holes. They are
still finding them.

After 20+ years of bad MS code development we now
have bad-code exploitment. We can't fix it fast
enough or often enough. A lot of us saw this
coming or were completely NOT surprised when we
started to learn of viruses and all the other
malware.

MS has been in the game a long time. As long as
there wasn't any real competition, they never had
any incentive to fix their software, so they
didn't even bother. This is blasphemy to a REAL
software developer, programmer or techie who
lives by the mantra, "that even though we made
something work, we can make it better."

Back when MS was fighting IBM in court, we were
just wishing that Bill would dedicate more funds
for good programmers instead of good lawyers.

The rest is history. Gates won, churned out crap
and never listened to the techies who were
constantly trying to get them to fix things that
were going to become BIG future problems and
security vulnerabilities.

9 replies

by mcollins1

It has to be said that things have definately improved over the years.
When you think about the number (and diversity) of different platforms that Windows adorns, it's not surprising that there are still problems with it.
A lot of people hated it when MS moved from DOS, asking themselves why a company would move from such a simple, yet reliable OS.
The truth of the matter is, the more complex a piece of software is, the more chance there are for glitches to appear. And it is only on some systems that it does occur.
Despite people cracking jokes about MS constantly, in my experience (In both small business/home user support, pc support, and network support), for every one person getting problem, there are at least another 3 who are perfectly happy.
If Windows is left alone then it will work fine on 95% of systems.
It is in trying to change the system to your liking (eg. installing apps/new hardware) that you get problems.
I have never encountered a piece of hardware that wouldn't work seamlessly with windows with the correct drivers, it just sometimes takes time to find those drivers. When you think about the billions of hardware combinations out there, it is not surprising.
In my experience, windows XP has been the most stable OS in an everyday user environment. We have a machine running Linux Fedora3, and that crashes more than 90% of our XP machines.
I found 2000 to be clunky and slow, but I am very impressed with XP overall.
When you think about the target market, it suits fine. It's easy to use, everyone knows where the bits they need to use are located, and with the updates MS release it basically manages itself... All they've gotta do in the next version is not integrate IE, because it is horrendous in terms of spyware etc. Firefox all the way!

by apotheon

"[i]The truth of the matter is, the more complex a piece of software is, the more chance there are for glitches to appear.[/i]"

It's true that, all else being equal, additional complexity leads to additional bugs. That is, in fact, one of Windows' major problems: accumulation of unnecessary complexity (cruft). That's not all there is to it, though. For an example, compare the Wordpad memory leak. Back in '94, Windows (3.11) for Workgroups came with a default word processor called, interestingly enough, Write. There was a memory leak in the program so that if you opened and closed it multiple times you'd find more and more of your system RAM being eaten up. Eventually, Write was updated by continuing development until they renamed it Wordpad. Now, here it is, 11 years later, and the same memory leak still exists in Wordpad.

"[i]for every one person getting problem, there are at least another 3 who are perfectly happy.[/i]"

25% failure rate is unacceptable. Maybe you'd think so, too, if you were more familiar with a system that had a failure rate that was less than 1%.

"[i]It is in trying to change the system to your liking (eg. installing apps/new hardware) that you get problems.[/i]"

I could dispute the argument that only by installing applications and hardware do you have problems, but there's no point. Even if we take your words at face value, that's ridiculous. Refraining from installing applications on a computer because you're afraid they'll screw up the system is one of the worst indictments of an OS that I've ever heard. You just became more of a Windows "basher", even if by accident, than anyone else I've ever seen arguing the matter in here.

"[i]I have never encountered a piece of hardware that wouldn't work seamlessly with windows with the correct drivers, it just sometimes takes time to find those drivers.[/i]"

Let's modify that slightly:
"I have never encountered a piece of hardware that wouldn't work seamlessly with [b]Linux[/b] with the correct drivers, it just sometimes takes time to find those drivers."

More to the point, though, Linux these days actually has better out-of-the-box driver support in general than Windows. Last I checked, you still have to separately install drivers for high-end video cards, rather than seeing that they've simply been noticed by the installer, when polling hardware, and getting the correct drivers.

"[i]We have a machine running Linux Fedora3, and that crashes[/i]"

I can't even begin to imagine what you're doing to that poor thing.

by jaqui

linux abuse, he's killing a linux box!!!!!!! ;)

um...

"We have a machine running Linux Fedora3, and that crashes more than 90% of our XP machines."

what makes you so sure it's causing your windows machines to crash?
are you sure you didn't install the wrong driver for the hard drive controller or something in those windows machines?

by stress junkie

Just in case you're not joking it's clear to me that he should have written:

We have a machine running Linux Fedora3, and that crashes more OFTEN than 90% of our XP machines.

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I also would like to see what he's done to make the FC3 machine crash. Maybe he's misusing the word "crash". I have had end users that would tell me that a server had "crashed" just because they couldn't log in.

by apotheon

I should have immediately considered the idea that the word "crash" is simply being misused. Somehow, I just assumed that someone posting to a community resource for IT professionals was technically astute enough to use the term properly, but it occurs to me that I shouldn't make such assumptions.

by jaqui

with any linux box, getting any crashes means a hugely screwed config.

using a 4 year old distro as a current server is never recommended. ( unless you have proprietary software that won't install on newer kernel )

he didn't put the often in, maybe interpreting it as it causes the xp machines to crash was the right way. :)

by mcollins1

I thought that might raise a few eyebrows :-) It's rather easy to upset Linux bods it seems!
Hey, crucify me for a typo! Obviously if I had 8 years technical, multi/os experience (as I do), I would never be making such mistakes! (And make of that what you will, I'm sure the more bitchy people among you will try to crack a joke about that/try to disprove my career, which none of you know anything about.)
I'm leaving it at this because I think it detracts from the original point of the conversation, as do most of the other posts so far.
The first comment was good, it picked out certain elements of my comments, and explained the reasons behind the differences in opinion. I appreciate that, since that is the spirit of discussion.
This site is related to "discussions" on technical subjects, and I feel it is a shame that people can't keep it to just that.
I would try not to be so judgemental about people purely from one set of comments. People are entitled to their different opinions, and every opinion is valid.
We're all in the same industry guys, and we're here to learn, and help eachother out. Let's keep the comments constructive.

by stress junkie

I think that all of the comments were made in a good natured spirit.

"It's rather easy to upset Linux bods it seems!"
Yes it is. Most of us are cranky old farts. :-)

"Hey, crucify me for a typo!"
OK. :-)

"Obviously if I had 8 years technical, multi/os experience (as I do), I would never be making such mistakes! "
We all make mistakes every day. We each try to make each mistake once then we can check it off of our list. I've only got 2,793,316 mistakes left to make!!! Some of them are really going to be embarassing. :-)

Now look at all the smiley faces in my post. See? No harm intended.

Embrace the stress. :-)

by apotheon

I tend to guess that your statement that "the first comment was good" must refer to my first post in this discussion. If that's the case, I'd like to point out that, for such a great discussion-oriented tone, it sure as heck didn't prompt much discussion. In fact, assuming you're talking about it at all, your comment was the only notice anyone seems to have taken of it.

I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm grateful for your apparently glowing opinion of the post. It's just interesting to note that it's identified here as being in "the spirit of discussion", and yet it hasn't sparked any discussion at all. Part of that might be due to the fact that the person to whom it responded (you) didn't respond to it in turn.

Just random observations, here: no judgment is intended to be assumed in my statements.

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