Microsoft is a weird place to work. Before I joined Microsoft, I was a developer. I had a whole bunch of time to figure out what was going on out there. It was easy to be one of the first kids on the block to play with a new technology – whether that was NCSA Mosaic, early versions of Linux, the first JDK… at Microsoft, it sometimes seems like we live “inside the hedges” as we used to say in college – kind of disconnected from alot of stuff that’s going on.
Found this weblog through meta douglasp. This posting seemed to point out a couple of things . . . . in a way it amplified some other postings that demonstrated some hesitance, akin to fear, about working with non-MSFT tools. I mean, MovableType? Despite my self-inflicted problems with it, it’s not that hard. And you leverage a community, something he also opines about Radio Userland not having much of.
But the idea that the World’s Largest Software company doesn’t spend a lot of time looking at what’s going on in the world, coming from the inside, seemed odd. I suppose it could be interpreted that when you’re inventing the future, you don’t worry about the present. Not that I think that’s a sensible strategy . . . .
Given the recent security issues, largely attributed to sloppiness and bad judgment, perhaps taking a look at the wider world would be healthy.