HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Here's another good one, featuring Bill Gates: https://youtu.be/HhdDZk45HDI

⬐ IBM

Wow I forgot how painful this was to watch.

⬐ wbl

Now I know why Microsoft employees all have private offices.

⬐ orionblastar

Netscape was a threat because Microsoft could not control the web browser, so they countered by making Internet Explorer and then bundling it with Windows.

Java Microsoft made their own version of it, but made J++ and J# that compiled Java code to native code. Sun and others made APIs to it, and eventually Sun sued Microsoft and Microsoft abandoned J++ and J# and made C# in 2001/2002 to replace it with Java like syntax.

Java as a language was not a threat, Java as a platform in mobile devices and operating systems was a threat. Java was being developed into an operating system at the time for that Network Computer that used Netscape as a web browser.

You can see the worry on Gate's face and how he is thinking each question carefully before answering. It was all about what Gates can recall not what might be possible.

⬐ modzilla

Interesting. It seems like both threats were real – just not clearly realized in the market until recent years. Android is now a huge operating system written largely in java, and IE as a web browser has more or less been whittled away by chrome, firefox, and others.

⬐ georgemcbay

This is surprisingly interesting to watch.

The way he responds is almost like he is playing a high-level chess match, which is unfortunately absolutely necessary because the person deposing him is fishing for a simple "yes" answer to a question without all the context he already provided (so that this can be introduced in a dramatic way such that even if those deciding the case get the full context later they will have already made up their mind that "Java == Competitive Threat" based on the introduction).

Having been on a 6 week long jury trial that included a lot of these sorts of deposition "revelations" where people (who you'd think would be smarter, though it is difficult to adjust for how much stress this sort of questioning puts them under) said something that sounded terrible in local context (but innocuous in the wider context that the defense later showed), the local context that is introduced first is really all that sticks with a lot of people, if the majority of the people on my jury were any indication.

In this case, all of his answers are smart, which isn't that surprising since like him or not Bill Gates is clearly a really smart fellow (and one who was surely coached for this up-front by a crack legal team).

⬐ johnabygone

...apart from jury trials don't have depositions, so you're lying

⬐ georgemcbay

The trial I was on had lots of depositions presented to us.

The case was Fleischmann v. DJO, San Diego County Courthouse, late July to August 2013, presided over by Judge Joel M Pressman.

The plaintiff lived in Colorado and the case involved a lot of care-givers from that area as well as "expert" witnesses from as far as Alaska, but the company he was suing was based in San Diego. Given the high number of witnesses unable to attend a trial so far from where they are based, we had to deal with a lot of deposition-based testimony, some of them shown to us in video form and some read aloud in reenactment by lawyers. And even in cases where the depositions aren't directly shown to the jurors they are still highly used by lawyers in an attempt to get present-at-the-trial witnesses to contradict their deposition statements.

You might want to tone down the accusations of lying when you don't really know what you're talking about (or I guess you can just use a nicely green throwaway account to hide behind).

⬐ V-2

Somewhat related. Have you seen it? Extremely interesting imho: http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc

⬐ drewcrawford

From 32m 50s, one of the most wonderfully pedantic exchanges I've heard:

Q: Did you send this email Mr. Gates, on or about Aug 8, 1987?

A: I don’t remember sending it.

Q: Do you have any doubt that you sent it?

A: No it appears to be an email I sent.

Q: You recognize that this is a document produced from Microsoft’s files, do you not?

A: No.

Q: You don’t?

A: Well how would I know that?

Q: Well, you see the document production numbers down at the bottom?

A: I have no idea what those numbers are.

Q: Do you recognize this as the form in which email has been printed out by Microsoft?

A: I don’t know what that means. All email printed by anyone looks just like this. So the fact that it looks like this doesn’t give me any clue as to who printed it.

Q: Well, let’s begin with that sir. E-mail printed out by other people are not stamped with Microsoft confidential stamps and Microsoft document production numbers. You would agree with that?

A: That has nothing to do with printing out.

Q: Do you understand my question sir?

A: Nope.

Q: Okay. Do you see down at the bottom where there are “confidential” stamps, and a stamp that says “Attorneys only”, document production stamps? Do you see those?

A: I see the stamps. I can’t characterize whether they’re document production stamps. To me they look more like you’d see on a prisoner’s uniform.

Q: You don’t have any knowledge about these stamps, it is your testimony? You don’t know what they are?

A: I’ve never seen a stamp like that. I’ve never used a stamp like that.

Q: Haven’t you seen stamps like that in every single one of the documents that you’ve been shown during this deposition?

A: (To counsel) Can you get me all the exhibits?

⬐ ghshephard

I don't consider it pedantic in the slightest - the questions were absolutely horrible, and I think Bill Gates was doing his level best to give accurate and honest answers, keeping in mind that he was being deposed, which, is at it's very core, is an adversarial situation.

Look at it another way - which of those question would you have answered differently? Perhaps the only error he made was when he said, "I've never seen a stamp like that" - he should have said, "I don't recall ever having seen a stamp like that."

⬐ jmedwards

It looks weird, but this is what a well prepared witness is meant to do in a deposition situation: answer only what is asked, if you don't know what is being asked, dig in. If you don't completely recall, then you don't recall.

http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/dec11/managing3.asp

⬐ ynniv

Depositions are unnatural, legally technical situations. For an amusing treatment, see http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/opinion/verbatim-what-is-a...

⬐ mynameishere

Someone should have informed the director and/or actor that lawyers rarely yell and rant in depositions.

⬐ thesteamboat

Nah, they weren't going for verisimilitude* and it's funnier imagining that the deposing lawyer, rather than trying to set up some later verbal trap, is just honestly bewildered by the ignorance of deponent.

* From the NYTimes article introducing the video:

In this short film, I sought to creatively reinterpret the original events. (I’ve not been able to locate any original video recordings, so I’m unsure how closely my actors’ appearance and delivery resembles the original participants.) My primary rule was the performance had to be verbatim -- no words could be modified or changed from the original legal transcripts. Nor did I internally edit the document to compress time. What you see is, word for word, an excerpt from what the record shows to have actually unfolded. However, I did give the actors creative range to craft their performances. As such, this is a hybrid of documentary and fiction. We’ve taken creative liberties in the staging and performance to imbue the material with our own perspectives.

⬐ x0x0

I've unfortunately been deposed for a day and a half and they are very weird things. First, as the deponent, your goal is twofold: to not fuck up your case by saying anything stupid and to run the clock. Many depositions are limited to X hours. And at least our lawyers were very clear: answer exactly the question, nothing but the question, do not elaborate, and answer minimally.

Also, opposing counsel gets to use notes while you don't. In my case, I was questioned about emails that, printed, where most of a ream of paper. They where trying to trip me up, get me confused, etc, and I was essentially being quizzed on the emails, content, and timeline of very stressful events that occurred over two years -- all without notes. I really wanted to point out that I write things in emails because my memory is fallible. That's why date stamped written records are useful.

My lawyer also had me answer all date questions in a formula, again to avoid misstating things. Instead of saying, eg, X happened in August, I had to say X happened around august, or around fall, etc. It seemed like clarity was your enemy -- opposing counsel could get you to make mistakes on minor details (did X happen at the end August or the beginning of September? who knows; that's why I use a calendar) and then use that to claim the major details where unreliable.

⬐ mkonecny

I'm not sure anyone here has watched the entire video. The lawyer catches on real quick to what Bill Gates is trying to say, and it appears like Bill Gates is being overly semantic to try and avoid answering the question.

Later on around the 30 minute mark is when Bill Gates begins to stutter and constantly avoids directly answering the correctly phrased questions.

⬐ MrJagil

Thank you for a great submission.

Can anyone clarify how this lawyer system works in regard to the involvement of fields they are not intimately familiar? I mean, I know certain lawyers specialises in tech or corporate matters, but it is entirely unrealistic for someone to both be knee-deep in matters of the law and technology (or any other matter they are not necessarily trained in). Do they consult with tech experts? Study up? Guess their way through?

I'm just reminded of what i see as totally botched lawmaking in fields where it seems a certain level of education in that field would be required to make sound decisions on it's behalf. Might be of other reasons than education (i.e. privacy vs government power), but watching this I can't help but feel there's a correlation.

I assume the chasm is only getting greater the more layers of abstraction we add to our technology stack. We're already seeing situations where the only one who can discuss a given case properly, is the accused himself.

⬐ ghaff

Among other things, complex cases also have stacks of (expensively created) expert reports on both sides of the case created by experts--as guided by lawyers to establish certain things that are relevant to legal arguments/points of law.

I actually did work related to this sort of matter a number of years back. I was admittedly working with top-level lawyers but my impression was that they were very sharp and understood the basic issues pretty well.

⬐ thathonkey

It doesn't work in that regard.

⬐ x0x0

I tend to agree, but I also think industries -- particularly tech -- have a working definition of totally botched lawmaking that means lawmaking the industry doesn't like. eg the lawsuits against Napster, that was attempting to build a business facilitating bulk copyright infringement with vanishingly few non-infringing uses.

⬐ stinkytaco

I think this is true of almost any industry, but it does seem especially prevalent it tech (which also seems to attract a greater number than average of the "I'm smarter than most" crowd). You can always claim that lawmakers don't understand [insert your industry here], but I suspect many understand it better than we think, but still disagree.

⬐ colechristensen

It's fairly obvious that disturbingly many senators and congressmen in important positions (relating to tech) have only faint ideas of things necessary to properly make voting decisions.

There is a difference between the common incompetence of elected officials and the existence of competent lawyers in high profile cases.

⬐ keypusher

Having been through a deposition myself, one of the most useful and crucial phrases to remember is "I don't remember". It is human nature in such situations to try and present yourself authoritatively, and to answer questions in a positive and detailed way. However, the absolute worst thing that can and often does happen is for the interviewer/lawyer to get you to elaborate on something and say you remember x or y happening, then presenting evidence to the contrary. If you don't know, or you aren't sure, or prefer not to answer the question, just say "I don't know" or "I don't remember".

⬐ rbobby

> or prefer not to answer the question,

Depositions are sworn testimony. Even if you'd prefer not to answer the question, you have sworn to be truthful. Responding "I don't remember" to a question just because you'd prefer not to answer would violate your oath.

⬐ runeks

It can also be used in situations where you would incriminate yourself by telling the truth. Mr. Gates uses it in reply to the question:

> What did you mean when you asked Mr. Maritz whether or not, "We have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhdDZk45HDI#t=2113

⬐ wise_young_man

It can't just be "used". You're under oath during a deposition. Lying under oath is perjury.

⬐ pdabbadabba

Yes, if you don't mind committing perjury.

The Fifth Amendment doesn't help you here (for those of you who think it might). You can only use that to avoid incriminating yourself criminally and, then, it does not simply permit you to give whatever answer you want. When you invoke the Fifth you have to refuse to answer the question, you can't just lie.

⬐ CamperBob2

What does perjury have to do with claiming that you don't remember something?

⬐ wfjackson

If later it can be proven that you did really remember it and that you lied for convenience, you can be held liable for perjury.

⬐ CamperBob2

Such proof requiring a functional MRI with integrated time-displacement capabilities?

⬐ pdabbadabba

That, or other extrinsic evidence. The easiest would be inconsistent deposition testimony (some lawyers are good at making you say what they want -- don't underestimate them), but another option would be evidence of your having done something to manifest your knowledge of the thing you claim to have forgotten soon before or after the deposition (like, e.g., sending an email).

And while perjury may be a stretch in most cases, there is also the matter of the jury's opinion of you as a witness (assuming that the case eventually goes to trial and you get confronted with your own deposition transcripts). If they think your memory seems a tad selective, then they're apt to assume that any fact you've "forgotten" is the worst possible fact for you. There are also concerns like civil/criminal contempt and other sanctions against your side in the litigation.

There is also the small matter of morality. Many of us think that you shouldn't lie in a deposition even if you can get away with it.

⬐ pdabbadabba

Perjury is knowingly giving a false statement under oath (e.g., in a deposition). If you are asked a question in a deposition and say you don't remember the answer when you actually do, you are giving a false statement under oath.

⬐ sauere

It must be hard sitting there thinking to yourself "these people here have no idea what the hell they are talking about", repeating the same answers over and over again.

Therefore, i think he is handling the situation rather well.

⬐ thomasahle

It sounds like you have only watched the beginning, when they are discussing java vs the jvm. Later we get snippets like these from Gates' own emails:

> "Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?"

> "I want to get as much mileage as possible out of our browser and Java relationship here. In other words, a real advantage against Sun and Netscape."

And in a conversation Bill participated in:

> "Apple wants to keep both Netscape and Microsoft developing browsers for Mac -- believing if one drops out, the other will lose interest (and also not really wanting to pick up the development burden.) Getting Apple to do anything that significantly/materially disadvantages Netscape will be tough. Do agree that Apple should be meeting - the spirit of our cross license agreement and that Macoffice is the perfect club to use on them."

It's a very different Gates from the philanthrope we see today, but back in the 90ties he was a bit of a dick.

It's a bit slow to watch it all, but the entire thing appears to be transcribed here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro...

⬐ fnordfnordfnord

>It's a very different Gates from the philanthrope we see today, but back in the 90ties he was a bit of a dick.

IMO Gates the businessman is just a ruthlessly competitive adversary. I don't even see a conflict between him then and his philanthropic activities now.

It was also covered pretty well at Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107...

⬐ thomasahle

> IMO Gates the businessman is just a ruthlessly competitive adversary.

Well, anticompetitive adversary.

> I don't even see a conflict between him then and his philanthropic activities now.

He certainly seems to be pretty good at both jobs.

⬐ fnordfnordfnord

>Well, anticompetitive adversary.

Touche

>He certainly seems to be pretty good at both jobs.

I agree, and I am glad he gave us a likeable trait within his lifetime, unlike many of his robber-baron contemporaries and predecessors.

⬐ stplsd

This is from part 6, priceless:

Q And first let me ask a general question, and that is: Did you believe that from Microsoft's standpoint it was desirable to have as many pure Java applications as possible?

A We weren't focused on that as a goal, no.

Q In fact, is it fair to say that you preferred fewer pure Java applications to more pure Java applications?

A We preferred more applications that took advantage of our APIs, and so we worked with ISVs to maximize the number that took advantage of our APIs.

Q And your APIs were not pure Java APIs; correct?

A No. Some were, and some weren't.

Q Yes, sir, some were, and some weren't. But the APIs that you wanted people to use were APIs that were not pure Java APIs; correct, sir?

A No. We were glad to have people use both.

Q Were you indifferent as to whether they used your pure Java APIs or your proprietary APIs?

MR. HEINER: Objection.

THE WITNESS (Bill Gates): You've introduced the word proprietary, and that completely changes the question. So help me out, what do you want to know?

Q BY MR. BOIES: Is the term "proprietary API" a term that you're familiar with, sir?

A I don't know what you mean by it.

Q Is it a term you're familiar with in your business?

A I really don't know what you mean. You mean an API that you have a patent on?

⬐ wfjackson

>Q Is it a term you're familiar with in your business? >A I really don't know what you mean. You mean an API that you have a patent on?

Isn't that a good question? An API is essentially a function header.

eg. void print(string Text);

How can it be proprietary unless it was patented or something? See Oracle vs. Google.

While talking to a court one has to be exact. Perhaps the lawyer meant an API implementation that is copyrighted?

⬐ bluedino

In Microsofts case it may have meant undocumented. Features only Microsoft knew were there, since they wrote them

⬐ wfjackson

No, it's not. If you read the exchange posted by the parent poster again, it's about MS's additional API hooks in Java that were meant to be used by Java developers, so they're definitely not undocumented.

⬐ nl

Bill Gate's answer was " You mean an API that you have a patent on?"

If the lawyer had said "Yes", he could have answered "No": Gates knows that patents don't really apply.

Otherwise the lawyer would have had to define it, which runs the clock down on how long Gates had to actually answer questions.

⬐ wfjackson

Yes, Bill Gates answer was the question I was referring to as a good one. My formatting of the quoted content was a little messed up in the first line.

>If the lawyer had said "Yes", he could have answered "No":

No to what? The original question was whether Gates was indifferent to developer usage pure vs. proprietary APIs.

This was an attempt by the lawyer to color the APIs as proprietary while asking about pure Java vs. Microsoft's API functions and Gates wanted to know exactly he meant by that term before giving an answer to the question which could imply that was agreeing with the lawyer that the API was "proprietary", which could mean different things to different people.

It's like a lawyer asking "Do you like the brand of the beer you stole?",

The proper answer is "What do you mean, stole?".

Not, "No, I don't like Budweiser".

⬐ dorafmon

Can anyone explain why the lawyer is so keen on making Bill Gates to confirm that he thought that Java is a competitive threat?

⬐ johnchristopher

IANAL but I suppose it is to paint a certain picture of BG's intentions regarding Java which would be then used to motivate the decision of the judge/jurors [0].

[0] Your legal system may varies but it's often about judging the intention and then the consequences.

⬐ dorafmon

So it can be used against him? How?

⬐ johnchristopher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_in_English_law

If the lawyer can prove or make BG admits JAVA is a threat then BG's actions against JAVA can be seen as deliberate rather than accidental or unfortunate.

Because the "Oops I didn't think tweaking JAVA API so it works only on Windows would hurt SUN that is trying to sell a JAVA thingie that works everywhere" card wouldn't work that well and it would established deliberate questionable practice.

In this case it might or might not be something like that.

⬐ twoodfin

At the time, Microsoft's licensing disagreement with Sun over Java frameworks and integration with native code had some overlap with the DoJ's case: Was Microsoft attempting to eliminate a threat to their Windows monopoly with "embrace, extend & extinguish"?

I think the government ultimately dropped that angle.

⬐ None

None

⬐ manish_gill

I don't get it. Is this the same deposition which was such disastrous that the judge laughed in court while the video tape was being played? http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9811/17/judgelaugh.ms....

I talked it over with a law-school friend of mine and he agrees that the initial deposition was handled very badly by Gates, so much so that it is used as an example of "what not to do in a deposition" in law schools. I wonder what people here are praising Gates about. :)

Edit: Here's another article: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...

⬐ aragot

Thank you for this valuable background. So as I understand, Bill Gates' deposition is legally correct but so terribly unpopular that it's the wrong thing to do, am I right?

Besides, what was the outcome of the trial? If I understand:

- It started in May 1998,

- In April 2000, it was judged that Microsoft acted consistently in an anti-competitive wat,

- In June 2000, judge Jackson orders the break-up of Microsoft into two companies. It was reverted in September 2001, presumably because it doesn't make sense anymore.

- In November 1998, Microsoft is ordered to stop selling products which contain an incompatible version of Java. Sun wins this ruling.

- In 1997, Microsoft is ordered not to require OEMs to ship IE with Windows.

It looks to me that all those interviews have led to very little outcomes. Any expert's opinion on this?

http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2002/11/35212

⬐ manish_gill

I'm just going to paraphrase some quotes from the discussion I had with the aforementioned friend, since I think he puts it much more succinctly

"""

Indeed. I mean, people think that Gates is being so clever with his pedantic word-play jargon games, but they are forgetting is that the Federal prosecutor is smarter at word games, is well versed in law, and can easily pick out minutiae. He would have just made Gates wait 6 hours and ask the question again and again and again, until finally, he writes up a report saying how uncooperative Mr. Bill Gates was during the deposition (whose entire point is that you are supposed to cooperate) and thus making the case of plea bargaining even harder. (He is quite smart. Probably top of the class at Harvard law knowing how federal prosecutors are hired.)

The whole idea of a deposition is you try and co-operate. If I were a judge do you see why I'd take a very dim view of that tape? The article is cnn's main story from that year.

    But as a sign of how worried Microsoft is about the effect of the videotape, the company brought in a hired gun to talk to reporters about how depositions are typically combative and involve "jousting" and, in that sense, how Gates' deposition was "unremarkable.""

When you have to do that, you know something is wrong. Oh and btw that is completely disregarding how it affects public opinion which in turn might harden Justice dept through pressure via political bodies (congress and white house) that are susceptible to public opinion. Remember, all depositions are public record.

It might seem quite funny and clever to you but an average American outside the Valley probably sees it very different - an overpaid arrogant CEO.

"""

As for how come there was very little outcome, apparently it's a fairly well established claim in various law journals that the whole reason MSFT case failed was because after 9/11, they didn't seem to want to go after an American champion. Or MSFT would've been broken apart. Prosecuting them changed as political priorities changed. (Date of settlement is November '01). And a Republican revival started around the same time.

Also note that Gates retired a few months later. Official reasoning was given as him feeling burned out, apparently.

⬐ aragot

Great wrtie-up. Thanks.

Europe wasn't so lenient. Microsoft paid more than $2bn in fines for Windows Media Player and for not giving the choice of web browser in some versions of the OS. Nellie Kroes was the leader here. Including €561 for skipping the browser choice dialog, which was mandatory because of a settlement of Microsoft, for 14 months in 2009.

This is 3%-6% of their worlwide revenue ($30bn circa 2002, $60bn circa 2009).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_comp...

http://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-...

I wonder if European trial customs are a bit more intuitive and less based on the preciseness of contracts/laws than in US, leading to shorter, more intuitive decisions?

⬐ gearoidoc

Handles it like a champ IMHO.

⬐ mandeepj

This article[1] is worth mentioning in this context as we talk about Microsoft's anti-trust policies.

[1] - http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx

⬐ coralreef

You really see the pragmatic, poker playing mentality that Gates has been described as here.

⬐ elwell

23:48 - http://youtu.be/HhdDZk45HDI?t=23m48s

My attention perked as I expected to hear a familiar phrase from Pinky & the Brain, and it would have fit the context.

⬐ misiti3780

This is pretty painful to watch - he seem very awkward - its pretty funny when he gets pissed off at the guy about 5 minutes it "Give me a break!"

⬐ ISL

I took the bait; it happens at the 12 minute mark.

Gates does an impressive job of staying sharp through incessant questioning. The opposing counsel has a job to do, but it's unpleasant to experience.

⬐ Geee

Hmmm.. The Microsoft-Apple deal in 1997 wasn't signed when Jobs made the announcement. He just went through it. Was that known? It's @40:10

⬐ None

None

⬐ Plough_Jogger

Incredibly diplomatic.

⬐ yuhong

Trivia: The last MSJVM updates were actually the DST updates released in 2007 under the extended hotfix support for DST program (that costed $4,000 per year). Not for the US DST changes, but the ones in Australia and other countries.

⬐ kalleboo

I feel sorry for the poor soul still supporting an MS JVM application in 2007...

⬐ enupten

I'm always surprised by how idiots who haven't the slightest clue about things they are adjudicating, having the temerity to believe that they do.

⬐ fnordfnordfnord

Pot, meet Kettle.

⬐ CamperBob2

You can't possibly imagine that lawyers, legislators, or judges are the least bit qualified to design an operating system.

That was my whole problem with the antitrust trial... it amounted to a bunch of anklebiting by well-intentioned but hopelessly unqualified people.

⬐ fnordfnordfnord

>You can't possibly imagine that lawyers, legislators, or judges are the least bit qualified to design an operating system.

No. Of course not. I was pointing out the irony of HN user enupten's criticism of the lawyer deposing Gates, while knowing little about being a lawyer. My remark relies upon my assumption that enupten is more likely to be some sort of a techie than a lawyer (and not both).

OTOH, you can't possibly accept MS' weak argument that their hands were forced by engineering decisions, rather than engaging in illegal anti-competitive business practices for the sake of harming their competitors. The mere fact that the government's lawyers and judges were not well suited to create their own competing software products isn't proof that they were wrong about the legality of MS' conduct.

>That was my whole problem with the antitrust trial... it amounted to a bunch of anklebiting by well-intentioned but hopelessly unqualified people.

I was disappointed in the results of the trial as well. What outcome(s) would you have preferred?

⬐ CamperBob2

My preference is a bit outside the mainstream, in that I don't agree that the trial should have happened in the first place. I've never seen Microsoft beat anyone in the marketplace who didn't deserve it. Like Google and Apple, they were lucky to have some of the least-competent competition in the history of business. When those competitors proved inept at defeating Microsoft in the marketplace, they went whining to the DoJ.

I believe that any other consumer-friendly OS, if exposed to the same critical scrutiny that Windows faced, would have fared just as badly in the quality and security areas where Windows has traditionally taken most of its bashing. Windows didn't win over OS/2, MacOS, and Linux because of any skulduggery on Bill Gates's part (and yes, I agree, there was plenty of legitimate skulduggery to accuse Microsoft of perpetrating.) It won because the others sucked even more.

Moreover, I believe that the network effects that arose from the dominance of Windows were far more beneficial than the sort of meaningless competition that prevailed in earlier personal computing eras, where everyone was selling proprietary hardware and OSes that were just different enough from everyone else's to make life annoying and expensive for independent developers. Modern mobile developers don't know how lucky they are that they only have to target two 800-pound gorillas.

So I disagreed strongly with the DoJ's antitrust efforts, and would have even without the involvement of figures like Judge Jackson whose legal talents would have been better spent adjudicating parking tickets. The whole process made me pretty cynical about antitrust actions and our legal system in general.

⬐ sprw121

Bill Gates has some serious swag

⬐ haneefmubarak

Even though I generally dislike the man, I gotta say I admire how he handled that. Especially considering how much of a prick the other person was being.

If I had been in the same scenario, eventually I would have responded:

"Are you trying to obtuse or are do you simply lack basic comprehension skills?"

⬐ fnordfnordfnord

I think you've missed the point of the game that's being played. Gates is in the hot seat, and he is doing his best to wiggle his way out of a tight spot. So saying that you admire how he handled that is a bit like saying that you admire how he weaselled his way out of the trouble he was in for MS abusing its monopoly and other anti-competitive behavior that he and the rest of the MS board were up to at the time. But, yeah, he obviously did his job well, so long as by "well" you mean in a way that optimized MS chances of success, while hurting MS competitors' chances of success.

⬐ mtrpcic

If you don't mind my asking, why do you dislike Bill Gates?

⬐ haneefmubarak

He has strongly opposed free software for a long, long time. Additionally, his company has been a strong proponent of DRM for ages and just keeps making it worse.

That wouldn't be so bad if it worked with few problems, but somehow, I always seem to get caught up in the DRM bugs in Microsoft's implementations.

⬐ kenjackson

Virtually every company in the world has opposed free software... Including Apple and Google. Outside of Mozilla and Xamiran, I can't think of many companies that do back free software.

⬐ V-2

Xamarin (if that's what you meant) is proprietary and quite pricey at that ;)

⬐ WiggleYourIndex

All the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt) Gates' ilk produced to scare people from Freedom will bring tears to future generations' eyes. How could someone so ruthlessly oppose voluntary, community-led development (which by now we can safely say won)? Answer: Look at his company's financial investors.

Relevant Revolution OS snippet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw8K460vx1c&t=6m40s

⬐ V-2

Also Internet Explorer, with its incompatibilities, yet very large user base, and Microsoft trying to enforce its own web standards - held the internet back for a long time. Web apps could have been better and cheaper to develop if it wasn't for this factor.

⬐ melling

We are still paying for IE. XP can't install a version greater than IE8, which many people and companies still use.

⬐ fleitz

Yes, 14 year old operating systems have limitations, have you tried installing Chrome on Redhat 7.2 recently?

How about Chrome on Mac OS 9, or Mac OS X 10.1?

⬐ melling

I think you're completely missing the point. First, I'm not blaming Microsoft. Second, there are more people using XP than using Macintoshes or Linux. I'm simply pointing out that we're still paying the price for the IE domination of the late 90s early 2000's. At this point Microsoft is paying a price too. Hopefully windows 10 will garner enough support that they can move away from their past also. Their latest versions of IE are actually quite good.

⬐ wfjackson

Reminds me of the -webkit tags that became the defacto standard forcing Opera, mobile Firefox and mobile IE to support them since web developers can't be bothered to code to standards or update their code. If it works in Safari/Chrome it ships because of their very large user base in mobile, exactly the same situation with IE.

http://css.dzone.com/articles/why-webkit-new-ie6-trap-vendor http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/australian-technology/the-w...

Not to mention Chrome developers "trying to enforce their own web standards":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7184912

Progress on web standards have always been spearheaded by browser implementations before being standardized, there were many non standard extensions that Netscape implemented that IE had to add support back in the day. IE6 was a particularly bad issue because major browser releases were tied to Windows releases and Longhorn/Vista had to be reset and delayed.

⬐ V-2

Yes. I am not saying that Microsoft has monopoly for this. But they had better leverage than anybody else in the desktop era (thanks to the way IE was bundled with Windows) and did it for large scale. Which made them disliked. I'm not a supporter of Google, which is becoming more of a bad guy than Microsoft these days.

⬐ colechristensen

He ruthlessly destroyed his competition using unfair/shady/sometimes illegal business practices are we're all worse off as a result.

He's also from the very beginning been strongly opposed to free software.

⬐ korzun

> we're all worse off as a result

Who is we? Who are you speaking for? Are you speaking for me? Are you speaking for millions of people his foundation and charity work touched?

Step out of your little bubble and leave your childish comments there.

⬐ xasos

I agree with you, but you are talking about the philanthropic Bill Gates of today. Colechristensen was referring to the Bill Gates of the 90's with his shady and unethical business practices which led many businesses and new products to failure, which meant that the only internet browser people could use was his own. If browser competition started earlier, we could be much further in the browser development world than we are today.

⬐ penprog

His charity (while good for the world) doesn't undo the damage he caused when he was CEO of Microsoft.

⬐ korzun

What damage. How did it impact you.

⬐ x0x0

Well, ms crippled the web as an application development target by freezing ie for somewhere between 5 and 10 years, in order to support their desktop software monopoly. A monopoly that used to cost on the order of $100+ per pc. So they got probably an extra $400 from me.

⬐ gearoidoc

I'd also question what damage he did as MS CEO that can in any way take away from the good his foundation is doing/has done.

⬐ penprog

I never said it took away from the good. I said that the damage he caused doesn't disappear because he is doing good.

⬐ pyre

I'm generally opposed to the idea that people can crush others in their pursuit of wealth, and then become "good" now that they are part of the uber-rich (and can afford to just toss money around). It encourages the idea that the ends justify the means.

⬐ gearoidoc

It's business - you play to the limit of the rules and if you break them then you try your best not to get caught.

MS didn't crush people - it crushed companies. There's a big difference.

⬐ riquito

> MS didn't crush people - it crushed companies. There's a big difference.

Companies run by robots, I suppose.

⬐ gearoidoc

No, run by people - as your facetious comment sarcastically points out.

However, it is entirely possible for these people to get another job.

⬐ penprog

So, because people can "always get another job", you think it's right that Microsoft under Bill Gates (unethically) crushed the companies that they put their time, money and effort into? Man you must be drinking some crazy corporate kool aid

⬐ gearoidoc

Not drinking kool aid - just have a realistic understanding of how business works.

⬐ vinceguidry

Yes.

A company is not a person, a person is not a company. Attacking one should not be considered the same as attacking another, our entire economic system is based around the abstraction of organization so as to shield people from legal liabilities incurred by simply pursuing trade. You can't have it both ways, to both enjoy the legal benefits of a corporate structure, and then to be able to claim public sympathy when you get beaten in the market.

Corporate personhood is a dangerous legal concept that Americans believe in for unfathomable reasons, and it causes all sorts of ethical problems, particularly legalization of political manipulations that are considered corruption in other parts of the world.

⬐ pyre

The idea that "it's just business" so it's ok to do anything and everything that you can get away with (up to and including breaking the law) is a harmful idea. "Crushing" other businesses by participating fairly in the market is different than using under-handed tactics to win at all costs ("history is written by the victors," "might makes right" and all that).

⬐ icebraining

I think you have a fair point; I've downvoted you purely based on your tone.

⬐ general_failure

Please stop trolling

⬐ SixSigma

Hitler liked dogs.

⬐ haneefmubarak

We are the people who end up having to deal with a lack of free choices, a small range of products which are buggy, and DRM bullshit.

As for his foundation and whatnot, it could be said that a fairly large number of people, given the sort of financial resources he has, would help "millions of people". Actually, a lot of extremely wealthy people do use their financial resources to help vast numbers of people. Often, they just make donations instead of creating foundations, since other foundations may already exist to do what they want.

As such, it is quite reasonable to disregard the "millions of people his foundation and charity work have touched", as many others would have done the same in his place.

⬐ korzun

> We are the people who end up having to deal with a lack of free choices, a small range of products which are buggy, and DRM bullshit.

What are you dealing with? Get real, you are sitting on HN waiting for your Uber.

Buggy products? Who has bug free products? Name one bug free product from 10 years ago. Is it going to be some half ass Linux desktop distro? The new bi-weekly 'Windows Killer'?

Lack of free choices 10 years ago was completely normal. Using free alternatives in 2000 as a desktop was laughable at best. Even now, in a golden age of OSS where you have tons of cool tools and cheap processing power. Mature projects have issues with finding quality contributors. I'm not talking about a random jQuery plug-in, etc.

Market spoke and it's 100% clear. I was around when there was a 'movement' of getting Linux distros to every office. That was a decade ago and the only viable competitor that made it into the space was Apple. They borrowed some of their base from *BSD. Which is mostly a server workhorse. Ironic.

Why are you bringing up DRM? What does it have to do with Microsoft? Learn about business schematics and history of it.

> As for his foundation and whatnot, it could be said that a fairly large number of people, given the sort of financial resources he has, would help "millions of people".

It's not about raw $ it's about % of wealth and focus. Handing off money to a foundation for a write off is not 'charity work'.

TLDR: You have no idea how different the technology space was 10 years ago. I can say this with extreme confidence.

⬐ jghn

> Using free alternatives in 2000 as a desktop was laughable at best

I used a combo of Linux & FreeBSD as my desktop OS exclusively from ~2000 to 2005 (when I bought my first mac). For the 4 years prior to that range I only ever booted into Windows to play games.

⬐ wfjackson

What DRM bullshit? I thought it was Apple that implemented Palladium?

>As such, it is quite reasonable to disregard the "millions of people his foundation and charity work have touched", as many others would have done the same in his place.

Steve Jobs quote:

>Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology

Also, throwing money at charities is far less effective than try to affect change by working full time on it. If money was the solution, the tens of billions given to Africa would've solved the issues.

⬐ spacemanmatt

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft's role as a major proponent of DRM and generally consumer-hostile device policies, you just haven't been paying attention.

⬐ wfjackson

Allowing Vista to play Bluray makes MS a major proponent of DRM? Then so are Google(Widevine acquisition), Mozilla(DRM in HTML5) and Apple. If you're referring to the FUD against Vista DRM, it was debunked long ago. I guess you missed it(read all three parts).

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/everything-youve-read-about-v...

Also, perhaps you believe more FUD against Windows 7's perceived DRM, but it was also debunked.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/02/oh-the... Perhaps you need to read from more varied news sources than just Slashdot, Groklaw and Boycott Novell/Techrights.

And what have you got to say about Palladium implementation by Apple?

⬐ WalterBright

Most of his competitors destroyed themselves. See "In Search Of Stupidity" by Chapman.

⬐ radmuzom

Brilliant book. In it, Rick Chapman also states how there were some things MS should have done differently, but the general opinion that MS "killed" competitors' products and was strongly monopolistic is quite wrong.

⬐ Karellen

For starters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents

http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

They may not have been written by him, but they accurately describe and predict the observed behaviour of Microsoft w.r.t. Free Software under Gates' leadership.

And that's just what MS did to Free Software. Under Gates, Microsoft were just as ruthless towards other competitors, seeking to undermine them in a number of ways (unfairly leveraging their monopoly position, dumping, sabotaging) rather than competing in the marketplace on the merits of their products. See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

⬐ romanovcode

I'm just curious, no pretext here. But did you liked Steve Jobs?

⬐ haneefmubarak

Amusingly enough, I'm fairly neutral on him. His good is exactly equal to his bad, IMHO.

⬐ soup10

Gates was being super evasive, with-holding information and playing dumb. I don't fault the interviewer at all, the name of the game is pin the tail on the weasel, it's only natural that he has to repeat himself and ask gates to clarify over and over. The fact is Microsoft feared Sun as a competitive threat, and did some unethical things to try to undermine them. Microsoft's implementation of java was part of that strategy(embrace, extend, extinguish). Obviously what ethics means or should mean in the context of corporations is a whole bag of worms, but it's clear that Microsoft did and continue to do things that were detrimental to the advance of computer technology as a whole to benefit themselves.

⬐ _delirium

That's how I recall it being perceived at the time as well, that Gates's deposition came off as evasive, and wasn't that well received.

⬐ Arwill

The important point that dawned on me watching this video, is that the things you describe weren't done by Microsoft as a faceless corporation, but consciously by specific people, and by Gates himself directing the activity.

⬐ venantius

I'm stealing one of the YouTube comments, because I actually thought it was pretty interesting. I started watching this thinking the interviewer was an idiot, but I think the issue is a little more complicated than it seems at first. Comment from YouTube user "tapo":

So in the 90's Sun Microsystems created Java, which has two components, the programming language and the runtime. The runtime (the Java you install) lets you run things written in Java on any device regardless of OS or CPU architecture. Write once, run anywhere. This was a huge threat to Microsoft. Why write Windows programs when you could write Java programs and they'd run on any computer?

So Microsoft wrote their own Java runtime called the MS JVM, and made it part of Windows, it extended Java to do Windows-only things, meaning there were now "Java" apps that could only run on Windows, destroying the whole point of Java.

This became part of the antitrust trial because it ruined Sun's product. In a separate case, Sun sued Microsoft and won.

⬐ doughj3

> So Microsoft wrote their own Java runtime called the MS JVM, and made it part of Windows, it extended Java to do Windows-only things, meaning there were now "Java" apps that could only run on Windows, destroying the whole point of Java.

How does this differ from what Google did with Android, effectively leading to "Java apps that can only run on Android"?

⬐ nl

How does this differ from what Google did with Android, effectively leading to "Java apps that can only run on Android"?

Microsoft was a Java licensee, and Sun claimed the license required them to implement the standardized Java interface. Sun sued over the license and antitrust issues.

Google isn't a Java licensee. Oracle sued over copyright issues.

⬐ nikcub

It doesn't. Sun, and then Oracle sued Google and lost (on syntax, on API it is still bouncing around):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google

Sun settled with Microsoft before a verdict was reached, so the question of IP and if alternate implementations of a language syntax is allowed wasn't answered then.

In the antitrust suit, all that was answered was that Microsoft used its advantage with its operating system monopoly to push its version of the Java runtime. The effect was that Microsoft were not allowed to bundle their runtime, but had to offer users the choice - they were not found to be violating Sun's IP in implementing a runtime.

Syntax of a programming language not being IP protected is probably a good thing for developers, regardless of what you think of the Microsoft situation. The API being protected is a separate issue, as is the trademark on the name (which applied in the Microsoft case but not in Google's since they didn't use the trademark term in their implementation)

⬐ yohanatan

> Syntax of a programming language not being IP protected is probably a good thing for developers, regardless of what you think of the Microsoft situation. The API being protected is a separate issue

But in the case you cited, the API was found to be not protected (which is also the proper ruling in my opinion).

⬐ peterashford

I'm pretty sure that Sun didn't sue Google. They'd discussed it internally and decided to let it slide. Only on being purchased by Oracle did the the lawsuit go ahead.

⬐ V-2

Note that Google considered using C# instead of Java at some point :)

"If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language - or - 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way"

http://www.fosspatents.com/2011/07/judge-orders-overhaul-of-...

⬐ MichaelGG

The Mono team ported Android to C#, and got some significant performance wins. http://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/

One wonders how much better the world would be if Google had hired some first employees that preferred expressive languages.

⬐ V-2

MS created Visual J++, and Visual J# afterwards. Ultimately C# was born out of these efforts and it's a much better language than Java nowadays (with some exceptions such as better enums in Java). The tooling is superb as well - Visual Studio is a kickass IDE.

Although adding ReSharper to the party doesn't hurt.

⬐ xxs

C# and .net had Delphi's mastermind, nothing to do with Visual J.

⬐ V-2

You are mistaken.

   After joining Microsoft, Hejlsberg led the company’s efforts in Visual J++ 

   [...]

   Hejlsberg helped make Visual J++ the most popular 
   and most productive Java IDE in the late '90s.

http://www.microsoft.com/about/technicalrecognition/Anders-H...

⬐ xxs

Fair point, I always thought he joined in 1998.

⬐ MichaelGG

One if the major things .NET had in it's favor was MSR to actually figure out generics. MS Corp viewed it as an academic and experimental feature and would never have gotten it implemented on their own. From what I've heard, Delphi's mastermind was not in favor of them, but I don't have a quote for that. Furthermore, looking at C#'s first couple releases, it seems they were aiming for a slightly improved Java. Only after F# did C# reluctantly start to pick up functional features.

To MS's credit, .NET did aim to be a true multi language runtime, back to Project 7. They got feedback from many people to make sure many languages could be accommodated (looks like they've since given up on this goal). Ironically, the JVM, with it's strictly less capable VM, boasts far more languages targeting it's runtime. Probably because Microsoft worked against releasing it for other platforms and is still a bit standoffish.

⬐ tanzam75

> One if the major things .NET had in it's favor was MSR to actually figure out generics. MS Corp viewed it as an academic and experimental feature and would never have gotten it implemented on their own. From what I've heard, Delphi's mastermind was not in favor of them, but I don't have a quote for that.

According to Don Syme's blog posts, certain "product team members" said that "generics is for academics only." However, he did not name Anders Hejlsberg as being one of them.

Here's the blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2011/03/15/10141602.as...

Also see: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2012/07/05/more-c-net-...

Also see the story from the other side: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scottwil/archive/2007/10/24/working-...

I wonder if MSR's implementation of generics in .NET 2.0 was why F# got bundled into Visual Studio as a first-class language. IronPython, IronRuby, etc. never got that type of internal buy-in and got spun-off instead.

⬐ MichaelGG

Right, I have no actual citation on Anders or other C# team members regarding their position on generics. Just personal conversion. Perhaps it's way off base. Yet, the lack of lambdas, inference, and the reluctant implementation in C# 3 (only the minimum for LINQ) suggests that was not the style they were looking for. Same for the handling of async in C# - instead of a general mechanism, it's another hardcoded intrinsic. More evidence: TypeScript also looks lackluster, despite being a big step up from JS.

I've no real clue why F# was productized, but I'd like to think it was because MS realized it has to stay competitive. F# is probably the most advanced language with that level of tooling, support, libraries, etc. I know F# is the only reason I continue to target the CLR. At the same time, MS's F# support certainly feels like it's just lip service, even while their flagship language lacks basics like a REPL. (I know, Roslyn will cure all.) I've yet to see any marketing suggesting F# would be a better choice for many projects; only esoteric sciencey and maths usages see suggested.

What'd really be forward would be for MS to support Rust or a project like that. (I believe they hired the guy behind BitC but I don't think it was for language design.)

⬐ pjmlp

> Only after F# did C# reluctantly start to pick up functional features.

This is not true. C# got functional features thanks to the work of Erik Meijer and his team.

His paper "Confessions of a used programming language salesman" about this work, is very well known in the compiler design community.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.118....

⬐ MichaelGG

I was careful not to say F# caused functional features to appear, only the timeline. I also noted all the features they added were purely for LINQ. So it does feel, to an outsider, that C# only obtained its functional features by happenstance. Had someone without Meijer's intent gone for a LINQ feature, maybe a different approach may have been taken. I get the feeling he was like a covert agent, dangling this easy way to get LINQ, to entice other employees into accidentally allowing such powerful features in, or as I believe he says in that paper "well even VB now has monads".

⬐ pjmlp

Sorry if I somehow misinterpreted it.

Yeah, LINQ was what got enterprise developers slowly started into the FP world.

⬐ possibilistic

I've never done any Windows development, so I'm curious as to why C# might be considered superior to Java (especially Java 8).

Is it simply better language features ( typing, generics, etc.?), or does the argument also include .NET and the CLR?

Will Microsoft open up development on unix systems (not mono)? I've interpreted signals from the CEO as an indication this could happen. What about visual studio?

⬐ MichaelGG

The CLR is more flexible than the JVM, but if you're only using C# you'll usually only notice when doing C interop. With the major exception of structs and generics, which may provide large speed improvements.

C# the language is superior in essentially every way to Java. Far less code = less bugs. F# takes it up another notch, while allowing you to keep interop.

Microsoft has had plenty of opportunity to officially support Mono, but they have not. Their patent promise only extends to Mono as long as you don't run into other issues with Microsoft. If MS wanted, they could, at any time, start really supporting Mono and work to unify runtimes. But anything's possible.

⬐ V-2

To be fair, F# has its counterparts in the JVM world (like Scala or Clojure). I used the rather niche Kotlin lang on Android, for hobby projects so far, and it's pretty nice, too, even if not fully mature. More similar to Scala, I believe.

⬐ pmoriarty

I don't think F# is particularly similar to Clojure. No more similar than OCaml or SML are to Lisp (which is not very).

⬐ V-2

True, it's a different FP flavor. They (F#, Scala, Clojure) are in similar position though in that they're FP-centred alternatives to the main language of the platform (C#, Java)

⬐ pmoriarty

"Far less code = less bugs" ?

By that measure, APL programs must be the least buggy in existence.

⬐ MichaelGG

The recent discussion on K suggests that may be the case.

⬐ azth

Link?

⬐ MichaelGG

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475809

I'm not sure if K generalizes well. It may be that plenty of software has edge cases that must be handled that don't have any elegant representations. I have a hard time believing such little code can actually work that well. But it seems impressive enough that I plan on learning it some and making sure I'm not massively missing out on something because it seems foreign.

From my own experience, less code certainly means less bugs. Even with denser code. Simply having to jump around to find stuff (due to more lines) seems to cause more problems

⬐ chipsy

I've been gravitating towards the stance lately(independently of reading about K and the APL family style) of aiming towards "total-factor symbol reduction" - i.e. a program coded with fewer symbols, and fewer unique symbols, is preferable to one that introduces many new symbols, or uses existing ones inefficiently.

From this perspective, just factoring out imperative code into a named subroutine becomes a pain point because it adds new symbolic content - a new name, things being passed in, things being returned, things that were in scope suddenly falling outside of it. It is no longer an "organization tool" - you can add a level of block scope and a comment for that instead, and navigate the resulting large functions with code folding. And classes - well, classes become something to avoid!

APL style simply moves this concept down to the per-character level of thought and advocates additional care towards certain measures of readability. "It is more likely," says the APL programmer, "that you will see a typo in a 2 character name than in a 10 character name." The language aids in this process by providing tools that drastically condense common operations and encouraging their use as the default.

⬐ MichaelGG

Read John Carmack's writings on inlining (also discussed here on HN [1]) where inlining refers to keeping one function with all its work done in there, instead of calling out even to things like "myfuncstep1", "myfuncstep2", etc.

I just hit a major bug due to that kind of thing, where stuff wasn't clear due to messy size of the code (customer insisted on C#). If the relevant sections had been sitting on screen, then I most likely would have noticed or never even made it in first place.

I also started working with a new hire, one that isn't an FP proponent, and I'm shocked at the variable names. Even iterating a list of entry objects: I'd naturally write the list as 'es', and the current item 'e'. Versus 'entriesToProcess' and 'current entry'. Or even 'entries' and 'ent'.

People's objections there seem to be that 'entries' is more readable than 'es'. While that may be true in isolation, I'm not sure it matters when working on a codebase above a few hundred lines. The amount if context is likely to be high enough that you're not going to be plucking one line out for changing, and the local context (and typing) should make it apparent it's a plural of e.g. entries, not employees.

1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374345

⬐ asveikau

Generics in C# don't do type erasure. That's one of the "language nerd" features that's a big win. Most other stuff I can think of is kind of surface level. (Though nice to have: Property syntax, native interop that sucks less, IDisposable, closures, extension methods, linq)

⬐ dserodio

I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't bought Xamarin yet. Mono being a first-class citizen (with an appropriate license) would do wonders to attract Java and non-MS developers to .Net - myself included.

⬐ NicoJuicy

Actually, because Windows development (using Visual Studio) is not only c#

It's also vb.net, f# and so much else. Even node.js is integrated now! In short, it's a very adaptable IDE (with a lot of features also).

But it isn't Windows anymore since Owin.

What's also nice is that they are innovating the platform for integrations with popular (opensource) like features. Eg. The scaffolding of Rails got integrated into Asp.Net MVC in it's own way. NodeJS selfhostable option is adapted into .Net as "Owin". SignalR is their realtime component, you got live IDE features when developing webapps (it uses SignalR in the background)

It's kinda a mix of "all worlds" :)

⬐ V-2

Well, Java caught up somewhat with version 8: with lambdas and Streams to provide LINQ-like functionality - which, however, isn't equally good imho, and not extendable because it's not based on extension methods. And unfortunately I have no access to these goodies anyway, as an Android dev :/

Ah, and then there's still the inferior, type erasure based generics. There is nothing on par with C#'s awesome async-await. There's no yield return semantics (when used properly, you can create very clean and robust code thanks to it). You've got to deal with the infamous checked exceptions (I think it's the consensus these days that this wasn't such a good design choice after all). No single-root type system (so you've got Integers and ints, and the latter aren't objects) etc. And there's more, even little things like var keyword or partial classes that don't exist in Java (like many language features, partial classes can be used for evil, but it's very helpful for dealing with autogenerated code). Operator overloading. Nasty and weird syntax for annotations (in compare to C#'s attributes).

Some of these can be a matter of taste for sure and I'm not interested in language flamewars :) I write both Java and C# for living, just personally I prefer the latter.

It would be real big if Microsoft purchased Xamarin and made it free (or much cheaper). They've really gained momentum in recent time and it feels like they are getting recognition from MS now.

⬐ brusch64

coming back to Java, after some years of programming C# I have the same feeling.

C# feels like Java done right. Many of Java's shortcomings can be masked with a great IDE (making setters and getters) nobrainers - but I prefer C#.

⬐ jghn

I thought scala was java done right ;)

⬐ V-2

Well - both, kind of :)

Take a look at this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/omervk/scala-for-c-developers

It draws some parallels between C# and Scala.

⬐ dserodio

Except for pass-by-value and pass-by-reference. Java's model of always passing a reference value makes the mental model around references so much simpler.

⬐ brusch64

It makes the model simpler, but I found this pretty cumbersome. I wanted to write a method returning two values (Boolean), so I had to return an array of Booleans. Out parameter seem easier for me (and more concise)

⬐ MichaelGG

Yet essentially every Java app's UI sucked, and the ones I see remaining still do. Extending Java to actually make it work for practical applications on Windows seems like a smart and useful thing to do. The whole "application should be consistent across OSes" was a pointless idea, and even today that remains true.

Java also seems nonsensical for Sun. How were they supposed to make money off it? Especially as a hardware company, it seems a bit odd to target all platforms. And in the end, how could Microsoft not buy Sun for a measly $2BN?

⬐ AnimalMuppet

How were they supposed to make money off it? It was supposed to help them sell servers (by making web programming and enterprise programming easier).

⬐ MichaelGG

How does having a cross-platform system make their servers or systems preferable?

I'm all for it and see Java as doing quite a bit of good (despite the terribleness of the language and brain-damage it's inflicted on developers, which is a great bit of bad). I just don't get how it helped Sun, and I suppose, history shows it did not.

⬐ AnimalMuppet

By increasing the ease of writing stuff that needs servers, the idea was that more servers would sell. Some (not all) of those would be Sun servers. That's a net win for Sun.

⬐ orbifold

The idea that applications should be consistent across OSes is not really pointless, it just happens that for some reason the webbrowser is now one of the major platforms for applications instead of java running in the browser. Also in the 1990s there was not a clear indication that x86 would dominate the whole market and in particular for non customer facing applications there really was no compelling reason why they had to look good or "native", so Java certainly looked like a good idea, as did Smalltalk.

The incentive for Sun probably was in part that they wanted their high end workstations to stay relevant and maybe eventually develop cpu's that accelerated java execution.

⬐ MichaelGG

Yet on mobile, we go out of our ways to make things look and feel native, even if the web's being used.

The concept of run anywhere, from a code execution standpoint, is fine. That doesn't preclude using platform specific APIs to make the application better. Like using C# but targeting iOS's UI toolkits. Or using signals from a Mono application.

While MS may have certainly intended to fragment Java, the core concept of platform specific APIs isn't inherently a bad thing.

Also note that during this time, MS supported Windows on non-Intel architectures so I'm not sure about the x86 comment.

⬐ wfjackson

>So Microsoft wrote their own Java runtime called the MS JVM, and made it part of Windows, it extended Java to do Windows-only things, meaning there were now "Java" apps that could only run on Windows, destroying the whole point of Java.

The more important question is, was there anything that prevented Sun or anyone else from implementing those in the other OSes? Otherwise it looks like programs are limited to the most basic level everywhere. I do remember the MS JVM was significantly faster than Sun's. So the solution was to slow it down or for Sun to make it's own faster?

It's in Microsoft's interest to make things run faster on it's own OS. For example of a similar issue, see Flash on OS X and Jobs' memo regarding how it sucked and made OS X look bad and refusal to allow it in iOS. How is that a good thing and what MS did bad?

Instead of improving the JVM, Sun decided to make money by suing MS. No wonder that bloated piece of slow crap that looks like crap is dying a slow death and stopped being relevant.

I remember using a popular bittorrent client called Azureus that ran on the JVM. My laptop would get super hot and slow to a crawl. Also remember how J2ME made mobile Java development a complete hell before Windows Mobile and iPhone came on the scene?

http://www.zdnet.com/three-billion-devices-run-java-yeah-but...

⬐ easytiger

Your comment pissed me off a bit.

> The more important question is, was there anything that prevented Sun or anyone else from implementing those in the other OSes?

Yes, they made calls to native microsoft frameworks etc.

> I do remember the MS JVM was significantly faster than Sun's.

Lets dig out the binaries and do a perf test.

> So the solution was to slow it down or for Sun to make it's own faster?

This comment makes no sense. No idea what you mean by it.

> It's in Microsoft's interest to make things run faster on it's own OS.

This isn't about performance

> How is that a good thing and what MS did bad?

Who said it is any different?

> Instead of improving the JVM, Sun decided to make money by suing MS.

Yea they just abandoned the JVM in 2005. Hasn't changed since.

> I remember using a popular bittorrent client called Azureus that ran on the JVM.

Java for front end had requirements that most desktops of the time failed to meet. So what?

⬐ ygra

>> The more important question is, was there anything that prevented Sun or anyone else from implementing those in the other OSes?

> Yes, they made calls to native microsoft frameworks etc.

Uhm, yes, that's how you run things on another platform. You have to call that platform's APIs. Sun's JVM won't be able to create an AWT window without calling WinAPI's CreateWindow. They have to call the native APIs at some point or another.

⬐ easytiger

And what use are COM components on another OS that doesn't have them?

⬐ ygra

I think there was a misunderstanding here. I thought it was about normal Java APIs which just happened to use a better abstraction on Windows than what Sun was providing. You were probably referring to MS-specific Java APIs that were corresponding exactly to certain COM objects for functionality that didn't exist on other OSes, I guess.

⬐ easytiger

Yes, those are the things microsoft added. Another point was things they refused to add. Such as JNI & RMI. They used J/Direct for Windows specific system stuff.

The simple facts of the case are that Sun license the Java brand to someone who wants to implement a JVM/API but you have to pass the TCK/JCK testsuite to keep the license. MS would have failed that.

⬐ AnimalMuppet

To add a bit: Microsoft added stuff to the standard packages (java and com.sun, if memory serves), but the stuff they added would have been Windows-only. So you write it on Windows, using what looks like standard packages, and then - surprise! - it won't run everywhere, it will only run on Windows. A nasty, hidden form of lockin. And Microsoft was doing this deliberately, trying for the lockin. That's why Sun sued. And, since the contract prohibited exactly what Microsoft did, Sun won.

⬐ easytiger

Exact same policy with OpenGL before DIrect-X came along.

⬐ xxs

>>I do remember the MS JVM was significantly faster than Sun's.

This is not true, actually. JDK1.1 1997 had JIT. MS had basically exposed the Variant and COM, the windows handles and part of WinAPI. Overriding paint(Graphic) on a native AWT component (say java.awt.Button) did nothing either and so on.

>>Instead of improving the JVM, Sun decided to make money by suing MS. No wonder that bloated piece of slow crap that looks like crap is dying a slow death and stopped being relevant.

JDK1.3 with hotspot compiler (May, 2000) had the fastest JIT by far.

⬐ wfjackson

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine

> It was the fastest Windows-based implementation of a Java virtual machine for the first two years after its release.[1] Sun Microsystems, the creator of Java, sued Microsoft in October 1997 for incompletely implementing the Java 1.1 standard.[2]

Which is the fastest JVM after 1997 is essentially a moot point after the lawsuit was filed.

I also like how Apple completely sidestepped such kinds of situations in iOS by disallowing third party SDKs and alternate browser engines. If there can be no Netscape or Java, there is no threat and no need to kill something and potentially get into trouble. Same with Google and Chromebooks.

⬐ laumars

You don't need a runtime environment on the client side to design a cross platform development toolkit. What happens with iOS is that 3rd party tools compile native iOS packages (kind of like cross compiling to target a platform different from the one you're developing in)

⬐ comex

Such as Flash, which Apple did try to kill - remember the old section 3.3.1?

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flas...

The clause was removed just 5 months later; there were rumors that potential antitrust issues were involved:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2010/05/apples-compiler-policy-...

History repeats itself.

⬐ laumars

There's a few different solutions around. I believe one of them (https://trigger.io/) is even YC funded.

⬐ aleem

Absolutely, I am not sure why the other comments are blaming the interviewer as being stubborn or thick. He was being pedantic and rightfully so. It sets a pretty good tone for the questioning, the right tone. He got multiple responses to the same question, which I think is a good thing. There is more opportunity for the questioner to get his desired response.

At the 32 minute mark it comes to a head where Gates is reading a 3 line mail for a while, rocking back and forth. The email written by Gates read: "Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do, to undermine Sun".

Prior to that document being produced in the video, Gates spent a good 10 minutes or so on the arguing the use of the words, "competitive threat" and "undermine" and so forth.

Gates also admitted to speaking directly with Steve Jobs on the phone. This was clearly anti-competitive behaviour.

The next line of questioning then goes into pedantic details about Microsoft's discussions with Apple and the same game continues.

⬐ ghshephard

"Gates also admitted to speaking directly with Steve Jobs on the phone. This was clearly anti-competitive behaviour."

There is no law, implied, explicit, or otherwise that suggests CEOs of competing companies can't, or even shouldn't talk with each other.

While there are many areas that are off limits to competitors (setting price levels, dividing markets, reducing supply) - there are lots of valid reasons for competitors to communicate on a regular basis around issues like standards, purchasing agreements, licensing agreements, etc...

I'm sure that Boo-Keun Yoon (CEO of Samsung) and Tim Cook have frequent conversations trying to settle their differences.

⬐ aleem

The anti-competitive behaviour was the conversations with Apple regarding collusion to undermine Sun. These conversations spanned email, phone calls and meetings all within close proximity. The email was the clearest indication of it as it spelt out the "clear plan" on which Microsoft would proceed.

As per the email, the phone call (which in itself cannot be proved but more matter is shared later on when Microsoft CFO/Treasurer met with Jobs and other documents came to light).