HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

>Ballmer just wanted to sell Windows and Office like products to big enterprises.

Yes, but actually, NO. I know it's fashionable to bash Ballmer for being the stereotypical image of the late '90's corporate villain, pulled right out of Office Space[1], but he was also the one who got the ball rolling on what we today know as Azure and saved the Xbox division during the red ring of death and other major issues that plagued the Xbox 360 and cost Microsoft billions.

If he only cared about the enterprise stuff, he would have sold the Xbox division or let it sink at the first sign of losses, but instead he propped it up despite the massive losses. IMHO, he should get some kudos for that as Xbox is currently the only competitor to the Play Station (Nintendo isn't since they do their own thing).

"I am trembling, sat in front of Steve (Ballmer), who I love to death, but he can be an intimidating human being. And Steve said, 'OK, talk me through this,'" Moore added. "I said, 'If we don't do this, this brand is dead.'" If we hadn't made that decision there and then, and instead tried to fudge over this problem, then the Xbox brand and Xbox One wouldn't exist today."[2]

Ballmer also set the stage for Microsoft's entry into the cloud space in the early days before it was even called Azure, when he saw what AWS was doing.

"Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, initially resisted the idea of embracing the software services paradigm fearing that it would cannibalize Windows and Office business which was contributing to 80% of the revenue. Eventually, Ballmer was not only convinced but pushed Microsoft to become a fully-fledged cloud company through “we’re-all-in” war cry."[3]

Not saying you should like him or anything, but this guys really deserves more credit that he gets for where Microsoft is today (the good and the bad).

As a bonus, for added humor, here he is going crazy on stage about 'DEVELOPERS', like a hamster on cocaine. [4].

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/

[2] https://www.vg247.com/rrod-xbox-360-ballmer-xbox-one

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2020/02/03/a-look-...

[4] https://youtu.be/I14b-C67EXY?t=12

⬐ michaelcampbell

> As a bonus, for added humor, here he is going crazy on stage about 'DEVELOPERS',

I guess some people found it funny, but everyone I work around as a software developer (not for native Windows/MS, mind) all found it incredibly embarrassing.

Upon re-examination: if github/microsoft is owning the analytics data gathered from monitoring the keystrokes, then they are a third party, and could possibly make that data available across time; so that a prospective employer can get a view on past performance of a candidate, or the new employer will have access to analytics data gathered on you while working at a previous company. Now that one has the potential to make the whole thing much more sinister. There might be a big difference between the situation where your current employer has a keylogger on you, as compared to the keylogger sitting in the cloud. Grandparent poster Bogwog has a solid argument here.

It all depends if the industry will act this way or not, I still hope that there is some level of desency left somewhere, because being too paranoid about all of it will not get me anyway either. Also the utility of all this analytics data is limited, for example they could possible get the 'number of lines of code' written by someone, but it is impossible to judge how essential all these lines of code were to the business. Also there would be a significant backlash, if they get too invasive on the privacy of developers. (that's the moment for the video where Steve Balmer is flipping out on stage and shouting 'developers' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY )

Steve Balmer wins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY&t=10s

If you can do a shuffling run, punctuated by awkward hops around a stage while screaming, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" to applause from a huge crowd at a corporate event, then you've got some devoted fanatics.

There is another big reason that Apple didn't buy Be and was right not to -- and I say that although BeOS is my favourite x86 OS ever.

Dev tools.

Remember Steve Ballmer's "Developers! Developers! Developers!" dance? https://youtu.be/I14b-C67EXY?t=10

He was right. Without developers for a new OS, you are dead in the water. Which is my MS has fought so hard to keep compatibility.

Apple had to switch OS. That meant it had to persuade all its devs to switch OS. That meant it had to offer the devs something very special, and that something was NeXTstep and Interface Builder. NeXT's dev tools were the best in the software business and _that_ offered trad Mac devs a good enough reason to come across.

Be had nothing like that.

BeOS was wonderful, but it was not a replacement for NeXTstep as a replacement for MacOS.

But there was another company out there.

BeOS was a natively multiprocessor OS, when that was very rare. One of the reasons is that in fast x86 computers, the x86 chip is one of the most expensive single components in the machine, and it puts out most of the heat.

Especially at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, the era of big fat Slot 2 Pentium IIIs and worse still Pentium 4s.

But there was one company making powerful desktops with the cheapest, coolest-running CPUs in the world, where making a dual-processor machine _in 1998_ was barely more expensive than making a uniprocessor one.

That company's CPUs are the best-selling CPUs ever designed and outsell all x86 chips put together (Intel + AMD + Via etc.) by well over 10 to 1.

And it needed a lightweight, SMP-capable OS very badly, right at the time Be was porting BeOS from PowerPC to x86...

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/55562.html

He is a Steve Ballmer sendup, but Gates and Ballmer worked closely for many years at Microsoft and had many fundamental disagreements about the direction the company should take. Ballmer refocused Microsoft from software to hardware when he became CEO (hence "The Box" joke on the show).

Ballmer himself probably doesn't like the caricature (he's a bit of an internet darling, isn't he? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY), but would someone who worked with Ballmer find it accurate? Likely.

Not to mention, Gates wrote the article about Silicon Valley linked in this thread.

Here is a video of said character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY&t=12s

the guy is hilarious at the stage: https://youtu.be/I14b-C67EXY?t=12s

I thought the "web developer love" reprise was done in very good humour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY#t=102

There's a rough and ready likeableness about Steve Ballmer's personality I've always kinda liked.