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Date:      Thu, 4 Apr 2002 11:32:01 -0800
From:      Benjamin Krueger <benjamin@macguire.net>
To:        William Carrel <william.carrel@infospace.com>
Cc:        Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Anti-Unix Site Runs Unix
Message-ID:  <20020404113201.C2470@rain.macguire.net>
In-Reply-To: <1AFD7E6F-47EB-11D6-BF98-003065D5E9A4@infospace.com>; from william.carrel@infospace.com on Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 08:43:34AM -0800
References:  <xzppu1f1oh5.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <1AFD7E6F-47EB-11D6-BF98-003065D5E9A4@infospace.com>

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* William Carrel (william.carrel@infospace.com) [020404 08:43]:
> On Thursday, April 4, 2002, at 07:18 AM, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote:
> > To summarize:
> >
> > A) Microsoft developers are smart
> > B) Microsoft developers don't document their code
> > C) Microsoft does not require developers to document their code
> > D) Programmers who document their code are smart
> >
> > There are no conclusions possible based on the above four premises.
> 
> Yeah, I obviously needed more caffeine when I wrote that...
> 
> Although I stand by my conclusion regardless of my poor logic at 2 AM.
> --
> William Carrel

	It's not a bad conclusion in that you're almost right on target. I'd almost
say Microsoft hires a few very smart developers, coaxing them to stay with
incredible benefits and salaries, and a whole lot of programmers, mostly fresh
out of college, to write code en masse. (They can't get paid that badly
either, a few folks I'm friends with host some kickass parties from their 1400
square foot apartment in downtown seattle. Wish I could afford to drop $2000
on a pad.) 

	I've been to parties with both kinds of coders and being the inquisitive 
(nosy) guy I am, listened to a lot of Microsoft stories. My experience has 
been that developers at Microsoft design software internals, and programmers
get assigned to write code. Maybe it'll get used, maybe not. Most of the
programmers I've met were kids 2 or 3 years out of college. Some were still in
the middle of learning things like XML or other technologies they would "soon
be using at work".

	Microsoft seems very much to be a brute force code factory, churning code 
internally, and selling the end product to customers when another person from 
some far-off part of the company says go.

-- 
Benjamin Krueger

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
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