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12/02/2002 Archived Entry: "Laying pipe...all day long"

The title refers to a song that's been off-and-on stuck in my head for years. Working song with sexual overtones: my favourite.

Did a little contracting after work today, which I like a lot. It earns me more than work and is usually either much more interesting or much less taxing than my usual workday. Though I do have to admit my work this past couple weeks has been better on both counts. A couple months ago I was ready to apologize to my boss, then tell everyone else to go to hell so I could go home and have a nervous breakdown. There's nothing like working your ass off and being told you are doing a crappy job to make you hate humanity (or at least HR administrators).

What really scares me about enjoying my job is that sometimes I have to drop some of my ingrained geek-predjudices and open my eyes to the fact that some thing created by Microsoft are very cool. VBA, notwithstanding the monstrous huge security flaws that have turned Windows machines into so much virus-ridden slagmetal, does a very good job of automating processes in ways that I can't think any Linux or other operating system does. There is a an attempt to make a VBA for linux GNOME Basic) which seems pretty good, but it's not going to have that sort of basic connectivity to an application that I found in VBA for Outlook. That's a shame, because it really could be the 'killer app' that linux really needs.

This leads me to the interactivity that I see in the Windows operating system between all sorts of applications that all depends on Windows/Internet Explorer. While I cringe at the ways that Windows forces me to fit into a specific dumbed-down mold, I can't help but relish the idea that if I could just reach into Windows' deepest guts I could build something wonderful. Unfortunately with Microsoft's battle against releasing even one line of it's precious source code, I doubt I'll be able to do so in my lifetime.

And that is how Microsoft is stifling innovation, by preventing developers from building from the ground up. Sure, they can entrance me with the simpleness of the high-level stuff; but they will never attract the best and the brightest to build the newest and coolest and most useful because those people (and I) want to know the underlying principles that everything is built on...and see if we can do better.

I'll just let out a big *SIGH*, and hope that the killer app for Linux comes a little quicker.

Replies: 6 comments

This leads me to the interactivity that I see in the Windows operating system between all sorts of applications that all depends on Windows/Internet Explorer. While I cringe at the ways that Windows forces me to fit into a specific dumbed-down mold, I can't help but relish the idea that if I could just reach into Windows' deepest guts I could build something wonderful. Unfortunately with Microsoft's battle against releasing even one line of it's precious source code, I doubt I'll be able to do so in my lifetime. Why not? Are you talking about rewriting Windows, or just building something for it? Cuz while they don't release the source code, there's lots of documentation about the APIs and stuff like that. Heck, most of it's on the MSDN webpage. Posted by Chuk @ 12/03/2002 10:56 AM PST

The unfortunate thing is while you look and see "lots of APIs", you don't have the same functionality as a Microsoft developer does because they don't release all of them. Anything you create for Windows is always going to be less than what Microsoft creates because of this. This control they have reduces your chances of ever creating something that could compete with a Microsoft non-OS product. An example: In VBA for Outlook, if you want to create a drop-down Calendar in one of your forms, you must buy and install a third-party ActiveX control (most of which have a per-user license that makes it impossible to release a bit of VBA code for this to the public). Microsoft can put these in its forms all it wants, because it has more backend control over what it creates and the knowledge of how these things work. They will never share this knowledge and allow anyone (you or me) to use the Windows OS to its fullest potential because they want to maintain the ability to 'build a better mousetrap' than one you could ever build. This is a pretty high-level example. On a lower level, what if you had a brilliant idea of how you could build a GUI over top of the Windows subsystem that is HUGELY better than Windows. You can't, because you can't reach down that far. Or even, what if you want to build a GUI for blind people that would do this? You can't, because you can't reach down that far and Microsoft will neither release the information you'd need to do this nor do it themselves because their isn't the market for it that they'd need to make it cost-effective. In a one-liner: When you live your entire life in a small box, you can paint a sky inside the box, but you can never look at the real sky and maybe invent an airplane. Posted by Greg @ 12/03/2002 01:08 PM PST

The unfortunate thing is while you look and see "lots of APIs", you don't have the same functionality as a Microsoft developer does because they don't release all of them. Anything you create for Windows is always going to be less than what Microsoft creates because of this. This control they have reduces your chances of ever creating something that could compete with a Microsoft non-OS product. An example: In VBA for Outlook, if you want to create a drop-down Calendar in one of your forms, you must buy and install a third-party ActiveX control (most of which have a per-user license that makes it impossible to release a bit of VBA code for this to the public). Microsoft can put these in its forms all it wants, because it has more backend control over what it creates and the knowledge of how these things work. They will never share this knowledge and allow anyone (you or me) to use the Windows OS to its fullest potential because they want to maintain the ability to 'build a better mousetrap' than one you could ever build. This is a pretty high-level example. On a lower level, what if you had a brilliant idea of how you could build a GUI over top of the Windows subsystem that is HUGELY better than Windows. You can't, because you can't reach down that far. Or even, what if you want to build a GUI for blind people that would do this? You can't, because you can't reach down that far and Microsoft will neither release the information you'd need to do this nor do it themselves because their isn't the market for it that they'd need to make it cost-effective. In a one-liner: When you live your entire life in a small box, you can paint a sky inside the box, but you can never look at the real sky and maybe invent an airplane. Posted by Greg @ 12/03/2002 01:09 PM PST

sendmail error fixed, sorry for double-posting Posted by Greg @ 12/03/2002 01:10 PM PST

That makes sense. But then why not just do "the great thing" with an open source OS where you can see all the source? Is it just that Windows has already got the interactivity between programs set up? People are already trying to get there with Linux, and they probably will one day. Before MS releases the source code to Windows, anyway. Posted by Chuk @ 12/03/2002 03:43 PM PST