Microsoft Insights from the Inventor Jeffrey Snover
December 16, 2021
Microsoft is an innovative place. The company released the precision-tuned Windows 11. The firm innovated with fresh announcements about bad actors from China. Then the Redmond giant imposed some manual work on those who wanted to use a browser like Netscape or Opera.
Thus, I was interested in reading what inventor Jeffrey Snover had to say about his utility PowerShell. Navigate to “An Interview With PowerShell Inventor Jeffrey Snover.” You can either listen to the interview or read a transcript from this page.
I want to highlight what I call “insights” from this interview.
The first item is a quote about Microsoft’s ability to manage programming work done from remote locations. (Remember, please, that there is the wonderfulness of Teams to make this process a flawless as possible.) Inventor Jeffrey Snover said:
We got funding but the bulk of the development team was in India. That was a disaster as none of us knew how to do distributed development.
Interesting. I like the colorful technical term “disaster.”
The second item concerns the value of PowerShell for “the modern world.” I quote:
The interesting thing is that the Windows approach is winning in the world and that makes PowerShell the best tool for the modern world.
I wonder if inventor Jeffrey Snover is categorizing Amazon, Apple, and Google as having developers who are not part of the modern world?
Third, I circled this fascinating passage. I must admit that I thought about the SolarWinds’ misstep when I read the sentences:
software works when it works and fails when it fails. That sounds stupid but it isn’t. Most programmers focus on success. They get a clear vision of success, they budget their time for success, and they get emotionally centered on the success of their technology. When their code works, it works. BUT, it turns out that the world is not perfect. There are problems. APIs don’t always succeed. Many engineers half-ass their error handling and in lots of cases, that error handling does not work. When their code fails, it fails. Systemically introducing ‘chaos’ into a system is the best way to find out whether your code is going to work when it fails.
Are these engineers which a not taking care of errors employed by Microsoft, or are these engineers excluded from the core of devoted PowerShell users. Those are the specialists who are part of the modern world. The others? Who knows?
Fourth, I found this statement suggestive:
Microsoft is focused on “Developers! Developers! Developers!”.
Does this explain why Microsoft partners are engaged in diagnosing, reworking, and fixing up Microsoft generated software and systems. The “developers’” mantra strikes me as a socially acceptable way to say, “You people can make a fortune as Microsoft certified engineers. It’s employment for life.”
Fifth, I liked this succinct statement:
You have to decide whether security is important or not. If you decide it is important, you allocate the resources and follow the well-established Security Development Lifecycle patterns and practices. Lip service doesn’t get the job done.
Microsoft and security. It is the 21st century equivalent of ham and eggs or peanut butter and jelly. Bad actors love Microsoft code. Opportunity in abundance. Wasn’t the word “disaster” used to describe Microsoft’s management expertise in the time of Covid and distributed work?
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2021
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
