Gates' Replacement says Microsoft Must Simplify

Javaman59 writes "This article in The Australian newspaper describes the background and the agenda of Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates' replacement as chief architect at Microsoft. The creator of Lotus Notes, he's a high-calibre technologist. From the article: 'Ray's a programmer's programmer .. He's much closer to an uber-engineer, whereas Bill hasn't been a programmer for a number of years.' Ozzie is also driving Microsoft to simplify its software: 'Complexity kills .. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.' He's not the only brilliant programmer in the world, but he does have Microsoft's resources behind him."

Good plan!

[Anonymous Coward]

back to DOS would be an improvement. (i am serious)

Re:He is not a programmer's programmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if the guy who brought the world Lotus Notes thinks Microsoft need to simplify their software, things are worse than - no, correction - almost exactly as bad as I thought.

Re:He is not a programmer's programmer

[IAmTheDave]

Hey, if the guy who brought the world Lotus Notes thinks Microsoft need to simplify their software, things are worse than - no, correction - almost exactly as bad as I thought.

And how many trillions of lines of code is Vista?? I say put Aero on top of Windows 95. Now we're rocking simplicity!!

who'da thunk it?

[stinky wizzleteats]

This may be the single best long term decision Microsoft has ever made. At least until Ballamer murders Ozzie with a chair.

Lotus Notes???

[Pedrito]

I don't know, if I were the person responsible for Lotus Notes, I might want to omit that from my resume. If you haven't had Lotus Notes inflicted upon you, count yourself lucky.

Technologist!

[Rob T Firefly]

The creator of Lotus Notus, he's a high calibre technologist.

Not only is he a technologist, he's a great scientician and an award-winning engineeringer. His unfailicating leaderostimation and efficientistic directionating of Microsoft's profusical resources will undoubtingly work for the betterificationating of all humanitism.

Re:From the horse's... uh... well...

[Hoi Polloi]

"one of the top five programmers in the universe"

I know where the other 4 are, they are all in Russia sending me spam and running porn sites.

Viva La Simplicity!!

[general scruff]

Command Line here we COME!!

Clue (was Re:who'da thunk it?)

[Billosaur]

Chairman Ballmer did it in the Conference Room with a Chair

Re:Good plan!

[WillerZ]

DOS/360 I assume?

Personally I prefer TSO.

Too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It kind of reminds me of the Captain of the Titanic handing over command to the third mate: "She's a magnificent ship except for a small gash in the side. I trust you to take good care of her."

By the time Microsoft gets its problems sorted out, Linux will be the de facto standard. Engineering the complexity out of Windows will take years.

Re:Technologist!

[Hoi Polloi]

That statement is perfectly comulent and Ray will embiggen MS.

Ozzie

[Hoi Polloi]

From what I've seen of Ozzie, especially on TV, he is in no condition to go on tour with a heavy metal band never mind run a major company.

"Gonna be tough to undo years and years of neglect."

That's what rehab is for.

Rock on!

Re:Technologist!

[GreatDrok]

Not only is he a technologist, he's a great scientician and an award-winning engineeringer. His unfailicating leaderostimation and efficientistic directionating of Microsoft's profusical resources will undoubtingly work for the betterificationating of all humanitism.

That's it. The Vogons are on slashdot. Where did I leave my towel?

Re:Technologist!

[Stormwatch]

"Notus", on the other paw...

Am I correct to presume that you're a furry?

Re:Lotus Notes

[Electrum]

If anything, the reason I think people hate it so much is precisely because it allows just any wanker to come in and crap out a solution without thinking about it.

You just described Visual Basic.

Re:Technologist!

[Yewbert]

Awright - who taught Don King to type?

Re:He is not a programmer's programmer

[martinultima]

What the HELL are you high on?? If you want simplicity, I say we need Aero for Windows 3.1! Or even better... Aero DOS! Now that's simplicity for you!

Re:Technologist!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

You'd have to be high calibre to fix Microsoft. 0.45 should do it.

No. I'm afraid there's only one calibur that will be enough to deal with the Redmond campus. [wikipedia.org]

Re:If he's an über engineer

[Elvis Parsley]

HP calculators he uses, for RPN he thinks in.

Re:You gave away your market share, no one took it

[el cisne]

"We barely had to pitch Exchange to get businesses off of Notes, we just went down the list of suckage and asked which items applied to their current environment."

This was of course after you beat Notes. I mean after you beat Notes it was no problem. We all remember when you beat Notes, and often say, "Wow, remember when they beat Notes?" "Yeah, that was great when they beat Notes."

Makes me wonder what else you guys like to 'beat'.

OSS Lotus substitute...

[Anonymous Coward]

please tell me of the superior product in the open source realm that does what Lotus Notes does.

The GCC compiler (and the C language). It takes just about the same equal amount of work in C or in Lotus to make the same equivalent application.