I'm not sure what your comment has to do with development time static code analysis...Stuff that only runs on a developer's machine or build system never touch the end user's machine...

Can't possibly be cheaper anymore considering the new VS edition: "Community" is free

So's IntelliJ's community edition. But if you compare the roughly equivalent tiers above that, IntelliJ's about half the price, give or take.

Even if you're on a Mac or Linux, you have so many better options than Eclipse. Don't throw away your sanity AND self respect...

Making what is basically a fork of a platform isn't exactly the same as targeting a platform they don't control.

You'd have a point if they forked Android, tacked the Windows Phone UI on it, and added support for THAT in Visual Studio...but thats not what they're doing.

Visual Studio is definitely farther along than IntelliJ was 10 years ago. With Resharper, for obvious reasons, its almost the same thing. Even without, its not too too far behind (most of Resharper's features at this point overlap....people just don't even realize it, having used the plugin for so long and not wanting to learn different keyboard shortcuts).

Overall IntelliJ is still superior IMO (and cheaper, especially if you don't need all the languages, so you can use something more specific like WebStorm or Rubymine), but not by much.

Since they don't control Android (open source maybe, but the version that ends up on phones is vetoed by Google and fairly tightly controlled), the most they could do is submit patches to it, that could be accepted or declined. They could also bundle extra libraries...like every other Android app toolkit/framework does.

Not much evil to do there. This isn't exactly the first time Microsoft includes support for open source stuff (ie: when they started supporting jquery). They go through the same channels anyone else would.

Generally what happens in cities with poor transit, is that people stop using them. Then the transit authorities look at their statistic dashboard, see "oh, bus route XYZ is almost empty. Means we can cut it!" and things just get worse.

Happened in my hometown. There was a bus that would get me straight to the subway, and during peek hour it would come every 3 minutes (ie: the buses were often back to back). They were all jam packed, too.

They eventually made changes to the route to "optimize" things. The route was split in 2 somewhat different routes, and came half as often. They forgot that not everyone went to the subway (so going from midpoint to midpoint was no longer possible, as the routes didnt link) and that 6 minutes during peek hour was ok, but it meant 1 HOUR wait off peek time.

During peek hour, since the routes were not longer as useful unless you wanted to hit the subway, half or so of the riders just stopped and used alternatives. Off peek hour you were lucky to see 1 person in either bus.

Eventually they just cut one of the routes and the second one was only running during peek hour at 30 minutes interval for lack of riders. It became totally useless.

Crap. They may fund github!

Except they're not embracing anything. They're opening some of their most popular stuff. Do you think they're going to try and kill Github by...putting stuff on github?

He's not suggesting anti-trust regulation per say. He's saying revert things to the state they would have been if it had been void of regulations all along. That is,the companies didn't get a government sponsored monopoly for several decades. Then after that reversion is done, go all out free market.

Its obviously not possible in practice, but if you wanted a free market, you'd have to have it from the beginning. Trying to break a government-made monopoly via free market is impossible.

Ok, so ISP ABC signs a 20 years exclusivity deal with Small Town XYZ.

ISP raises rate through the roof, blocks streaming services, etc.

It is now profitable to compete with ISP ABC...but...you have to wait 20 years. 20 years is basically 1/4th of my expected lifespan. I could move I guess, but...

Now, the 20 years runs out, I'm a decade away from retiring at that point....a bunch of ISPs just can't wait until they can compete again...but ISP ABC made a truckton of money from the exclusivity deal...and can make a heck of a deal with the city...and get another 20 years exclusivity deal.

Yeah, thats working great.

Net neutrality isn't necessarily what people want, but its the closest thing to what people want that they can get right now in the US.

Think about it. If we had actual competition, and I could go and pick from one of 10 ISPs...none of them would dare, let say, throttle netflix, as they would basically bankrupt themselves. Prices would go down, services would go up (you may have a package that gives videostreaming priority...which is not net neutral, but if its a CHOICE, and you can go to the competitor that gives gaming traffic priority...it may not be a bad thing for you as a customer. Sucks a bit for providers, but still).

The problem is we don't have that. If you're on Comcast, and they throttle netflix, and you want netflix, well, TOUGH. Yay, Netflix makes a deal, and thats cool..but I want Crunchyroll and Funimation. Well, too bad. Its netflix or eat up the throttling! Net neutrality helps that, but it still doesn't give me choice.

Companies barely optimize for Windows at this point (have you seen the minimum requirement for assassin's creed unity?).

Heck, some games have slowdowns on -consoles-.

And you expected them to optimize the Linux version?

Baby steps here cowboy.

Every time something gets easier when it comes to software development, people just push things further (as they should).

Thats why no matter how many versions of Internet Explorer we stop supporting, web development is still a pain in the ass. The moment people stop doing something hard, they just take all the time they saved, and tackle something else that all of a sudden become worth it (ie: supporting mobile operating systems, optimizing stuff with webgl if its available, whatever, you name it)

Things that went from "No way, we don't have time for this!" become standard, and the cycle continues. Every minute we save because a task is automated or redundant, is a minute someone spends doing something that was once impossible. And if that person works for a competitor, you now have to catch up.

No, its not more common than I'd think. All your examples generally have a lot of people behind them, and only a fraction of those people design the API. You can have a product with 500 developers behind it, and have 1-2 people working on the API design. And thats not counting the countless people who make APIs nilly willy (I don't consider that designing an API in the same way this post isn't a hardcover novel.).

I guess it was a poor choice of wording on my part. You're right, most products involve some form of API. A (very small) subset of that actually has effort put into designing it. And of whats left, only a fraction of the developers involved in the project are actually involved in the API design. A bit how in the movie industry, only a fraction of the people involved are script writers.