What's Microsoft's real plan? With the advent of .Net, the Microsoft/Novell deal, the splitting of Microsoft into three major groups internally, and the impossibility of Windows being developed the same way that Vista was for the the generation of Windows it becomes quite possible that Windows as we know it - with an NT Kernel and all - is no longer the future of Windows. Just how might Microsoft surive? Check out my full blog describing Microsoft's Real Plan.

From the blog:

It has been my speculation that .Net was the start of Microsoft's plan for how they will survive in a post Windows world.

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Imagine (for a moment) Microsoft releasing a new version of Windows - Windows NG (for Next Generation) - that does not provide any backwards compatibility whatsoever. If Microsoft did this, they would need to be able to quickly push a lot of people to support their new system; or they could ride on the shoulders of giants - existing OS's that are already out there that have a lot of software

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then how could Microsoft use an existing OS? What would there be for them to use? Well, there is always the BSD's, but then Microsoft would have to fork and support their own - kind of like Apple did; which could be costly. Or, Microsoft could chose a Linux Distribution (Novell's SuSE?) and make it its primary back end; add on the extra tools to move their infrastructure over (Vista's User Mode Sound and Video drivers, and .Net) and a user interface to make it look like Windows

A possibility? Sure. Likely? Only time will tell.

I noticed the Slashdot Article on Why Software Is Hard and wrote a response in my Blog. Should be a good read for any techy. The blog entrie primary talks about Software Engineering vs. Programming. Needless to say, these go hand-in-hand with why software is hard. To quote from the Blog:

The key difference, however, is that the Software Engineer realizes that the "programming process" is just the implementation phase of creating software; and that there is a lot more to be done before the implementation phase can even begin. Comparitively, the programmer wants to just jump in and start writing code as soon as they have been handed a task, skipping the rest of the process, and possibly even ignoring any part of that process if anything from it was handed to him/her.

And FYI - the blog is more than just a link to the Slashdot article, and its related article. It also includes a link to few postings on OS News and its sister article, as well as some responses to a couple of the comments to that article. Needless to say, Slashdot (from what I could see) was a lot more forgiving of the original article.