The New Microsoft
Tags: microsoft, dotnet, discuss
Published: 2018-09-26 08:12:03

---
title: The New Microsoft
published: true
tags: microsoft,dotnet,discuss
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---

The [recent announcement that Hyper-V Quick Create now features Ubuntu](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/09/17/run-ubuntu-virtual-machines-made-even-easier-with-hyper-v-quick-create/) served as a reminder of something I originally regarded with cautious amusement, but has now subsisted for long enough I can actually accept it. Microsoft is no longer the “evil empire” it once was.

## In No Particular Order

C# and Windows 2k/7 were the proverbial “foot in the door”. The former being (imho) the managed language/runtime that Java should have been, the latter being (again, imho) the first OS from Redmond that was difficult to really complain about as an end-user.

The [Microsoft acquisition of Xamarin](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/02/24/microsoft-to-acquire-xamarin-and-empower-more-developers-to-build-apps-on-any-device/) was interesting. Other than becoming a first-class component of Visual Studio doesn’t seem like much has come out of this, however.

“Express” editions of Visual Studio have existed for a long time, but [Visual Studio Community](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/) felt like the first that was a real product that could be used by professionals.

[Orleans](https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/) is probably of limited use to the majority of people, but it’s an interesting contribution in the area of distributed systems.

When [Windows Subsystem for Linux](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10) was announced it might as well have been hell freezing over. Ok, I haven’t actually used it for anything and as far as I can tell it’s comparable to either [cygwin](https://www.cygwin.com/) or [msys](http://mingw.org/wiki/msys), but still…

After using Emacs for 3 years and then Vim for almost 15 as my general-purpose text editor of choice, [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) has handedly brushed them aside.

[.Net Core](https://github.com/dotnet) seems to have really lit the fire under C#. My love for it and .Net Standard can scarcely be contained.

Just the other day I found out [PowerShell is also multi-platform](https://github.com/powershell/powershell). Its remoting functionality was convoluted/clumsy compared to ssh the last time I looked at it (2015), but I have long lusted after its commandline argument auto-completion. And, if Windows is a necessity in your world, a first-class replacement for cmd.exe was sorely needed.

On that note, [OpenSSH is an optional Windows component](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2017/12/15/using-the-openssh-beta-in-windows-10-fall-creators-update-and-windows-server-1709/).

Can’t leave out the much maligned [Github acquisition](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/).

Honorable mention goes to [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/). Never used it, but have heard generally good things. And let’s be honest, Amazon/AWS need the competition.

Just the latest chapter in the [“embrace, extend, extinguish”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish) saga? Perhaps.