5 years ago for .Net was a very long time ago. Back then the only games in town were C++, java or .net. The former was for the hardcore, the other two were written by programmers who had no clue what they were doing. You're just taking a memory of what it used to be like and comparing it to what you know in OSS today.
You're talking before the fairly meteoric rise in the standard of web programming over the past few years. Before blogs. When tables vs divs was an actual argument. When C++ was relevant in anything apart from high performance programming.
You're also talking about .Net 2.0, pre-LINQ, extension methods and MVC.
And reading your post makes it sound more that you have a chip on your shoulder about bad programmers more than anything else:
lazy, non-challenged developers
ASP.NET is a hulking piece of shit, anyone that tells you otherwise is lying and/or too stupid to realize it
other .NET developers you know are unchallenged nitwits without any sense of vision, any sense of craft. A bunch of me too dim wits who collect paychecks by copying and pasting their way to completion
redmond regurgitating drone army
There are lots of jobs in .Net or java. There's sweet fa for a crap programmer in OSS. Once you realise that is the reason you came across so many crap programmers, perhaps you can understand that there's nothing actually wrong with .Net, it was actually a pretty fucking big revolution. On the other hand you will still come across .Net programmers who think datatables are pretty funky, rely heavily on view state and bizarrely believe .Net controls aren't the spawn of the devil.
As for the rest of it, honestly, 'Win2K server admin', um, it's moved on man. Stop beating the straw doll. 'The world is open now', look a little more objectively at the world we actually live in. Did you even notice the iPhone come out a few years back? Or the Kindle? Or all the other closed source proprietary systems that a me too OS movement gleefully copies, badly for the most part. There's plenty of room at the table for both.
Yes MS have turned into a pretty crap company under Ballmer, but their language teams are still pretty damn good.
The reality is you've become a more experienced programmer. And somehow you're magically attributing it to OSS instead of just knowing more than when you were wet behind the ears.
Or all the other closed source proprietary systems that a me too OS movement gleefully copies, badly for the most part.
OSS and proprietary seem on opposite sides of support-systems and customer-facing systems. Proprietary > OSS for users' visual cortex, OSS > proprietary for everything supporting that top layer.
I think part of it is that OSS UI reeks of design-by-committee. Which is something Apple has gotten ridiculously correct. UI needs to be unified and have a flow to it, something which you're more likely to get from a single (highly skilled) person than from a thousand.
> I think part of it is that OSS UI reeks of design-by-committee.
I hate reading this. It shows little experience with with open source programs, and ignorance of how open source programs work.
There are hardly any OSS projects with thousands of people- in fact, the only one I can think of is the Linux kernel. Most GUIs in the open source world are worked on by one or two people. Firefox is a good example. Ben Goodger and (one?) other person did essentially all the UI work.
Now, it's true that there are a lot of open source programs with terrible user interfaces. Some of this is because of the strong connection between *nix and OSS, and the primitive toolkits available 15 years ago. Some of this is because it's written without an end user focus. Sometimes the authors don't care. Some of it just sucks.
It's true that Apple has had a lot of success by paying a lot of attention to UI issues. But they're not only different from the majority of OSS software, they're different from the majority of proprietary software. Have you ever tried to explain to someone how to use Opera, or Internet Explorer? Word? Security products like Symantec? The world is filled with baffling crap, it has nothing to do with the licensing scheme.
In short, I am bothered by your generalization because it I believe it to be untrue, and worse, unexamined.
Worked on by one or two people, but criticized and improved (and suggested, influentially) by many. Committee. The point isn't how many people write code for the UI, the point is how many people influence (or control) the direction of the UI.
Just look at Ubuntu's interface preferences. Committee. Everyone wants an option, so they're all there. Perfect for alienating everyone who doesn't want all the options. I.e., 99% of the world. Look at <OSS program X> and poke around (especially the popular ones - try Open Office). You'll find bajillions of settings which prevent average people from going deeper and improving their experience.
edit: granted, this is changing in a few areas. Rails, for instance, is convention over configuration - and look at how successful it's been. Mobile apps have been revolutionized by Apple's apps, and developers all over are rushing to mimic it. People are starting to learn, but it's a long way to the top, and the vast majority of the improvements seem to be originating from companies, not OSS groups.
The Gnome project has a reputation and a long history of removing preferences that people want. The 'Ubuntu interface preferences' are largely Gnome preferences, and taken on and individual basis, are generally quite reasonable. The only 'mess' I know of is the fact that the preferences are displayed in a giant dropdown menu, instead of in a control applet interface, like OS X, Windows, and SuSe do. Gnome actually has a control applet that should take the place of that dropdown, but Ubuntu chooses not to use it.
OpenOffice.org is a disaster whose problems go far deeper than the UI.
Also, rails is changing things by preferring convention over configuration? What year is this, 2005?
In the end, here is my complaint: You are taking what is essentially the best case scenario, proprietary or not, and saying that it means software with a copyright license is more usable than software with a copyleft license. Stop doing that, it does the general discourse about software a disservice.
Best case scenario... OK, how many apps are in the iPhone app store? 1/4 million I think I saw somewhere? How many of those are open source? A lot of those sell more copies than most desktop apps would dream of. You can put open source apps on the store, and it could impact a ton of people. Why isn't it happening? Android apps, from what I've seen, have a similar comparison - while many of the successful open source apps are unique in some functionality, the vast majority of the polished design seems to be coming from small companies. And Android is far more appealing to most programmers / geeks who value open source. What's the disconnect coming from, if not lack of supply?
I've yet to see more than low-double-digits of beautifully designed open source programs, and the majority of those were made entirely by one person, often open-sourced because they didn't think they could get enough money to make monetizing it worthwhile. I've been watching for years (though I could be watching in the wrong area). Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been utterly rocketing towards more focus on design, and has a long history of success.
Want more evidence? Look at games. Millions upon millions of players, probably approaching billions of copies sold / downloaded, very few of which are open source games. There's an entire industry oriented around UI/UX and design... and where's the open source influence? Bad Civilization / Quake clones? A lot of the unique designs I've seen have been done by individuals without open sourcing the code, for whatever reason.
And yes, OOo is frightening on many levels. It's a worst case scenario, and I recognize it... but I see it echoed frequently in other OSS projects.
I have not said OSS cannot produce good UIs. I have said there seems to be a trend, and at least I have seen far less. And also take into account that this is not done by enumerating all programs ever produced; this is weighted by success, especially with the design-oriented consumer culture lately.
I don't know, even a cursory glance at the Ubuntu homepage, complete with shiny screenshots (theoretically chosen to showcase the best design elements), shows there's still a ridiculous distance to go before it'd be anything I'd consider "well designed". Further investigation shows similar inconsistencies across nearly every screenshot of included applications.
Better by far, certainly. The Ubuntu crowd has made significant strides in the past few years. But just look at the "Ubuntu One Music Store" image and tell me you don't see glaring inconsistencies in padding, form outlines, and control styles. Then look at other applications and notice which buttons are shaded and when, and resizable edge styles, and why does the shade get that dark near the bottom without a font highlight to counter the harder-to-read lower contrast?
Are you comparing ubuntu running in vmware to native win7/osx? Then yes, you might come to this conclusion.
Try comparing native/native or virtualized/virtualized. The vmware and virtualbox drivers lack many functions that are used in native-running ubuntu or windows, for that matter.
I hate trolls like you. A lot of us work really hard on making it the best damn platform ever, and it is, and then some quack who doesn't know anything says "it's just like Windows 95" which shows that they didn't even bother to try it out, or take the tour on ubuntu.com or even watch a recent video of the latest release on youtube. And that just sucks the fun out of life.
Please, actually take a look at it before saying something ridiculous.
I'm basing that one first hand experience, but as vetinari correctly guessed, I do run it in VMware. I have no way right now to test if, as he says, that makes a huge difference. But using a VM is how most people will test out operating systems and the best way to get first hand experience without a huge commitment.
Calling users trolls who don't know anything doesn't make me want to give you any credit. Vetinari made me consider that I might be missing out on the best the platform has to offer but you just made me want to uninstall it.
> 5 years ago for .Net was a very long time ago. Back then the only games in town were C++, java or .net.
Wow! I was building sites with Zope by 2002. There were far better alternatives than C++, Java and .NET far earlier than 5 years ago. I did lots and lots of Perl since 1996 and some PHP thrown in around 2000. Only used C++ and Java when nothing else would do (mostly because of clients that had too much of the wrong Kool-Aid).
No there really is a big difference in the culture, ecosystem and average programmer between the FOSS/Unix world and the Microsoft world. Individuals always vary sure. Exceptions to the rule, sure. But there is a very real difference between those two worlds. I'd say almost every programmer who has been around long enough, and exposed to both camps, realizes this. Do a survey of say the top 100 famous "elite" programmers in our industry and I bet the overwhelming majority would agree with this characterization. The evidence is out there.
And yes, Microsoft has been trying to get more and more Unixy over the years, and more and more Appley, and I'll bet they continue doing that in the future. Good for them.
You're talking before the fairly meteoric rise in the standard of web programming over the past few years. Before blogs. When tables vs divs was an actual argument. When C++ was relevant in anything apart from high performance programming.
You're also talking about .Net 2.0, pre-LINQ, extension methods and MVC.
And reading your post makes it sound more that you have a chip on your shoulder about bad programmers more than anything else:
lazy, non-challenged developers
ASP.NET is a hulking piece of shit, anyone that tells you otherwise is lying and/or too stupid to realize it
other .NET developers you know are unchallenged nitwits without any sense of vision, any sense of craft. A bunch of me too dim wits who collect paychecks by copying and pasting their way to completion
redmond regurgitating drone army
There are lots of jobs in .Net or java. There's sweet fa for a crap programmer in OSS. Once you realise that is the reason you came across so many crap programmers, perhaps you can understand that there's nothing actually wrong with .Net, it was actually a pretty fucking big revolution. On the other hand you will still come across .Net programmers who think datatables are pretty funky, rely heavily on view state and bizarrely believe .Net controls aren't the spawn of the devil.
As for the rest of it, honestly, 'Win2K server admin', um, it's moved on man. Stop beating the straw doll. 'The world is open now', look a little more objectively at the world we actually live in. Did you even notice the iPhone come out a few years back? Or the Kindle? Or all the other closed source proprietary systems that a me too OS movement gleefully copies, badly for the most part. There's plenty of room at the table for both.
Yes MS have turned into a pretty crap company under Ballmer, but their language teams are still pretty damn good.
The reality is you've become a more experienced programmer. And somehow you're magically attributing it to OSS instead of just knowing more than when you were wet behind the ears.