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0 pointsclaytongulick2y ago0 comments

Or it's because you weren't Facebook.

Like angular, react got the huge initial boost in popularity because of the brand behind it.

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sesm2y ago

That's not true, see for example initial announcement on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5789055

React didn't get much adoption initially and FB didn't spend money on marketing their framework, like Google did with Angular. Developers started using React to speed-up table rendering in Angular application, and only after some performance-related blogposts adoption started to grow.

mstade2y ago

Absolutely, brand recognition is hugely important in whether something's a success. It can also go the other way, great ideas and tooling simply die because the brand is tainted.

Not everything Microsoft has produced is terrible, but for a while there it seemed all developers I knew couldn't see past the brand even if the tooling/products/ideas were solid. I feel it's gotten better since Nadella took the reins, but the smell still seem to linger sometimes.

claytongulickOP2y ago

I agree - I'm a greybeard, so it's a bit of a bizarre world to me where Microsoft is actually a lovely, valued open source brand and probably the most ethical (depending on your definition) of all the big tech companies these days.

Time to go snow skiing in hell, I guess. It's deeply frozen over.

zlg_codes2y ago

I'd give Microsoft more of a chance, but the way updates and the UI are handled in Windows really puts a sour taste in my mouth. I've heard many good things about stuff like WSL2, PowerShell, and other things that can make Windows feel more accessible for power users, but I'm still looking at a Windows 7 machine without a TPM. I'll be able to update to W10, but after that I'm hosed and have no choice but to 'upgrade' to a chip that has a nanny CPU in it.

If Microsoft provided a Developer's Edition of Windows -- without telemetry and ads -- that also came with access to a knowledge-base of best practices for Windows-based software, and why you want to use each major Windows component, for a flat, one-time fee, I'd strongly consider building things for that environment.

I feel like Microsoft's current approach of buying their way under the free software world via GitHub is kinda scummy, and all that code's now under Copilot and other LLMs. If they were a bit more upstanding and had a clean, mutually respectful business model, I might consider buying their products.

In the mean time, I'd rather use something written by a random hacker, because I can at least read their code, or even hit them up and have a conversation about their project.

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