MSFT v Slashdot

[John Kawakami]

>Kendall Clark wrote:
>
>>Hmm, actually, I don't know a single free software hacker who really
>>gives a damn about the MS source code. Sure, if it's ever available,
>>we'll look and laugh and point and guffaw. But I don't know anyone who
>>wants to *work* on it. <shudder/>
>
>Hey, I'm no programmer, I just use Microsoft stuff (on a Mac, 
though). From a user's point of view, it seems klunky and visually 
ugly. I'm assuming the guts of the code are like that too. Why? It 
can't be the lack of technical sophistication of their programmers, 
can it? And next to Apple & Adobe graphic design it looks like crap. 
Why is that? Surely they can afford snazzy designers. Is there 
something in the way they organize the design & production of 
software?
>
>Doug

Actually, a lot of the Mac code is hideous, and the OS encourages 
some weird programming.

Windows programming is also pretty klunky, unless you use Visual 
Basic, which is pretty nice (sometimes).

The reason why the Mac excels, while Windows lags, and Linux 
positively blows chunks, is that Apple, early on, based their 
interface guidelines on psychological research about human-computer 
interaction, and got their software engineers to understand some 
facts about interface.  This, in turn, created the Mac "interface 
culture".

The best code is in the Linux world.  The unix model of programming 
is elegant and simple.  The OS is relatively simple.  The code is 
exposed to the public, so the programmers work a lot harder to make 
it presentable.

There's no correlation between good code and good interface, but 
there is a correlation between concern about code and good code. 
Likewise, when the Linux community learns to accept interface 
designers (and gets more than a few to write interface libraries) the 
interfaces there will start to improve and will probably surpass the 
Mac's.