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I'm ultra not-hip. I don't own anything Apple and never have.
When Windows 8 came out, I wanted a new portable computer, so I bought a Samsung tablet (11.6") with stylus input and Core i5, rather than a laptop, which is actually quite nice with Windows 8.
Last year I bought an 8" super cheap tablet with Atom/etc, mainly because they are super cheap. The way Windows 8 sets everything up across devices was rather nice.
I've had a Galaxy S3 for ages, and since Samsung decided to do a big "FU" and take away the MicroSD card slot on the S6, I've decided to say a big "FU" to them, and use the 128GB MicroSD card I bought for my S3 on a different phone instead (yes, I could have got an S5, but I'm a man of principles).
So I decided to order a Lumia 640 (in naranja), since it's inexpensive (I'm buying off-contract, SIM free for various reasons). That shipped (finally) today and might arrive sometime soon-ish.
I also decided to say "fuck it" and go full Microsoft, and order a Microsoft Band, since they recently got released in the UK and I'm trying to motivate myself to do fitness activities. What better way than to buy something that costs a moderate amount of money that I don't need, so that I feel guilty if I don't use it?
So at some point probably end of next week I will have my Windows (7 for now) desktop PC, my two Windows 8 tablets, a Windows Lumia phone and a Microsoft Band.
I also have an Xbox 360, but haven't played that in years, and because PC Master Race I don't think I'll be getting an XBone any time soon either, but apart from that, FULL MICROSOFT.
Now to see if it all actually plays nicely together like my two Windows 8 devices did when I logged in using the same Windows/Live account.
 
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Nice! For all the shit Microsoft gets, I gotta hand it to them, they're pretty good. My favorite product of theirs is the C# programming language. It's such a cushy language that's absolutely loaded with syntactic sugar. Really makes it easy to write programs. That's probably why there are more programs available for Microsoft Windows than for Apple (or one of the reasons, rather). Have you tried coding in Objective-C? I did once in high-school. Such a confusing language :p
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I'm so hyped for Windows 10. If you got a spare computer, check out the technical preview!
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
As a former Lumia 925 user, I can say that windows and windows phone doesn't really gel together like you would expect. I really like the concept of the OS. Unfortunately app load times are atrocious, there aren't enough 3rd party apps, and even if the app exists in the store, the developers don't update it.
Then I had to switch to android for my new job.
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I'm an all-Windows guy myself, so welcome to the club! Works great for what I do with it.
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On April 16 2015 07:22 codonbyte wrote:
Nice! For all the shit Microsoft gets, I gotta hand it to them, they're pretty good. My favorite product of theirs is the C# programming language. It's such a cushy language that's absolutely loaded with syntactic sugar. Really makes it easy to write programs. That's probably why there are more programs available for Microsoft Windows than for Apple (or one of the reasons, rather). Have you tried coding in Objective-C? I did once in high-school. Such a confusing language :p
C# is sparkly, shiny and easy to use but it is built around encouraging people to not ever give a sh!t about performance and speed. Even with highly optimized garbage collection, it's still dangerous in that perspective.
But it does fill the purposes, not all enterprise apps must be blazing fast.
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I ordered the phone from Amazon France (because at the time it was cheaper than the UK phones), but now the UK has cheaper phones, but no orange in stock (I went with orange).
The phone (ordered from Amazon France, and I'm in Guernsey, about 30 miles from the French coast) was shipped from Milan to Bergamo (Italy) to Cologne to East Midlands in the UK, and then to my island this morning.
Took less than 24 hours to make its way across half of Europe, but I won't be able to pick it up until maybe tomorrow or Saturday.
Yay for fast but inefficient shipping.
The Band isn't released until next week so won't be here for ages.
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I am practically all Microsoft as well, but then mainly software-wise.
I used to have a Lumia 1020, but swapped it for a second hand iPhone 5S because the lack of (quality) apps is real on Windows Phone. The OS itself was good back two-three years ago, but iOS and Android have evolved so much over the past few years that Windows Phone 8.1 feels outdated in many regards. I just use Microsoft apps now on my iPhone (OneDrive, Outlook and the Office suite for viewing documents). If microsoft had some messaging service akin to iMessage that would sync your messages across multiple devices, Windows Phone might win back some market share. Right now, however, a Lumia phone feels like a slightly more advanced dumbphone, not a 2015 smartphone.
I have a Surface 2 tablet with Windows RT, and up to this day I still do not get the flack it got. Windows 8(.1) is by far the most advanced tablet operating system out there, both the RT and x86 versions. The tablet does not feel like a 'confused' machine. It knows very well what it is: a tablet that can be used as a laptop if the need arises. I'm happy that Microsoft decided to ditch Windows RT on their new Surface 3 tablet, and go for an Atom CPU with x86 Windows 8.1. For people who actually want to do work on their tablets iPads just became obsolete.
EDIT: I would like to add that I am impressed with the broadwell ATOM cpus: I bought an Asus x205 (11" HD screen, passively cooled Atom 3735 cpu, 2 gigs of ram, 32gigs eMMC storage, weight: <1kg, has 2 usb2 ports, mini hdmi and a microSD slot as well) netbook and it lets me effortlessly edit 20-30mb excel files. On top of that the battery life is nothing short of stunning: 8-12 hours depending on what you do. The device cost me a measly €212, which also included a free 1-year Office 365 subscription.
To think that not even three years ago you were lucky if you could squeeze 4 hours of battery life out of a mid-range windows laptop.
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I have both ecosystems, desktop running 8.1, surface pro 3, the most recent 15" rmbp, ipad mini 2, iphone 5s. The screen is excellent on the surface pro 3 but it is lacking a bit in color reproduction - you won't really notice this though unless you actually put it next to the rmbp. Software-wise both are great, and I'm quite happy with both, although personally for me the ipad is useless and I haven't used it in months.
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On April 16 2015 14:21 xtorn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2015 07:22 codonbyte wrote:
Nice! For all the shit Microsoft gets, I gotta hand it to them, they're pretty good. My favorite product of theirs is the C# programming language. It's such a cushy language that's absolutely loaded with syntactic sugar. Really makes it easy to write programs. That's probably why there are more programs available for Microsoft Windows than for Apple (or one of the reasons, rather). Have you tried coding in Objective-C? I did once in high-school. Such a confusing language :p C# is sparkly, shiny and easy to use but it is built around encouraging people to not ever give a sh!t about performance and speed. Even with highly optimized garbage collection, it's still dangerous in that perspective. But it does fill the purposes, not all enterprise apps must be blazing fast.
Few modern languages are designed for that. I'd argue "none", at least not much more than C#. The only languages that are faster in essence are C/C++ and crap like Fortran, haha.
Obviously if you don't know what you're doing and how the virtual machine works and stuff, you can write awfully slow and memory hungry code, but that's the same for any other language. Maybe you could precise your stance a bit more so that I can understand what languages you're comparing C# to or what features are "encouraging" (strong word :D) people to write slow code?
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On April 16 2015 14:21 xtorn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2015 07:22 codonbyte wrote:
Nice! For all the shit Microsoft gets, I gotta hand it to them, they're pretty good. My favorite product of theirs is the C# programming language. It's such a cushy language that's absolutely loaded with syntactic sugar. Really makes it easy to write programs. That's probably why there are more programs available for Microsoft Windows than for Apple (or one of the reasons, rather). Have you tried coding in Objective-C? I did once in high-school. Such a confusing language :p C# is sparkly, shiny and easy to use but it is built around encouraging people to not ever give a sh!t about performance and speed. Even with highly optimized garbage collection, it's still dangerous in that perspective. But it does fill the purposes, not all enterprise apps must be blazing fast.
You SHOULD not give a "sh1t" about performance. You should write reasonable code. Then you can profile and tune it where necessary. C# doesn't encourage you to write unreasonable code any more than any other language. On the contrary, it makes it much easier to improve performance after profiling because C# is much better suited for safe refactoring than languages like C/C++.
C# has its issues like any other language, but performance isn't one of them. Not in the kind of applications that you should consider C# for, anyways.
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aren't many of the things in this thread being attributed to the strengths and weaknesses of the C# language really a product of the editor/suite/compiler MS bundles with it.
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On April 17 2015 04:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
aren't many of the things in this thread being attributed to the strengths and weaknesses of the C# language really a product of the editor/suite/compiler MS bundles with it.
The language specification is a major factor when it comes to tool support. C++ is a powerful language thanks to templates, but templates also make it very hard to define reliable automatic refactorings. C# is a lot easier on tool developers.
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On April 17 2015 02:31 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2015 14:21 xtorn wrote:On April 16 2015 07:22 codonbyte wrote:
Nice! For all the shit Microsoft gets, I gotta hand it to them, they're pretty good. My favorite product of theirs is the C# programming language. It's such a cushy language that's absolutely loaded with syntactic sugar. Really makes it easy to write programs. That's probably why there are more programs available for Microsoft Windows than for Apple (or one of the reasons, rather). Have you tried coding in Objective-C? I did once in high-school. Such a confusing language :p C# is sparkly, shiny and easy to use but it is built around encouraging people to not ever give a sh!t about performance and speed. Even with highly optimized garbage collection, it's still dangerous in that perspective. But it does fill the purposes, not all enterprise apps must be blazing fast. Few modern languages are designed for that. I'd argue "none", at least not much more than C#. The only languages that are faster in essence are C/C++ and crap like Fortran, haha. Obviously if you don't know what you're doing and how the virtual machine works and stuff, you can write awfully slow and memory hungry code, but that's the same for any other language. Maybe you could precise your stance a bit more so that I can understand what languages you're comparing C# to or what features are "encouraging" (strong word :D) people to write slow code?
i can elaborate on what mess i think is dangerously easy to create with C# (its something i deal with daily when im reviewing other ppl's code), precisely because the language is so easy to use. I do agree with you that novices can shoot themselves in the foot with any language.
but this would be way out of scope of this thread.
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Just jumping in here 'cause of all the code talk. The reason Microsoft is so effing good is because of Visual Studio. I don't care if I'm writing C#, C++, VB, whatever; Visual Studio is THE single most pimped out IDE in existence.
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EPT
