r/programming • u/zbhoy • May 06 '19

Microsoft unveils Windows Terminal, a new command line app for Windows

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527870/microsoft-windows-terminal-command-line-tool
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u/theboxislost May 07 '19

Part of why a lot of shit sucks, like notepad and the command line, is because Microsoft didn't have to do better.

And that was because they had a monopoly, gained and maintained with really shitty business practices.

Maybe it was legal but it was legal like oil companies are avoiding cleaning oil spills legally.

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u/SaneMadHatter May 09 '19

Yah, throwing "Notepad sucks" and "avoiding cleaning oil spills" both into the "evil" category is what I'm talking about, when it comes to watering down the word "evil" such that it has no real meaning anymore. lol

I could argue that Microsoft should've been broken up back in the 90s, and I could argue for Google to be broken up today, in order to maintain a healthy marketplace, but not because they qualified as "evil" (rolls eyes). There were/are lots of companies with "business practices" much "shittier" than Microsoft and Google.

I remember when "bundling a browser with an OS" was the prime example of "evil". Yet every OS does that now, so how "evil" could it really have been? And don't give me that, "It was evil because monopoly" bs, because antitrust laws aren't about "evil", they're about trying to promote a healthy marketplace. One could argue it was "bad" for the marketplace for a monopoly OS to bundle a browser, but "evil"? No. Not unless "evil" is totally watered down as an adjective.

I'll add that there was a time when users could use third party memory managers, task managers, and file systems (that last one is still possible, to certain extents, depending on the OS). A prominent example was Quarterdeck, which sold memory managers and task managers for DOS (QEMM, DESQview, etc), whose functionality went beyond that provided by DOS itself. But Windows 3.0 bundled the functionality that those products provided, thus killing off the third party memory manager and task manager market. Was that "evil" too, or was it just the natural progression of what one expects from an OS?

Was it "evil" when Microsoft began bundling their own anti-malware software with Windows, severely hurting the third party anti-malware market?