I never thought another tech company could be more awkward than Microsoft at branding. I guess it’s just hard to name things.

Yes it is and hello from someone at Microsoft who has helped brand a few things. It’s really hard problem that is not easy to describe to others but branding in huge companies like these is hell. Though worth it when we get it right and make things clear. Trust me no one here branding wants it to suck.

I'm still confused by .Net Core, .Net Framework, and .Net Standard. The diagram in this article made me ten times more confused:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/05/07/net-core-...

It seems to contradict itself so many times.

Little off-topic: Is there any work being done with Visual Studio's integrated Code Review system[0]? You cannot even run the solution (inc. changes) from it!

We're stuck on TFVC, is the planned solution to move everyone to Git and Pull Requests? The recent Visual Studio Live Share is really kick butt, but doesn't solve traditional "offline" code reviews.

Also we're using O365 Planner and Teams, but there's no integration into Team Services at all. Any chance we'll see Planner plan tasks as a work item in Visual Studio/Team Services?

[0] https://i.imgur.com/LNeTASv.png

.NET Standard is an interface. It describes a specification that must be met. .NET Framework, Xamarin, UWP and .NET Core are implementations. Both have APIs that are specific to the implementation (for example, .NET Framework has APIs that are specific to Window, while .NET Core is cross-platform and doesn't have them, and Xamarin has mobile-specific APIs that don't make sense on desktop). At a minimum they both implement the APIs designated by the .NET Standard specification. It is a guideline for you to write libraries that can be shared anywhere without recompilation.

You should be because the concept of .NET changed over the years. When first announced, it was supposed to be Microsoft's alternative to Java. In their internal documents, they defined it as infrastructure centered around MS SQL Server. With time, things developed and the initial vision changed a few times. So yes, it's a mess name-wise.

dotnet Standard is the core of everything. The underlying code for both the dotnet Framework and dotnet Core. What the differences between the dotnet Framework and the dotnet Core is I can't tell you. All I know is that dotnet Core is cross platform and the cool kid in town. Use Core if possible.

Curious, what aspects of the process do lead to the suckage? Committee-driven decisions? Existing ecosystems and conventions? Politics?

I remember at some point there was a popular theory that if you add an "X" to a name, it appears more modern to the customer. So Microsoft started to brand different technologies in this way. The data exchange mechanism became "ActiveX". Their abstraction layer for graphics cards became "DirectX".

Is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k still a good description of how things mess up?

Skype is the one that blows my mind. You had another product that doesn't work with Skype, so you renamed it Skype. WAT?

To add, just a few years ago we had Ubuntu One, also a cloud storage service.

I'm kind of disappointed Ubuntu didn't sue Microsoft over the name. Given they had just had to rename from SkyDrive to OneDrive due to trademark infringement it would have been amusing to see them need to do it again for not having actually checked for similar services with similar names. Or maybe there was a payment to Ubuntu involved there.

Maybe it's a conspiracy to replace OneDrive search results with their own haha

I'm a fan of Amazon Drive. The native clients are nice with a clear interface, and have the option to simply upload files or directories once, without having to synchronize them in local directories. It's not immediately clear how to do this in Google Drive, which seems confused especially since they've split it into two different products already.

There's also been a persistent problem with the Google Drive native desktop client, where syncing files consumes 100% of your local CPU for hours (or days) as it syncs, a problem which Dropbox and Amazon Drive do not have.

I wish Google built is own first party cli tools for Google drive. Sort of like rsync but with a Google flavor. I'm sure people would love it.

They definitely don't want people using it as a backup system.

Their unlimited storage is useless because you can't actually use it properly. It saves them money.

I don't think Google cares whether people would love it or not, what counts is how much money they can get on it - in this case, zero.

A good example of how RAID 1 is not a backup.

Is there any kind of RAID that can be considered a backup?

No, because any individual system is still susceptible to theft, fire, water damage, electrical damage. RAID 1 is just a protection from one hard drive dying.

That was a rhetorical question :). If I delete files by accident, RAID won't help me.

I think the whole "One" branding is a tired trope which many technology companies tend to use to show one platform, company etc. In past 5 years I have seen 3 of my employers add One X, with X being the company name, as the official goal or strategy.

It's the same as 'AAAA Acme Plumbing' and '123 Towing'

Alphanumeric positioning has implied meaning.

Wow, this is great. Where can I find more of your poetry?

Doesn’t One, in Google’s (or more precisely, Android’s) parlance, signify cheapness?

I don't see it as a bad thing. To me Android One is a symbol of confidence and simplicity. It is a promise of no bloat on Android. It is a promise of timely updates. Most importantly, it is a signal of a good value. Look where the trainwreck of the fire phone got to at Amazon.com

They also have Android One. Guess soon they will release Android Drive.