- ~2005 to ~2009 was the Ray Ozzie era. Ozzie took over the role of Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates in 2006 and the company, internally and externally, was focused on very ambitious projects. Software 'architects' were common on every team and usually doing something the 'right' way trumped shipping quickly and iterating. There were lots of interesting ideas and cool tech, but turning that stuff into viable products and businesses proved to be difficult.

- ~2009 to 2013 was the Steven Sinofsky era. Sinofsky took over as the head of the Windows division after Vista and helped recover with the Windows 7 release. His influence quickly spread and most of the company adopted his management structure (very strict separation of concerns between development, test, and product management). The role of software architect quickly disappeared (and Ray Ozzie left the company, leaving the CSA position to disappear entirely) and although research was still important it was definitely not the top priority. There was much less focus on building platforms, ideas, or other intangible things vs. shipping to customers in controlled and predictable ways.

Post 2013 and Steve Ballmer stepping down I don't really know much since I left around that time.

For certain definitions of "controlled and predictable," yes. For others not so much. Sinofsky's tenure was also the era of the great push to turn Windows 8 into the one Windows to rule all devices, which resulted in it being the controversial, poorly-received product it has been. "Controlled and predictable" would have involved rolling out changes like moving to Modern/Metro/Windows-Style/etc. UI, removing the Start button, booting to the Start screen instead of the desktop, etc. slowly and incrementally, but Sinofsky bet instead on rolling them all out at once in a single "big bang" release. That was a big, risky bet that completely failed to pay off, and that MS has been retreating from step by step ever since his departure.

Incremental releases and minimizing controversial changes might make releases more "controlled" in different ways, but those weren't the target.

[Edited for clarity]

Ask yourself if you would rather work for a big software leader that is resting on its laurels or for a company that knows it has some ground to cover if it wants to stay relevant, and then you'll know if you prefer the old Microsoft or the new one.

... and msbuild was recently open sourced. The code is right there on Github.

Yeah, Microsoft of 2015 is very different from Microsoft of 1995, in good ways.

It already comes with rules for C#, VB, C++, F#, etc. Replacing the rules for C++ with another command line and set of parameters of quite doable! :)

(I happen to be using such a build system, unfortunately I wasn't the one who wrote it so I cannot provide any direct help, just encouragement!)

It can actually all work from within VS as well.

The following claim might be a little generalized, but I believe Microsoft is still largely considered as an software company, who sells licenses and units of products for a living, and very much enterprise focused. This is quite different from the image that younger companies, especially those service-oriented ones, show or at least try to show to the public, something that is more ubiquitous and intimate.

It's embarrassing how fickle the technology industry is... so much reliance on hype and trend-hopping.

Anyone who has been around long enough (and not really that long all things considered) knows better than to ever trust Microsoft. Their whole model has been, and always will be: "Embrace, extend, extinguish".

So Microsoft is opening some things up? They've had no choice as they are being left behind more and more. They know the modern developer is not as interested in an expensive IDE and MSDN account when there are many alternatives. We are creating so much more software than before and the top down model Microsoft sold has become niche after many years of dominance.

Any open project Microsoft gets involved in and any open standard they get involved in should come with a warning label. Why? Because this is in their DNA.

These other companies may not always work together in harmony, but at least they aren't preoccupied with extinguishing their competitors and dominating ("owning") their users.

Microsoft is a special case because they had a zero-sum game/scorched Earth mindset, and the ability to lose billions of dollars per year, indefinitely, achieving it.

Microsoft was not content at allowing potential new ideas/technologies develop which might grow the market and improve things because they saw everything as a potential threat to their position. So they would do everything from trying to poison the market, to pouring (losing) tons of money into competing products, and sometimes just buying up companies and let it rot.

The very special part is as long as Windows and Office were cash cows, stock holders weren't willing to lead a revolt for Microsoft losing billions on everything else.

Not all companies are not scorched earth (SGI gave away serious resources to Nvidia, Valve recently gave away their VR tech in the highly publicized layoffs a few years ago).

Other companies might like to play scorched earth, but they don't have the ability to piss away money like Microsoft. This is why Microsoft is a special case.

Microsoft still has tons of cash and Windows/Office is still a cash cow. And it is generally accepted that company culture is hard to change once established (especially here on HN). This is why people with historical context do not trust Microsoft, with good reason.

That's weird, because my perception of the companies listed above is that they are exactly preoccupied with that.

The only reason I don't do it is that I'm afraid it won't be distinguishable from a small percentage of the HN readership who do so seriously.

Really, it gets boring.

... because the "positive" energy retired.