Comment by artyom
18 hours ago
To everyone who bought the "developer-friendly" Microsoft of VSCode fame from a few years ago: this is what they forever did, and forever will do.
This company has been pulling these tricks since the early 90s.
If you fell for this once again, there's nobody else to blame but yourself.
Ironically the one good thing we got from AI is being able to sift through everyone's entire internet history (even de-anonymizing the stuff they didn't want under their regular nicks) and being able to tell exactly who supported this.
You’re forgetting the fact that the newer generations coming into the industry don’t know that. They don’t even know what a VHS tape is and some don’t even know what a DVD is — this isn’t a problem it’s just their baseline is different from ours. Global warming is an example of this: newer generations see today’s conditions as normal but we older generations see them as broken and a problem.
To be direct about this: this is actually our fault they fell for this. It’s your fault too. We’re the ones building the future for the next generation/s, so whatever “tricks” they fall for are created by our generation (to extract or generate wealth, amongst other things.)
That’s on us to do better through education and fighting back.
The younger generations aren't really that stupid. They know what a DVD is for gosh sake.
They also know the conditions they have to endure - economic, climate, whatever - are not normal or okay. They're well aware of who to blame for those.
> If you fell for this once again, there's nobody else to blame but yourself.
We don’t need snarky comments like this, especially when the technology in question is so pervasive and takes a lot of cognitive effort to avoid. The blame lies solely with Microsoft.
What you call snarky, I call individual accountability.
Should preventing inhaling smoke in public spaces be also individual accountability?
A snark by any other name still smells as rude.
The very young do not always do as they are told.
If one hasn't been personally betrayed yet, it is easy to minimize or ignore the warnings of others who have been through the predatory/anticompetitive, EEE, stack ranking, etc. eras of MS.
I agree with you in very general terms, but I'm not sure you can reach the level of "market share" VSCode has had the last few years with just the very young.
True that.
No question VSCode has some real structural advantages: free (as opposed to pricey VS Enterprise licenses - this matters in non-tech enterprises), somehow easily installable even in enterprise locked-down environments, first-class webdev support, first-class python integration, extensive extension/plugin ecosystem, extensive multi-language support, excellent wsl integration, and that MIT source license to PR their way out of their EEE (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) infamy.
There's no other free IDE quite with this set of features. Eclipse is a heavy heavy lumbering thing.
It's not even a mystery why it has a lot more traction than vscodium - that sweet sweet MIT license means it's a good thing right? Salves that mental nag in the conscientious.
It takes a principled, die-hard attitude to use vscodium over vscode, or something else altogether, especially if you're a multi-talented dev.
That's the thing about giant corporations, they tend to outlive human careers. MS has outlived the careers of Gates, Balmer, and likely Nadella. Google has outlived Page/Brin, Schmidt. IBM so many. Volkswagen likewise. Even Comcast survived the worst-company-in-america days. Ma Bell continues to survive as Verizon, AT&T. Sony too. Railroads continue to this day. Hence the modern day race to get as large as possible, as quickly as possible.
Opposition due to incidents fades over time as people simply walk away into the sunset. That big boss that you have to defeat at the end of the game? Simply goes on to fight other players once you leave.
2 replies →
Right, you also need the very gullible
You may be surprised to learn some of the employed adults on this site were born after the 90’s.
Unfortunately, quite a few of these young adults ignored the people who lived through it last time and were repeatedly warning them about it.
And hopefully those employed adults have done their due diligence and read some history.
Ok but I’ve used VSCode for almost 10 years, got mad at this once, and disabled it instantly. This sucks, but maybe don’t overreact?
- Automatically activated audio cues (purportedly for accessibility) without consideration for users with auditory sensitivity; continued to release changes that would override attempts to disable the unwanted sound; dismissed with "but how else could we possibly notify people that we added the feature?"
- Refusing for over seven years to offer a simple UI to clear "issues" pane, instead blaming plugin authors for not 'owning' the content. https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/66982
Microsoft hasn't cared about the actual users of VSCode for a very long time.
I'd like my tools to not have a time-bomb attached to them, no matter if it takes 10 years to explode.
And honestly I think this case is just a perpetually clueless manager getting over-joyous with vibecoding (to the point of being marveled at changing two lines of code without blowing everything up).
It's probably going to be reverted in the coming days. Which doesn't change the fact that it's a very Microsoft way of operating.
Yeah, a company can only be shitty and "fix" their mistakes for so long until the general public realizes that the company doesn't have its customers best interests at heart.
How is this a time bomb? What was destroyed?
Just because you can opt out doesn't mean that they're not shitty for defaulting you to opt in.
It is certainly bad behavior that Microsoft did this. But it's irrational to jump from there to "this is what they always did and always will do" as OP did. Corporations are not unchangeable monoliths, and it was perfectly reasonable to use Microsoft tools when they were acting decently towards their users. Now that they have turned user-hostile, it makes sense to avoid them until they learn their lesson, and so on.
People act like a corporation has character traits, as a person does. But it doesn't. You can't strongly predict future behavior based on the present the way you can with a person, so it makes no sense to have seething eternal hatred for a company.
3 replies →