I am not sure how I feel about all of this. In my entire career I have used Microsoft technologies and have not had any issues with Beyond Compare. I was introduced to this fantastic product because the (rather large) software company I was working for had a site license for V2 and I have installed either that site lic, or my own personal license more times than I want to count. I find BC so "right" that any other comparison tool hasn't "been right" for me.
As a software professional I completely "get" how hard it can be to chase dozens of targets and a company NEEDS to make reasonable choices to support the platforms that actually make them money.
Within the last year (and even more so in the last 4 months) my career has taken me on a trajectory that moves the vast majority of my development tasks into Linux (Debian 7.1 for Development/Ubuntu 12.04 LTS production servers) and OS-X for iOS/Android platforms. If I still had a Windows 7 VM on my machine the only program I would use is likely BC3.
I have been hoping that Scooter would be able to "do something" to improve this situation, but I guess that "other" platforms are still not generating enough revenue for the company to really give them support. In the last 3-4 years I haven't installed a 32bit OS (for development) and MS does a reasonable job of supporting "old" code. (Heck, Visual Studio was still 32bit the last time I checked.) However... for all production code that I have written in the last 2+ years has been 64bit.
Why am I sad? Beyond Compare is a fantastic tool and I really WANT to continue using it for code reviews and check-in control. I can't be the only developer in the world that has made the move to 64bit and not really looked back. The effort required to use the tool and "deal" with all the platform restrictions is just too much. Every time I go looking for another tool, I've come back to BC when working with Microsoft platforms.
It is my sincere hope that Scooter Software survives and that Beyond Compare makes the transition. I ~know~ how "f-ing" hard cross platform development is. Linux and OS-X/iOS/Android have moved past "it is a fad" and "nobody got fired for choosing Microsoft" (yes, I am stealing that phrase from the old "IBM" version) is no longer true. I hate how fractured the Linux world is and Apple isn't a developer's best friend either. I am not certain that MS "can't win me back" but at this point even Windows 8.1 looks "sad" to me.
My point? Back when it was ~clear~ that Windows 3.1 was going to dominate the market I was at a company that refused to acknowledge the "winds of change" (Scooter obviously isn't as blind) and because 100% of our customers were still using DOS, "management" refused to invest in the future seriously. We had pilot programs, but a competitor that eventually hired me ended up taking a huge percentage of the previous companies business as clients began to make the move into Windows and found that the "old and crusty" wasn't "good" anymore.
At the moment, AWS Linux based cloud servers dominate our production and it is increasingly easier to have a development platform that is more inline with how the server environment works. More and more opportunities are in the mobile space, and again the dominate platforms are better supported on anything ~but~ "Windows."
Will Microsoft pull it together? Would I bet ~my~ company on a single platform today? Nope. It is still a crap shoot between Linux/OS-X and MS. (The highly modified Darwin kernel is still "Linux enough" IMO.)
Again, why am I complaining? The latest releases ~still~ don't support ~my~ setups and I guess I am whining.
If you got this far, thanks for reading.
As a software professional I completely "get" how hard it can be to chase dozens of targets and a company NEEDS to make reasonable choices to support the platforms that actually make them money.
Within the last year (and even more so in the last 4 months) my career has taken me on a trajectory that moves the vast majority of my development tasks into Linux (Debian 7.1 for Development/Ubuntu 12.04 LTS production servers) and OS-X for iOS/Android platforms. If I still had a Windows 7 VM on my machine the only program I would use is likely BC3.
I have been hoping that Scooter would be able to "do something" to improve this situation, but I guess that "other" platforms are still not generating enough revenue for the company to really give them support. In the last 3-4 years I haven't installed a 32bit OS (for development) and MS does a reasonable job of supporting "old" code. (Heck, Visual Studio was still 32bit the last time I checked.) However... for all production code that I have written in the last 2+ years has been 64bit.
Why am I sad? Beyond Compare is a fantastic tool and I really WANT to continue using it for code reviews and check-in control. I can't be the only developer in the world that has made the move to 64bit and not really looked back. The effort required to use the tool and "deal" with all the platform restrictions is just too much. Every time I go looking for another tool, I've come back to BC when working with Microsoft platforms.
It is my sincere hope that Scooter Software survives and that Beyond Compare makes the transition. I ~know~ how "f-ing" hard cross platform development is. Linux and OS-X/iOS/Android have moved past "it is a fad" and "nobody got fired for choosing Microsoft" (yes, I am stealing that phrase from the old "IBM" version) is no longer true. I hate how fractured the Linux world is and Apple isn't a developer's best friend either. I am not certain that MS "can't win me back" but at this point even Windows 8.1 looks "sad" to me.
My point? Back when it was ~clear~ that Windows 3.1 was going to dominate the market I was at a company that refused to acknowledge the "winds of change" (Scooter obviously isn't as blind) and because 100% of our customers were still using DOS, "management" refused to invest in the future seriously. We had pilot programs, but a competitor that eventually hired me ended up taking a huge percentage of the previous companies business as clients began to make the move into Windows and found that the "old and crusty" wasn't "good" anymore.
At the moment, AWS Linux based cloud servers dominate our production and it is increasingly easier to have a development platform that is more inline with how the server environment works. More and more opportunities are in the mobile space, and again the dominate platforms are better supported on anything ~but~ "Windows."
Will Microsoft pull it together? Would I bet ~my~ company on a single platform today? Nope. It is still a crap shoot between Linux/OS-X and MS. (The highly modified Darwin kernel is still "Linux enough" IMO.)
Again, why am I complaining? The latest releases ~still~ don't support ~my~ setups and I guess I am whining.
If you got this far, thanks for reading.
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