In a recent thread on the WDJ-Discuss email list readers and WDJ staff weighed in on the "To Microsoft or not to Microsoft" question. That is, should you build your web site using Microsoft products, and contribute to the evil Gates Empire, or should you go with Unix and enter the arcane realm ruled by Über geeks who cost an arm and a leg because nobody else really understands what they do?
When the suits discover that a 19 year old intern can set up a web server using NT and IIS (which comes free with NT, wotta deal!), and that their secretaries can make web pages using Word and FrontPage, they have a hard time justifying paying the kind of prop-head power it takes to properly run a web site on Unix. It doesn't help that many of the techies who urge them to use the non Microsoft stuff tend to be particularly rabid in their anti-MS rhetoric, which leads marketing types to dismiss them as unworldly, anti-commercial hippy geeks.
"Bill Gates is worth $40 billion, he obviously knows a thing or two these guys don't!"
Yes, he does. Bill Gates knows how to sell software. He has learned, over the years, what sells software, and that is making it easy to set up and use by people without a great deal of technical knowledge. This is something desperately needed in personal software such as desktop operating systems, word processors and spreadsheets, because the majority of people who use these products are non technical people - they shouldn't need to understand the theory of push-down automata and Turing machines to write a report.
However, Gates has also learned that the quality of software, and its interoperability with products from other companies, is something that can be safely relegated to a lower priority than user friendliness. In fact lack of interoperability is an advantage since it increases market share - if competing products and technologies such as Java don't work well with Microsoft's server or browser, both of which are given away for free, then that just discourages people from using competing technologies.
The problem comes when you have a crucial technical problem to solve to carry your Internet strategy forward. You find that the Microsoft product positioned to solve your problem is widely known to be a dog, even by those who don't have Bill Gates pincushion voodoo dolls hanging in their cubicles. But because you use Windows NT & IIS your only real solution is ASP, and then ActiveX, and the next thing you know you're finding it would really be best if all of your users run IE for their browsers rather than Netscape, because this one really neat little feature only works if you're using Microsoft software all the way through ….
Congratulations, you are locked in to one supplier of software, and you now understand where Bill Gates' $40 billion came from.
Aside from locking you in to Microsoft technology (or selling your soul to Microsoft, as Unix extremists would put it), there is another drawback to building your web site on Microsoft software. Namely, MS software is limited by the same features which make it so user friendly. The way Microsoft makes its software friendly is by simplifying the choices available to users. Wizards are provided to walk users through more complex tasks by presenting a small number of easily digestible choices. Because you only have to make a few simple decisions, these tasks are greatly simplified.
This is fantastic when you happen to want to do one of the things that Microsoft programmers planned for, and to do it using just those options they thought you would need. If "Where you want to go today" isn't along the path Microsoft has laid out with Wizards to guide you, you'll find yourself beating through the underbrush and brambles. When Microsoft does provide ways to get at the functionality normally guarded by Wizards, it requires you to use more complex Microsoft developer technologies such as VBasic and ActiveX.
Congratulations, you are now back to using the high octane propeller heads you thought you were avoiding by skipping Unix.
Look at it this way. "One-click" cameras are a brilliant business idea, because they're easy to use. The vast majority of people who use cameras don't want to have to fiddle with focus, aperture, shutter speed, and similar geeky details to take a picture. They just want to point and shoot. But if you were publishing a professional commercial magazine, would you give your photographer a disposable $10 one-click camera to shoot the cover?
In a recent thread on the WDJ-Discuss email list readers and WDJ staff weighed in on the "To Microsoft or not to Microsoft" question. That is, should you build your web site using Microsoft products, and contribute to the evil Gates Empire, or should you go with Unix and enter the arcane realm ruled by Über geeks who cost an arm and a leg because nobody else really understands what they do?
