They implied that he meant Microsoft's financials were in trouble, when he was more saying that Microsoft had become the new IBM.
I don't think Macs are popular in tech merely due to frivolous or circular fashion. Basically no one used Windows to do 2009-2016 era web dev. Not because founders were pushing employees to use Macs so investors would see when they came to visit; Microsoft genuinely lost a lot of reputation among programmers prior to the WSL stuff due to how bad their stuff was. Am I the only one who remembers this? People complaining and giving each other a look if they had to use "Winblows" and so on? (I still see this today.)
> Was it really necessary to come to his defense? ...
I mean, no, but why does every PG essay posted on here spawn a bunch of comments about basically how rich and pretentious he is? Why does this matter? If he's wrong, why not just say why?
He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing new tech, not revenue.
There was a time when being a programmer essentially meant writing C++ on Windows. I still remember getting a Mac as late as ~2013 and having my normie (non-engineer) friends chastise me for it -- "how are you going to get any serious coding done?" -- because that was their genuine impression of Windows vs Macs. Meanwhile, imagine you're the founder of YC in 2007 in a city where all the new tech startups are happening. Everyone's using Macs. Surely it's at least a valid argument or hypothesis that this is a leading indicator of where the forefront of tech is going.
And now if you go to any modern fast-growing tech company, you look around, everyone uses Macs. Even lots of Microsoft employees use Macs. It seems the hypothesis wasn't completely wrong. Incidentally, it's only with hindsight that we're able to refute this somewhat: Microsoft made a nice comeback in the tech world after Nadella became CEO. But that was a big surprise when it happened.
Was it really necessary to turn this into a talking point about rich people and their sins?
I think SP would have been the best. The thing about W25 or S25 is that you can guess what W or S means without being told. Can you imagine trying to explain this to someone? There's nothing about it that makes sense. There's no kernel of intuition to chew on. You'd finish explaining and the other person still wouldn't get it.
"What batch were you?"
"X25"
"What does X stand for?"
"Oh yeah haha, its a clever programming reference, it actually means spring, but S was taken by summer, so they used X instead because its a common variable name."
I don't think Macs are popular in tech merely due to frivolous or circular fashion. Basically no one used Windows to do 2009-2016 era web dev. Not because founders were pushing employees to use Macs so investors would see when they came to visit; Microsoft genuinely lost a lot of reputation among programmers prior to the WSL stuff due to how bad their stuff was. Am I the only one who remembers this? People complaining and giving each other a look if they had to use "Winblows" and so on? (I still see this today.)
> Was it really necessary to come to his defense? ...
I mean, no, but why does every PG essay posted on here spawn a bunch of comments about basically how rich and pretentious he is? Why does this matter? If he's wrong, why not just say why?