The Microsoft Behemoth

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How it all started

Microsoft has been around since 1975 and during that time they have grown into a serious powerhouse company. They are considered to be one of the "Big Five" tech giant companies in the world. One of the main aspects which makes Microsoft such an influential company is the fact that they create software and hardware. This versatility allows them to reach a huge audience of people all over the world. It is highly likely that you have come across or at the very least interacted with some form of technology that was created by Microsoft.

We are all familiar with the Microsoft Office suite and no doubt you have used Word to write a few documents in your lifetime. Microsoft is a true, giant in the software industry, and was co-founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. These two outstanding individuals had a deep passion for computer engineering in their young years and have contributed to society in many ways. Their sphere of influence has shaped many people's futures for the better and the world would not be the same without them.

It is this competitive nature which turned them into a truly great company and their early rivalry with Apple consequently created the great Apple company which we have today. They both pushed each other to the limits of imagination and we should be grateful for the technology that they have developed today.

The dawn of a new empire

Microsoft's growth over the years has been immense. Everything that they have done has been calculated and has proved to be quite successful and very inspiring. Although there is a slight blip in their roadmap. They were late to the party when it came to creating a mobile operating system. Unfortunately, Windows Phone became a failure because, by the time Microsoft had decided to launch it, iOS and Android were already the top 2 dogs and fully established.

Luckily Microsoft learned from their mistake and reinvested into other areas of the business. One of these areas is gaming. For a long time, Sony and Nintendo were the only game consoles that gamers took seriously. Then Microsoft launched the Xbox and changed the game. It took them a while to become established and make a dent in Sonys Playstation market which ruled supreme for hardcore gamers. But fast forward to today and Microsoft's Xbox Series X is now a direct competitor to Sonys PS5.

The two companies have created amazing consoles and the services and products to go alongside them. Some would argue that Microsoft has the edge when it comes to online gaming because their Xbox Game Pass tends to get more positives than Playstation Plus although the gap is not as great as it used to be.

Spending big is a show of force

Recently Microsoft has been buying a lot of top companies in specific areas to gain some ground on their competitors. They spent $68.7 billion dollars buying the gaming company Activision Blizzard. And they also bought the company ZeniMax Media which is the parent company of Doom and Fallout studio Bethesda Softworks. This has given them access to a huge library of games which they could now make first party which means that they won't be on the Sony PlayStation.

This is a big deal because having exclusive games will lead to gamers having to buy their console to play them. And they could always make the games multiplatform which will put them on Sonys system as well giving them even more profit when people purchase the games.

Outside of gaming, they have also bought LinkedIn and GitHub which are hugely popular for job seekers, companies and programmers. They also own the most popular code editor which is Visual Studio Code. And also the popular IDE Visual Studio. And let's not forget that they created the market-leading operating system Windows as well as the online email Outlook and the cloud service Azure. Microsoft is everywhere and if you are a developer I'm pretty sure that you are using or have used at least one of these products, services and tools. They also build computers and laptops so you can have their hardware and software.

Online tools developers should be using

A developer is only as good as the tools that they use. I believe that GitHub is definitely one of the most essential online tools for a developer to have. When you learn how to use version control for your projects you reach a new level as a developer. I am also a huge fan of the online platforms Netlify and Vercel which make it so easy to deploy your application online. And the fact that they work with GitHub makes this a very powerful combination.

In terms of learning, I would rate freeCodeCamp, Udemy and YouTube very highly. The amount of stuff that you can learn on these platforms surpasses that of any Computer Science course in my opinion. You can become a self-taught developer and a very successful one at that and for a fraction of the cost of a degree or even for free!

Troubleshooting with online communities

Troubleshooting is something that a developer has to do as part of their job. My usual process is to try to solve the problem on my own first. You won't grow much as a developer if you don't learn how to debug your own problems. If the problem has still not been resolved the next objective would be to read the documentation if you have not done so already. It is also common to use google and StackOverflow to find answers. Of course, if you have another developer that you can reach out to over chat or if they are in your office then that would be a good path to go down.

Other than StackOverflow I have found Discord servers to be quite good when it comes to problem-solving. On some occasions, I posted my issue on StackOverflow and then posted the link into a Discord server and had some other developers help me out quickly. I also really rate GitHub discussions highly because it can be a lot like using StackOverflow.

Thanks for your time!

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