I’ve been working as a C# dev since 2010. I was 16 years younger back then, and the "ethical considerations" of anything were not really a topic I was interested in. I was young and stupid, but at least smart enough (or so I thought) to see that continuing my career in PHP and its related toolchains had no future.
Today, I am grappling with a question that every sane person earning a living by working with Microsoft technologies must ask: am I okay with this?
Big corporations are evil
If you thought this post was not going to get political, you thought wrong.
This is not a statement about Microsoft in particular, but a statement about the biggest corporations in the world.
It is not, however, a statement against capitalism and the free market. The counterarguments defending capitalism and the free market, I imagine, probably come from patriotic Americans who are sick in the head.
No, I’m not against capitalism and the free market—to an extent.
Economics teaches us that companies try their hardest to achieve a monopoly. It’s a logical conclusion and a well-researched fact, not something we have to moralize about. Companies compete to maximize profits and long-term economic rent.
But when you’re one of the biggest corporations in the world, you have more tools at your disposal. You break rules, you crush the competition, and you get involved in politics. All to achieve a monopoly. Anyone defending big corporations is either someone whose job is to do exactly that—like someone from PR—or someone insane.
Have you ever met someone like that? That 25-year-old woman from HR who convinced herself that her life finally has meaning because she works for JPMorgan? She worships the brand like it’s some sort of religion. And it’s not just a professional mask; it’s her own tragically neurotic personality maintaining the brand worship in her personal life as well. And she’s not alone.
On the other hand, there are people who refuse to touch anything MS-related. This was confusing to me at first—it’s software, just code, so what are you doing? What are you trying to prove?
Some people do this for the wrong reasons, like refusing to touch anything that isn't open-source, or simply avoiding anything MS-related because "MS is bad" because Steve Ballmer once shat on Linux, or because Word once crashed on them.
But those who do it for the right reasons have a point. Working with tools created by an evil entity means you are part of the problem.
But... what if I build the right thing with the evil tool? What if tools made by evil can be used for good? Is it really that morally wrong to use tools made by evil?
Maybe just a little. I mean, we’re in the software development world, not the weapons manufacturing industry, where the questions are much harder to ask and the answers much harder to find. I imagine someone from Heckler & Koch stumbling upon this article by accident, reading the heading, and chuckling at the absurdity of it.
Using Visual Studio, VS Code, programming in C#... yeah, those are tools made by an evil company. Using them means we are contributing to the success of that company.
Can I live with it? Yeah. But I’m not going to deny the fact that a tiny bit of my moral integrity is being suppressed for my own well-being and that of my family.
It's good
Now comes the opposite view.
The ecosystem of MS tools is just... good. Even worse, it’s the best I’ve ever worked with. And I’ve tried a lot of different ecosystems and toolchains: PHP, C, C++, Java, Python, Node.js...
Don't get me wrong, back in 2010, MS technologies sucked. We had WebForms—a website framework that was absolutely horrible to work with. Visual Studio sucked too. In 2026, it’s a completely different universe; MS sidelined the horrible black box called .NET Framework, making the new framework open-source and cross-platform.
Especially when combined with Azure, the entire MS ecosystem is just great to work with, and it has no equal. People who complain about MS stuff not working just aren't seeing the side of the software development world where MS is actually doing a lot of good.
It doesn’t change the fact that MS as a whole is evil—like a multi-headed hydra—but the head responsible for engineering toolchains, the ecosystem, and developer support is definitely a very good, well-behaved head.
Summary
MS is evil. Using tools made by MS means you’re contributing to their success. Denying this is stupid.
However, the ecosystem of tools is very good—probably the best. Denying this is also stupid.
Top comments (1)
Your article touches on a very important point. Almost 3 months ago, I was a complete Windows user, and I used VS Code to code. But, it was very slow, and a large part of that was due to extreme telemetry and other related issues. And, I also had an issue with the fact that you can't do things like replace the DE, and how you would have to reconfigure things in fancy GUI menus that are very hard to navigate for hours to "Optimize" the computer, or "remove" its telemetry. I also had a big issue with how laggy it was. So, I decided to switch to using Linux as my primary and only OS, specifically Debian Trixie. After the switch, my computer definitely was faster, even on KDE Plasma. And, I actually had to go back to Windows to collect some of my code because Microsoft had some really weird data storage where it was on the cloud but not on my OneDrive, and it was very intense. I tried to copy it to the cloud, and it was way too slow. Then, I tried to copy it to a flash drive, and I realized something. The whole computer essentially "crashed" because its antivirus crashed, and I couldn't even close the antivirus GUI window because not even an administrator is allowed to do so. I couldn't even open a terminal. That was a very bad last experience on Windows. I disagree with your statement of "MS is evil. Using tools made by MS means you’re contributing to their success. "This is because as a single user, you aren't making a large difference. And, I disagree with your final statement of "However, the ecosystem of tools is very good—probably the best.", especially with it being able to be applied to OSs. And, I stopped using VS code once I switched to Linux because it can be extremely slow (maybe I'm an outlier), and I do not think it has many positives that you can't get from a different, fast IDE (I use my terminal and micro or nano). But, I think that Microsoft definitely makes some good tools, like the apps in their MS365 bundle (which I do not think should be paid, at least for most functionality). And, every tool in MS365 can be replaced by different free tools, especially ones in LibreOffice.