Satya Nadella explained how the company wants to help every group of people to develop the apps they love, regardless of their position or age.
He described the process as “building bridges”, saying: “We want to build bridges for your skills, your technology choices, your languages.”
Nadella introduced the creator of StaffPad, Microsoft’s new music notation software for the Surface that allows you to write music by hand with the Surface Pen. After joking about how music and code can both be “written in C# or F#”, Nadella used StaffPad as an example of how the company is encouraging everyone to develop.
Clearly, Microsoft wants to define its place in the world early on, using the first few minutes of its keynote to announce that it is still a development company. After former CEO Steve Ballmer famously led the crowd to chant “Developers, developers, developers” to indicate the importance of program-makers to the company at BUILD many years ago, Nadella today affirmed: “A lot of technologies have come and gone but what has remained constant, is that ethos that we are a development company.”
With Microsoft’s ongoing struggle to get app developers to commit to Windows still a very real issue, it isn’t surprising to find Nadella encouraging the community at the very start of BUILD. With news on Windows, Xbox and Azure all upcoming, Microsoft needs to persuade developers that working with the company is something worth doing if Windows 10 is to successfully shed the negative image of Windows 8’s often barren app store.
