[Article] Is Redmond losing touch with its developers?
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Ask me again when some body offers a better development toolkit than Visual Studio, Platform SDK and the .NET Framework. Until then, I'll stick with Microsoft. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]
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I'd echo Michael's response. I've used a couple of Java IDEs over the years (I've only done a very minor amount of J2EE coding), and I've always found them drastically under-designed compared to VS. Although, I've not tried IntelliJ and that always seems to be the favourite. I can understand the whole VB petition to some extent, largely from understanding the uproar when Windows 2000's lifecycle support was changed (I think) in response to large companies being unwilling to deploy XP having only just deployed 2000. However, saying that, thats only from a maintenance stand-point. I don't understand why people would necessarily still want to target unmanaged Win32 code using VB. Especially since its not _actually_ native code in the first place. I guess the gripe is with the continued support of Visual C++ for writing Win32 apps, but not VB. Now, I know this is likely the wrong place to bring it up :P, but there is almost certainly a vast amount of legacy VB code out there in enterprises, still being maintained (I've had to do some myself), and without any good way to bring VB up to VB.NET (this is ignoring the issue of bringing VB6 developers into the OO world) they're likely to feel left without somewhere to turn. Whereas despite the diminished pushing of VC++ from MSDN etc., the support is still there, with compiler and IDE improvements being made too. I can also understand the gripes with MSDN Universal customers, we have MSDN Universal subscriptions here and I personally was looking forward to playing around with it. However, we're a relatively small shop, and already have a large amount of the tooling in place -- a custom bug report/work tracking app, CruiseControl.NET, NAnt, NUnit etc. so I think the only thing we could really gain from is dropping SourceSafe. However, if the new version is significantly better we may be able to keep that, otherwise it looks like Subversion may be the way to go. I understand that people originally consider MSDN Universal to essentially be an all-you-can-eat type sub, but these kinds of tools were never in the arsenal, and if I'm not mistaken, the majority of the things included within the subscription are dev/testing licensed, _not_ licensed for every day use (excluding VS). So, although it maybe ought to be included for devs to produce add-ons etc., it probably wouldn't have ended up as an everyday use license anyway -- it's no longer Visual Studio we're dealing with, rather a kind of development Office productivity suite on steroids. Not sure I've made myself too
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I don't know guys, though I deeply respect your opinions on this issue, I have to say the article has some salient points. It does seem that Microsoft's marketing stratedgy, whether intentional or not, will leave the independent or small shop developer out in the cold. In one respect there is a possiblity that unless a developer is employed by a large enterprise corp that developer will slowly lose touch and skill in regards to MS technologies and WILL have to pick up other skill sets to maintain some sort of attractiveness for future employment. This plan, on the surface of it, closes the door to future developers being exposed to and seduced by MS development technologies. Jerry Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated--Robert C. Savage, Life Lessons Toasty0.com Ladder League (beta)
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I don't know guys, though I deeply respect your opinions on this issue, I have to say the article has some salient points. It does seem that Microsoft's marketing stratedgy, whether intentional or not, will leave the independent or small shop developer out in the cold. In one respect there is a possiblity that unless a developer is employed by a large enterprise corp that developer will slowly lose touch and skill in regards to MS technologies and WILL have to pick up other skill sets to maintain some sort of attractiveness for future employment. This plan, on the surface of it, closes the door to future developers being exposed to and seduced by MS development technologies. Jerry Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated--Robert C. Savage, Life Lessons Toasty0.com Ladder League (beta)
Don't forget that it's only the kind of collaborative tools that aren't included within the subscription. You still have access to the various testing/analysis type tools included within VS. From a developer point-of-view, the only thing (to my knowledge) that would be of use to see is the kind of work item tracking. That is, where do your tasks get listed, and how do you then action them etc. However, because of the extensible/generic nature of the processes included within Team System it sounds to me like even if you did have exposure to Team System, you still have to get to grips with the company's processes, rather than Team System per se. I personally don't see how it does shut out the independent/small developer out, unless of course it's not possible to obtain development licensed versions of the suite so that you could develop extensions to the Foundation Server etc. For example, I believe SourceGear are working on a *nix client to TS. It would be interesting to see whether small/micro ISVs could get copies of TS to develop against, but without licenses for productive use (i.e. becoming your method of tracking projects). I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong, but I would assume attractiveness in the workplace is down to more than just exposure to the latest tools. Sure it's a bonus if someone has already used ClearCase (for instance), but if a candidate hadn't I doubt it would be held against them -- using the tools is only a small part of getting up to speed with SCM. I initially was quite disappointed that TS would be outside of the Universal subscription (and priced quite so highly) but after reading other responses from devs, I do now feel that the position is being somewhat blown out of proportion. I'm just pysched about what's coming up in .NET 2, ASP.NET 2, and VS2005 to worry that I'm not getting Work Item tracking and SCM shelving, great as they may be. -- Paul MS Messenger: paul -at- oobaloo-co-uk
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Ask me again when some body offers a better development toolkit than Visual Studio, Platform SDK and the .NET Framework. Until then, I'll stick with Microsoft. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Blog [^]