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MS too much Longhorn focused?

I wrote about this some times ago but today the posts of Greg Robinson and Robert Chartier points me to the same argument: the comunity is too much Longhorn (or Whidbey) focused.

I agree that the future is interesting and fascinating, that we must be prepared for the future of .NET programing etc., but in these month if you buy a programming journal like MSDN what you can see? Whidbey articles, Longhorn articles, Avalon etc.

But the present?? Why not writing about the actual development platform? We've to work with this NOW! Personally I agree with Greg... I'm tired to see articles with contents like writing a windows form application on Whidbey and see that the "Hello World" is better for eyes than with VS2003...

I think that a real interesting technical article must talk about the present technology, not only about the future...

UPDATE: I've forgot to say that just this morning I've wrote on my Italian .NET User Group a post about the next TechTalk 2004 here in Italy... 640€ for conferences that for 80% talks about introduction to Longhorn, introduction to Indigo, introduction to Avalon etc. Maybe too much??

Print | posted on Friday, April 30, 2004 3:38 PM

Comments on this post

# re: MS too much Longhorn focused?

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Just my $0.02 ... but I work on developing my company's server product based on .Net and Sql Server. With such close dependency on Microsoft products, any future sea changes are going to effect my design and development plans a great deal.
Left by Andrew on Apr 30, 2004 12:23 PM

# re: MS too much Longhorn focused?

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I kinda quit reading a lot of the .NET sites for a long time - DNJ included - because it seemed every other article was about Whidbey/Longhorn.

I am working with .NET right _now_. I need to read about things I can do in a client's _production_ environment _right_ _now_.

I couldn't care less how easy/cool my job is going to be 2 years from now(and how much easier it will be to teach someone else to do it for half my wage), but the experts that write about .NET probably yearn to actually learn something new. I don't blame them for playing with future-ware.

I just don't have time to read about it and once the present-to-future article ratio dips below a certain point, it becomes a waste of time to even check the headlines/feed.
Left by tomrowton on Apr 30, 2004 12:26 PM

# re: MS too much Longhorn focused?

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Longhorn is a ruse. M$ knows that it can never defeat Linux and so it wants to prop up the stock price for another year or two.

Luckily .NET will survive as mono and dotgnu once m$ goes down -- hard.

Left by John Bailo on Apr 30, 2004 2:22 PM

# re: MS too much Longhorn focused?

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I still find it interesting that in order to "take down" Microsoft all the Linux people make clones of Microsoft's products. If you really want to blow them away, create a new app/interface/GUI that is superior and market it to the public (or give it away).
Left by John Winkle on Apr 30, 2004 5:36 PM

# re: MS too much Longhorn focused?

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That's an interesting viewpoint, John Winkle, but I'm having a hard time thinking of any product that MS did that with...
Does anyone know of any MS apps that are/were truly "new"?

I'll go ahead and rule out a few for you:
DOS, Windows, Office apps, Database apps, programming languages, .NET Framework, Web browser.

I'm not saying they didn't do any of them well after a couple of revisions, but they were not "new". I'm also not saying I agree with the "we need to kill MS" mindset - I find that daft, but young people need something to rail against and for OSS developers and evangelists, it's so much easier to complain about how crappy MS code is than it is to actually produce better applications that people can use without a CS degree.


Anyway, if you guys know of any truly "original," "new," apps that MS has produced, please correct me.
Left by tomrowton on May 01, 2004 6:50 AM

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