david sidlinger

The latest on the reading list is Programming WCF Services from Juval Löwy. I’m having a real hard time maintaining interest in this book for a variety of reasons, but I’ll save the review for when I’m done.

I was only in the first paragraph of the preface when I hit a statement that sums up how I have been feeling about Microsoft development lately. In Juval’s own words:

Then, in July 2002, during a C# Strategic Design Review, the remoting program manager outlined in broad strokes plans to rework remoting into something that developers should actually use.

Now, Juval is not a Microsoft employee so much as a Microsoft shill; so, nothing he says can be taken as anything official from on high. However, I think that one statement has focused my frustration enough that I can articulate what has been bugging me. It shows a complete and utter disregard for the people that have been building their products on the .NET platform by Microsoft and their evangelists. This type of behavior can be seen in almost all facets of their development tools and technology stacks (e.g. distributed systems, data access, web applications.) They come out with yet another new solution to a problem only to turn around and rework it from the ground up and tell us what a piece of crap that last implementation was.

Outside of the standard disclaimers on alpha and beta software, I have never seen or heard Microsoft say that we shouldn’t be using their current technology stack. If remoting was so bad (I do think it was and still is,) why didn’t they caution us against using it? Why do they continually come out with shiny new toys that require the people driving their success to rewrite mountains of code?

The simplest answer is that most of what they put out does suck. While there have been some real “gems” thrown out there for people to risk their business on, I don’t think that completely explains it.

The second simplest answer is that Microsoft has shareholders and loads of salespeople and middlemen to appease. They cannot survive without a constant stream of revenue pouring in. They could accomplish that by being the hands-down best platform out there. Instead, they choose to feed the MSDN beast and get developers whipped into a frenzy about something that will require more upgrades, training, etc. Incremental, but substantial, improvements with a lot of thought put into maintaining compatibility with existing code do not keeping cash flowing into the maw.

A lot of people have written about this. Some of Microsoft’s own people have had moments of sanity. I just wanted to register my disgust. If anyone from Microsoft comes upon this, know that you’ve lost another “heart and mind.” I have unwittingly done my part to push your products and agendas in the past. I won’t be doing it anymore. Will I stop using the .NET platform altogether? No. Will I avoid subjecting my employers and clients to change for change’s sake? Absolutely. Will I make every reasonable effort to get them to consider alternatives? You better believe it.

Update: As with all things, I should have looked to Looney Toons for an appropriate analogy. We developers are Elmer Fudd, and whatever Redmond is pushing is Bugs Bunny in a dress. We just keep falling for it every time.