The Poster Formerly Known as Kline Sphere <.@> wrote:
>>From Microsoft's MSDN website, you can download hundreds of pre-recored
>>webcasts. They are not specifically geared toward preparing for MCSD
>>certification, but present information covered by the exams. I download the
>>audio portion to a digital voice recorder and listen during my commute to
>>work.
>>http://msdn.microsoft.com/showsandwebcasts/
>
>I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears.
>
>The amount of information and knowledge (a lot of it free) that ms
>provide is truly awesome. It makes me think, why are so many crap
>systems produced on microsoft platforms? Then I take a look in this ng
>and reason becomes totally clear....
>
>Kline Sphere (Chalk) MCNGP #3
....hhhmmm...
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that MS is still
pursuing the "easy to use" development tool, rather than
focusing on the much more elusive and difficult "highly
productive" development environment.
I mean its cute that you can drag a data connection from the
server explorer and drop it as a ready made class - but that
looses its novelty pretty quickly. And while you can quickly
generate all sorts of gizmos with next to no work - as soon
as you are trying to get any real work done and you need to
deviate from MS's happy path - then you actually have to
know what's going on ANYWAY.
And while components, frameworks, application blocks do
eventually enhance productivity they also steepen and / or
lengthen the initial learning curve considerably - to the
point that these technologies are replaced by the next
generation when you finally after two years or so figure out
how to do something in 3 lines that originally took you 30
(OK, I'm exaggerating here). None of this will ever enable
an epsilon minus semi-moron to develop software properly -
but it does make people who know what they are doing more
productive.
And where does this attitude come from that anyone who
barely knows how to navigate MS Word should also be capable
of developing software?
The industrial revolution did in fact allow lower skilled
workers to produce more goods (after some investment on part
of the factory owners). However the manufacturing metaphor
does not translate very well to software development - more
isn't better - you'd think Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. made
that point eloquently enough 30 years ago. What's needed are
tools that make the competent people more productive - and
CASE tools didn't cut it. Whenever these tools come into
existence, they will require highly skilled and knowledgable
people to use them (effectively).
MS has got to start realizing that it is going to take an
army of sophisticated and competent administrators and
developers (who aren't in MS's employ) to make distributed
computing work with .NET (or any other technology for that
matter) in an environment of diverse business needs. The
'now anybody can do this' sales-pitch may be popular with
some managers but does not necessarily attract the right
people (or business customers) to the technology.
Unless of course .NET, WinFX isn't about business solutions
in the long term anyway but just an evolutionary step for
the software core for the umpteenth successor of the XBOX,
the universal hyper-connected electronic productivity and
entertainment media center and wanna-be killer of the
generic consumer PC.
There seems to be more money in entertainment than in real
business anyway.
Oops, entertainment is THE business - my mistake.
(-:
'Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.'
Martin Fowler,
'Refactoring: improving the design of existing code', p.15
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