Micrsoft the Next IBM

I checked out Scott "The Dot Glues" blog and he posted websites with great tips to do this or the other thing with Visual Studio and .BLOAT. For lack of something better to do I clicked on a couple links and found pages of steps and tutorials on how to do stuff with Visual Studio.

The first thought I had was, Scott "The DOT GLUE" doesn't get it! If in order to use a software development tool it take approximately 50 links on you blog and pages of tutorials to scratch the surface of steps required to make a tool perform tasks that should be native to the tool set, the software development tool FAILED! Given all the classes and bloat in the API wrapper classes known as the .NET framework that framework should do it all.

The issue is, .NET is NOT a FRAMEWORK, .NET's classes for the most part are merely wrappers over the operating system API much of which is still based on "LEGACY CODE". .NET is a mish-mash over whatever Microsoft has laying around or what some team is using at this moment.

I still can recall when YAG wrote the codebook for VFP. In approximately 200 pages with pictures you could have an application up and running with a pretty good idea of the basics of Foxpro. When was the last time you saw a visual studio book which was 200 pages long that explained this tool. It takes 200 pages just to unwind the freaking app.config and global.asax files.

Even with all that bloat, multiple frameworks and software involved in Visual Studio and blend you know, other then netflix I can not even think of one mainstream website or application for that matter written using Visual Studio and .BLOAT that is considered "cool".

On the operating system front Windows XP is the release when Microsoft finally got their os right, only to destroy it with Vista (gee that sounds familiar they did the same thing with Visual Studio after 6.0 was released). With Windows 7 I don't see any great adaption occuring. Window 3.11 and Windows 2000 were the last OS that had any big fanfare.

In the development tool arena Visual Studio 6.0 was the last good tool set that wasn't a bloated bug ridden mess. With MVC I actually get physically ill when I look at how far Microsoft's MVC implementation has managed to set software development back in terms of productivity. Perhaps only punch cards was more unproductive to use. Those cheerleaders that state we need to "get close to the metal" as justification for MVC are full of themselves and should spend more time deflating their overblown ego so they can drift back to reality instead of blogging. Here is a thought you want to be a real programmer then code in assembler so you can get real close to the freaking metal. Congratulations to Microsoft for splitting their own deveopment community.

On a side note ... Can anyone answer a couple questions, what is so freaking hard about building a webform designer that works? Damn this thing has been out forever and still unstable. I maybe could see a page rendering differently in firefox but IE doesn't even render correctly and Microsoft owns the browser's source code WTF? Further why can't anyone develop a class browser for VS that allows you to visually subclass UI controls? Even VFP could do this! Microsoft and the Cheerleaders love using the term OOP with visual studio but I seriously doubt the cheerleaders even understands what OOP means anymore. Soma or DOT GLUE do me a favor talk to Calvin I am sure he can help you with the class browser and explain to you why classes are important even at the UI level. Yeah I know you can hard code classes but this is supposed to be "VISUAL" studio not notepad with intellisense.

Anyway . . . .

Browsers: Internet explorer sucks balls each version has it's own set of hacks to get a webpages to render consistently across versions. Here is a hint for the IE team. FireFox is open source look at the code to see how to make a page render the same regardless what version of the browser you are using, you guys at Microsoft are great are stealing stuff go with what you know.

Websites: Live is dead. Bing is worthless and MSDN does anyone still use it. Not a single showcase website written by Microsoft. Sure there is Nerd Dinner that is a freaking showcase site and under a million lines of code .... How cool is that?

Office is still a good tool but the office team uses their own libraries and avoids .NET like the plaque.

SQL Server: I do miss using it on a daily basis, that is the one development tool Microsoft is yet to screw up.

Now we have the cloud coming. Which 95% of the average people are clueless what it does and for everyday users it serves no purpose. Again this is a business level technology which I struggle to see how businesses would be willing to turn over their data and files to Microsoft. My prediction, the cloud will have as much longevity as Microsoft BOB with the only exception being a few companies who see it as a way to eliminate some network cost.

I truly believe Microsoft is headed down the road of becoming the next IBM they have totally lost the "coolness" factor! If you dare question this logic here is a brief story.

I went shopping over the weekend to buy my grandson an IPOD for Christmas, my first stop was best buy. I looked down an aisle where Microsoft software was shelved then moved to the computer aisle there was no lines or enthusiasm people just stood blank faced while looking at the pc and the wore out windows paradigm like it was an AS400 mainframe.

I left and went to the mall, I walked into the apple store and it is packed with people, most of them were playing with apple technology or visiting the cool genius bar. People were calling ahead for reservations to talk to a sales person and exchanging ideas, in general they seemed excited about technology.

While waiting to make my purchase I had a vision of what it would be like if Microsoft had a Windows Store. There wouldn't be any employees at Microsoft's genius bar but video chat to Microsoft India where the support people would wear red polo shirts and ask you call them Bobby, Sally, Billy, Dick or Sue. Once you pose your question they would read a KB article to you, painfully detailing each of the 185,232steps required to upload a picture from Windows through the cloud to your facebook page, then assume you are an idiot for missing one of the steps which of course caused the process to fail and you have to start again. Moveover in the background you can watch them argue with each other over which way is the best way to upload your picture since of course there would be 531 ways to perform an upload and none straight forward. The mood in the Microsoft store would closely resemble a DMV office. The monitor above the bar, that displays the waiting list, would show the blue screen of death because a server in the cloud experienced a C0000005 fatal exception due to having the wrong version of the .BLOAT framework installed.

I suppose that is why Microsoft doesn't have stores, Ballmer is smart enough to have the same vision as mine, unfortunately he is not smart enough to fire the entire Visual Studio/ .NET management team then scrap Visual Studio and start over. Unless he is concerned that everything Microsoft does is worse then it's previous release, a lesson learned from vista.

After picking up the IPOD, I hit the wireless shop next. There stood the Windows 7 phone display, I looked at it for a moment but any interest I had in the phone was quickly lost when I thought of Visual Studio then proceeded to the android section where I ended up walking out with a 4g droid phone so I can "play" with mobile software development. Yes folks the ripple of effect of Microsoft Visual Studio even affects their phone sales.

Until Next Time.

Happy Coding and Think Open Source!

.Mark