The success of Microsoft’s Windows operating system is inextricably tied to its strong developer division. Since its founding, Microsoft has supplied programmers with the tools to build applications for Windows, the company’s crown jewels. Read the rest of the editorial here.
Blazing the trail for Longhorn
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The success of Microsoft Windows operating system codenamed Longhorn is not whether build a good solid product, it is whether Microsoft can sell it! Let us be honest here, they’re 3 years late already. Supposively, they have the best brains, the best tools and the best resources to get the job done, but if they can not sell it, than they’re doomed to fail or ditch out a half @$$ed product.
Personally, I wish them all the best to see where they end up but for now, I do not like their odds .
It seems to me that Microsoft’s efforts to appeal to developers are based on putting out an extreely inconsistent product full of bugs or just odd behavior, then heavily documenting how to deal with those oddities, rather than simply removing them in the first place.
It’s a fundamental issue… do you choose something that’s simple and relatively intuitive, or something incredibly complex, yet where there’s a lot of help? Should the huge manuals be seen as a good thing… or a sign that developers should stay away?
…putting out an extreely(sic) inconsistent product full of bugs or just odd behavior, then heavily documenting how to deal with those oddities…
That sounds more like a mac to me than anything else these days, ‘cept for the documentation part, where there seems to be a distinct lack on the OSX platform.
As far as microsoft’s developer friendliness goes, they have a great ide and .NET framework’s only real weakness for everyone is the lack of crossplatform support and dependence on IIS as a webserver.
Developer documentation is severely lacking in the open source world. Heck, parts of the gtk2.x tutorial still haven’t been fleshed out yet. Coders typically don’t like to do documentation so for someone starting out on some open source project they have to read some header files, get on some irc channel or google. Microsoft wins because of Visual Studio and MSDN documentation.
I think the open source world and Microsoft are even with regards to documentation. Microsoft may have more documentation, but their MSDN search engine sucks so bad the documentation might as well not exist. If you can’t find it, it doesn’t do you any good.
At least that has been my experience with MSDN.
Longhorn’s release date is around 2007. guess when the anti-trust settlement is scheduled to expire…. 2007.
hmmm
Q said: As far as microsoft’s developer friendliness goes, they have a great ide and .NET framework’s only real weakness for everyone is the lack of crossplatform support and dependence on IIS as a webserver.
Think it would be feasible to create an Apache module that’s actually a managed C++ DLL to parse ASP.Net pages on an Apache server? That module would be a bridge between the .Net Framework installed on the server and Apache.
Think of it like the Apache modules used to connect Apache to Tomcat for JSP pages and Servlets.
Oops, nevermind, it already does exist:
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,54072,00.html
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18740.html
@Chris, Actually it’s sounds like your talking more about Linux than Windows at least in my experience. Windows is complex but nowhere as complex as the *NIX world seems. I know there is a lot of dissagreement in this but everytime I can’t figure something out on Linux I get a response of “read the %*&@# manual” or a long complicating explanation involving several steps and technologies or words I’ve never heard of. I know it took me a while to get used to Windows but I’ve learned everything by screwing around with it and never read a book, actually I didn’t even use the internet as a resource for learning much either I just played around. This is especially true for developing, I mean when you install VS.NET you can start learning right away from a visual perspective and clicking without reading a thing. I wish python would be as easy for me on my FC2 box.
Anybody else ever feel that way? I think Microsoft may have an actual advantage as far as making simple tools for doing powerful things especially without using a command line and developing GUI applications.
I see where you’re coming from Jeff.
Maybe I’ve just been something other than new to programming (though I don’t know that I’d call myself an expert) for too long. It seems to me that what you’re saying actually agrees with what I had to say.
It’s not entirely difficult to approach Windows programming because all of these tools have been constructed to hide the complexity, but the danger is that you end up learning the tools, rather than how to deal with the system itself.
I could be wrong, but I think most of the complexity you’re seeing on the *nix side of things is primarily diversity. That’s not to say the individual toolkits and APIs can’t be complex and intimidating, but I think many people are intimidated by the choice, and would rather be steered toward one way of doing things, rather than face making the “wrong choice”.
.. so I use google to search the online MSDN!
It works really well
“.. so I use google to search the online MSDN!
It works really well
”
Yeah ! just tried it – it’s really cool