Microsoft PDC Journal

OzzyFudd writes: "I have recently returned from the Microsoft Professional Developers conference and posted a scathing journal of my week there at www.ozzyfudd.com I am an architech who works in largely heterogenous environments, hence, I go because I have to. I offer here some commentary, criticism, and humor from behind enemy lines." Gives some interesting insight into the future of C#, as well.

Comments

Why was this story posted?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but this has to be the worst story I have ever seen posted on Slashdot. It has all the attributes of the worst, most self-opinionated, badly-written rants on Usenet. If I want to read poorly written, even more poorly argued crap from the mouths of self-righteous commie-hating, gun-lovin' far right maniacs there are all sorts of sources without having links on Slashdot.

For a start the author's credibility is immediately damaged by his warez-d00d style red on dark tiled background website complete with '5 minutes in Microsoft paint' linking images. Strange given that he says 'Web and Internet Development' are his 'life.' The script kiddie image is further bolstered by his bad English, and I'd almost think he was a disaffected teenager pretending to be an adult, except that the picture he links to (check it out at http://www.scottbushey.com/art/webcam.html, Bushey fans) would surely have been more attractive. I think it's obvious that this extravagantly bearded self-proclaimed genius lacks an education from his rant on 'The Failure of the Over-educated.' An example quote illustrates his views on education:

'The over-educated suffer from having spent too much time in school, and not enough time out in Corporate America, where like no where before have the laws of nature, the beauty of predator and prey, and the best of humanity manifested themselves.'

Er... OK. 'Corporate America' and 'the best of humanity' in one sentence... And he hates Microsoft, right? Surely Microsoft are the archetypal predator? But you see the alternative is the horrible spectre of 'socialism and its evil henchmen, the over-educated.' Shudder. What we need are far more people like Bushey with their razor sharp, thoroughly coherent thinking, honed in the supremely honourable corporate jungle, producing reams of polemic cadenced in that unique English you can only acquire by not going to college. But then apart from that terrible education that I shouldn't have had, I expect I've had my mind poisoned by the CNN because they're the 'Communist News Network' (see 'Tree Hugging Hippy Crap', his incisive discussion of environmentalists and their selfish denial of furniture to needy children by protecting trees).

Of all Mr Bushey's diatribes, however, I think the 'Speak!' one sums up his attitude best:

'Are you unhappy? Pissed off? Angry? Troubled? Are you fed up with the world or just the guy down the street? Well guess what! You have an outlet, a way to vent, you have the equivelent of a thirty second spot on worldwide TV. Get yourself a website...

'Was your order screwed up at the drive thru today? Fine, let the whole world know what total assholes those idiots at the local choke and puke are. Was the woman on the phone today when you were calling the electric company to find out why they sent you someone else's bill a total bitch! Call her out in front of the whole friggen world on your website, then post a link to it on every discussion board from Yahoo to Usenet.'

Sounds like the charter for every sad Usenet poster who's ever bellowed out their futile rage in the mistaken belief that anyone cares. The question is why should the readers of Slashdot care?

Wow, how did this ever get +5?

[Chris Johnson]

"They are not your enemy"

Only if you are their customer. If you are not their customer then they are your enemy. This is really quite plain, what is so hard to understand about that?

"THey spent 2billion dollars a year on research. that has to result in something good"

Um- no. It can result in vast amounts of useless wheelspinning and wasting of money. See Apple as of 1996-1997: at the time Apple was working on everything from QTVR to OpenDoc and every engineer seemed to have his own 'cool project' all funded by the endless supplies of Apple money, and very little of it got anywhere. Jobs 'steved' most of it, and now Apple tends to deliver on its ideas rather than not.

It looks very much like MS is in a place similar to where Apple was back in '97... full of themselves, spending vast amounts on ill-defined projects, not taking care of the important things (i.e. the bugs developers were clamoring to be fixed), and very possibly bleeding money in Niagara-like amounts. How is this possible? It's possible because MS _spends_ money in Niagara-like amounts, and in order for that to be useful behavior it needs to produce results.

It appears that the results currently amount to developer alienation so intense (and this is from CONVENTIONGOERS, not snotty linux purists shunning the thing) that there is no excitement and little attention paid to the new toys- contrast that to the days of W95, for instance.

This is partly due to a sense of betrayal ('stop playing with new e+e and fix this damn bug!') and apparently it's also due to the fact that the new technologies are entirely reactive- they are all about filling a laundry list of features and there's little attempt to pretend otherwise. It's like C#'s real purpose is to kill Java, and any usefulness as a programming language is way down on the list- comparatively unimportant. All this is really raising the Art Of Monopolistic Positioning to new heights- it's like an ever-deeper understanding of the viral nature of MS's position in technology- the job really ISN'T to solve techie problems, or even to enable computer solutions. The job is entirely, utterly, to stop other vendors from being able to do that. Actually delivering working and useful technology is decidedly secondary.

Leaving aside the reality that this approach is getting thwacked in the courts, there's another problem: this is an entirely reactive approach. It can be effective at hurting a competing vendor in a free market, but you start hitting diminishing returns as the other vendors die off. The endgame (which we are in) leads toward major vendor-lock, but under conditions of general crappiness and a constant battle to deny obvious customer dissatisfaction (i.e. the crowd of developers yelling at the MS rep about the bug that hadn't been fixed in 3 versions). The same tools that work to hurt other vendors (outright denial of any problems, establishing that your product's benefits are what you _feel_ they should be rather than what they actually are in practice) end up working to cause severe customer rage, which is a real set-up: under these conditions any schmuck can come along and if their promise includes "Oh, and I am not Microsoft" they get an automatic boost. (see Apple in recent years- and Linux)

It may seem like a wild notion that Microsoft would go the way of Kaypro and Visicalc- but there is almost no other way they can go. I am not aware of any Steve Jobs-like figure who can come into Microsoft and start firing people and killing off stupid projects that are only reactive and vapor-oriented. They are _stuck_ with that approach- and well past the point where it's working for them. The Microsoft Way will not become clear sailing- it will continue to be bogged down in efforts to put roadblocks in competing vendors' paths, and the developer and the consumer will continue to be a very low priority compared to the power politics that make up so much of Microsoft's field of vision.

Eventually this will cost more than it earns. At a blind guess I would say that it ALREADY is costing them more than they earn- that MS is in the red if you look at the REAL figures and not entertaining games with taking next year's payroll as a tax deduction for last year twice over etc etc and so on. I say they are losing money- not because they don't still make loads of money, but because they are SPENDING so damn much and are not, cannot show any signs of moderation about this. That's a deadly trap- they daren't show any sign that they have finite pockets like any business or small country, and so they are forced to go way into the red and cover it up at any cost for largely _ego_ reasons and to protect their stock price, which is so intimately linked with their financial resources. It's a recipe for total destruction, not a slide into irrelevance but a high-speed wreck leaving no survivors.

One could wish that MS was able to behave like a normal company for a change and avoid this fate...

Re:Anyone Have an Objective Review of .net?

[Masem]

While not truely objective, I at least know what MS is trying to do.

.NET will allow you to use apps anywhere, not just at one box, but any net-accessible machine, including potentally devices et al. Your working state is persistant when you logoff because everything's saved mostly at a central server rather than your local HD. Updates and upgrades can be easily installed at only one point, as opposed to every computer on a network. Overall, it's an interesting idea on convience.

However, there are more pitfalls than potental good things. It allows easily for pay-per-use pricing since every use can be logged centrally as well. Privacy and security would be a high risk factor since basic network transactions are at the heart of this. And of course, these apps become dependant on decent bandwidth connections to work; no problem in corporate world, but not at 40,000 ft. Finally, MS has suggested that they'll have the .NET specifications all open for third-party developers to write for it, but most will appear to work only under MS OS's (which is why they need the proprietary C# and SOAP).

Some of these are MS-isms. However, more importanty, privacy, security, and bandwidth are going to be problems in any distributed app network whether created by MS or Linus. MO

Re:Aw what a blind hate again

[The OPTiCIAN]

• I developed a lot in java but I'm very willing to swap to C# once it's there. Why? because the tradition of well done documentation (not generated CRAP like Sun gives us), lots of examples and full applications, complete in sourcecode will be extended when .NET is fully released.

I have to disagree with this. Java is one of the best implemented paradigms in the industry at the moment, and javadoc is a big part of that. Java doc is everywhere, you can find whatever you need to, it's clearer to read than most documentation (eg at the bad end: man pages hehehe), it's complete and it's easy to generate. Microsoft, also, do some documentation well. For instance, I learnt Visual Basic largely from msdn. But Microsoft documentation is always tied into some sort of rubbish interface (like msdn either on web or purchased cds) which is just ridiculous, and their technical documentation is bloaty. Further, it's often difficult to find simple answers to simple questions because of the absurd structure of their index tree. And if you do want more detailed, example based java documentation (beyond the examples standard with javadoc), there are thousands of good books and online references. Your criticisms of javadoc are right out.

If you're currently developing in java, you'd have to be crazy to downgrade to an unproven proprietary platform with a shakey future.

Embrace and exend can be done well. It's what GNU is all about. But Microsoft's motives and practice are sure to make C# a one way tunnel to proprietaryville.

Bertrand Meyer

[Pac]

Meyer deverses the respect of the development community. He is a very serious, very bright computer scientist, and Eiffel is a neat little language with a devouted if small following.

On the other hand, as much as the article's author doesn't know who Meyer is, he is right on the spot. From Microsoft point of view he is just
"a poor guy, Eiffel author" who is there to prove MSs VM is multi-language and, of course, "he won't be there next year".

Meyer is being used by MS and getting some publicity for Eiffel in the process. Maybe he can find one or two new developers in PDC. But it is somewhat sad, nevetheless.

Slightly OT: Smokers are selfish pricks

[Kris_J]

I finally get to my room. It has two beds, a bunkbed, two televisions, no honor bar, and no ashtray. All I wanted was a smoking room...and they wouldn't give it to me (hehehe, for all you Suicidal Tendencies fans)! So what did I do? I broke out a huge cigar and lit up, proceeding to blow smoke into every fabric in the room. Looks like the Wyndham has a new smoking room!

What a fucking prick. I'm sorry the hotel didn't give you some stinky room to light up your cancer stick in, but if you've been put in a no smoking room don't fuck it up for those people with enough (ie; any) intelligence to not smoke. Jerk.

After that I didn't think it was worth another second of my time to read whatever pointless and probably inaccurate rant this idiot had to say. Does anyone have a review of the event from an intelligent source?

Re:Anyone Have an Objective Review of .net?

[Black Parrot]

> does anyone actually have anything good to say about it?

Sure. If you want your ability to conduct day to day operations to be at the mercy of backhoe operators, if you want your data to be stored on someone else's machine where it may or may not be snooped on without your knowing, if you want to be billed monthly for use of a critical resource, and if you want to be a victim of the ultimate vendor lock-in, then .NET is just the thing for you.

(Notice that none of this has anything to do with whether you like MS or not. If you want the perspective on MS's role in it, it should suffice to point out that this is the scam^H^H^H^Hscheme that Sun has been pushing loudly for the past several years, and MS has been alternately laughing at it or getting on the bandwagon, depending day-to-day on which stance they deem most likely to keep their customers from going over to Sun. However, it looks like they have well and truly innovated it over the last few weeks, so now they won't be laughing at it anymore. At least not until they lose interest in it and start pushing something else, like Net# or whatever they decide to call The Next Big Thing [TM].)

--

Sounds good to me

[Dacta]

I've just bothered to start reading stuff about .Net - I thought it was just MS marketing speak. There's actually some pretty cool stuff in there once you get past all the crap. (I've written something at http://www.kuro5hin.org, but it was in the moderation queue when I posted this)

Anyway, reading this guys writing makes me even more impressed with .Net (although did anyone else get the impression he loves C++ even more than most Linux hackers?). For instance:

Session state can be maintained on an alternate machine, allowing server reboots with preserved state,and it can be cookieless via url munging. You get a call stack trace and some verbose error messages. Event log and mail are built in, but mail requires that damn mail service still. Interdev will debug across languages now. Oh, and IIS gets Apache like pre-emptive recycling. The surprise here is they admitted they borrowed it from Apache. ASP is finally in its own process, and has memory leak detection. You can even assign processes and processor affinity to web apps.

Pretty cool, hey! Especially the maintaing of session state across different machines.

Will someone please remind all these VB people that it isn't object oriented, its object based? You'd think these guys are coding in C++ or Java the way the bandie OO terms about.

This guy just doesn't listen. Even MS (now!) admits that VB is only object based. However VB7 (which is the .Net version) is a proper OO language. It has proper inheritance and encapsulation - and it even does exception handling.

Object oriented development in VB.NET...hehehe, title says it all. Alan Carter, yer a dork. I want to see pointers and operator overloading.

I don't. There is no need for pointers in most coding, and generally the parts where pointers are used are the most bug prone. Java, Delphi, Python, Smalltalk - all proper OO languages and none have pointers. (Not sure about operator overloading)

The biggest worry is, of course, this:

ASP+ performance and caching was another welcome to C# filled session, and offered little other than common sense...throughput vs. responsiveness, etc... Warning to ASP coders: A lot of these "features" are going to automatically be shoving preformated html to your users. Remember how frontpage hosed yer code? Now IIS will be doing it.

The funniest thing his his whole speil:

They held up a poor guy, Eiffel author, as proof of their party language support. His language looks similar to C#...he won't be there next year.

Now this poor guy was (I believe) none other than Bertrand Meyer who (while he doesn't know much about open source software) does know his stuff when it comes to high quality software engineering. For the author of this piece not to know who he was, and to claim His language looks similar to C#... is pretty dumb. Since this guy seems to think he is some kind of technology guru, I would have expected he would have heard of Eiffel. It's not particually similar to C#, btw - have a look at design by contract for a start.

The Java Dump

[rlowe69]

they drop Java like a hot potato, without warning, in favor of their own proprietary C# which will surely tilt the balance of power even further into MS's grasp?

We can speculate all we want about why MS dropped Java, but the bottom line is that they realised they were fighting a battle they just couldn't win. Either way they look like the bad guys, so they just chose the solution that took less time - dump Java, "replace" it with another language and pretend nothing happened, treating the J-word like it's the worst cuss we've ever been acquainted with.

You know what's funny? The university I go to just changed the language it uses for introductory CS classes from Pascal to Java (thank goodness). The network is comprised of mostly NT4 boxes (sad but true). What is administration going to do when the students are crying bloody murder because (they don't know any better and) they aren't using Windows 2000?? Use C#? Yeah right.

What's the bottom line? MS is just making more enemies. IBM already loaths MS (see: OS/2). Sun's relationship is questionable, if not deteriorated. MS and Gates make fun of Oracle at every turn. What is MS trying to do?? Gain playground respect by bullying everyone? They certainly won't have mine - and it certainly won't stop me from bitching about them either. :-)

rLowe

You are wrong...

[Carnage4Life]

I don't care if this gets moderated down because some anti-microsoft moderator hates what I write here, but I have to say it: Microsoft releases a LOT OF sourcecode, free for all.: The duwamish bookstore, a complete e-commerce application ready to roll (a complete online store), with code, docs etc. numerous examples, tutorials and docs.

I developed a lot in java but I'm very willing to swap to C# once it's there. Why? because the tradition of well done documentation (not generated CRAP like Sun gives us), lots of examples and full applications, complete in sourcecode will be extended when .NET is fully released.

First of all it is obvious that you have never truly investigated Sun's Java documentation. All the source code you claim MSFT releases are simply tutorials and examples on how to use their proprietary languages. Sun does the exact same thing for Java, at the online Java tutorial site Sun releases a LOT OF sourcecode, free for all . Here's a list of examples as useful as the Duwamish example I found in less than five minutes of browsing the online Java tutorial.

Bingo - Client/Server version of Bingo that shows how to use JFC ("Swing") User Interface classes,Multi-threading and thread synchronization, Inter-application communication APIs , Digital signatures , a Customized EventQueue , Managing program settings.

Duke's Bookstore -An online bookstore that utilizes the power of Java servlets and shows various aspects of session management, handling HTTP GET requests, and more .

Dozens of Applets- that are used to show how use various Swing layouts, GUI threading, event handling and playing sounds. There are over a 100 classes whose source code is available in the various examples. MSFT's MSDN does not come close when it comes to releasing source code.

As for documentation, I learned Java primarily from the aforementioned tutorial and the Online API(which I happened to download for free) and am currently implementing an extensible regression testing framework that will be used on large B2B websites for a Fortune 500 company. All the Java knowledge I have I picked up online less than a year ago, I dare you to find someone who learned COM from online documentation only who can implement a large scale, cross platform, extensible automated regression testing toolkit in a month. The key here is from online documentation only. Call me when hell freezes over.

PS: Plus Sun's tutorials and API's are available for free download here, while do only way to get the entire MSDN collection is to pay for it by subscribing to MSDN and getting a CD.

PPS: The company I worked for was very glad that all my code has HTML javadocs that the QA team and other developers can look at to get an overview of how my code works. What is MSFT's generated CRAP alternative, as you so call it?


WHY C SUCKS
-----------
int i =0;
i = i + 1;

Java-bastardizing-then-dumping bastards....

[Sir_Winston]

Is it just me, or does this whole C# thing seem especially brutal considering the fact that MS was, right up to the very announcement of C#, pushing Java and especially their own bastardized version of it? Let's see: MS takes a semi-open standard invented and managed by arch-nemesis Sun, breaks it through alteration, fights a bitter court battle over the right to "innovate" on what Sun intended to be a cross-platform and uniform thing, succeeds in court and succeeds in screwing Java up with "improvements" which of course benefit mostly MS's own products, and then...as a grand finale...they drop Java like a hot potato, without warning, in favor of their own proprietary C# which will surely tilt the balance of power even further into MS's grasp?

I think that pretty much sums it up. The anti-trust case must be ruled on and upheld as soon as possible, or else we're all royally fscked. Microsoft.NET is looking more and more like a dystopian corporate-controlled world worse than those in cyberpunk scifi. Imagine a world in which software firms buy pricey MS toolkits to develop in an MS language for a yearly-licensed MS operating system which is seamlessly integrated into the MS.Network, which provides monthly-licensed access to programmes you don't own executed by machines which MS does own filled with files we own but won't be able to access unless we keep paying for monthly MS.NET accounts. That is the future MS wants, a future in which we don't own good hardware or software or the tools necessary to develop for the leading platform, but instead we own WebTerms melded to MS.NET which rents us all our applications and Internet access, hosts all our files remotely, and locks us in forever.

More MS buzzwords for the same old...

[moxy]

I'm sick of MS renaming their technologies. It seems their marketing people are busier than their developers. Why did SNA get renamed? Why does every MS technology get renamed? I'm not a MS basher, I use their products when it makes sense, but I waste too much time try to keep up with the new names for their technologies. Why does every version require a new name?

Aw what a blind hate again

[Otis_INF]

... from behind enemy lines.

Newsflash: They are not your enemy. THey spent 2billion dollars a year on research. that has to result in something good, plus in some environments their products are better than other products. Choose the tool that fits the job, don't change the job to fit the tool

It's also sad that the majority here who tends to post articles OR replies won't bother to look into what .NET is all about and when there is something useful to adopt and include in Open Source projects. The majority focusses on DETAILS like the C# vs Java thing (both proprietry languages designed by 1 company. what's the difference?) or fud that MS isn't capable of cooking up such an environment.

I don't care if this gets moderated down because some anti-microsoft moderator hates what I write here, but I have to say it: Microsoft releases a LOT OF sourcecode, free for all.: The duwamish bookstore, a complete e-commerce application ready to roll (a complete online store), with code, docs etc. numerous examples, tutorials and docs.

I developed a lot in java but I'm very willing to swap to C# once it's there. Why? because the tradition of well done documentation (not generated CRAP like Sun gives us), lots of examples and full applications, complete in sourcecode will be extended when .NET is fully released.

You should try it sometimes. You can benefit from it. Instead of bashing it, you could do what made MS big and Japan's economy the world leader: adapt and extend.... Open your eyes. It will do good :)
--