Microsoft's Top Devs Don't Seem To Like Own Tools

ericatcw writes "Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of crafting code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet." These guys are senior enough that they don't seem to need to watch what they say and how it aligns with Microsoft's product roadmap. They are also dead funny. Here's Jeffrey Snover on managed code (being pushed by Microsoft through its Common Language Runtime tech): "Managed code is like antilock brakes. You used to have to be a good driver on ice or you would die. Now you don't have to pump your brakes anymore." Snover also joked that programming is getting so abstract, developers will soon have to use Natal to "write programs through interpretative dance."

Comments

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

MSDN is another way of saying you don't know what you are doing.

elitist morons

[timmarhy]

so MS has elitist morons in their ranks as well, how is this news?

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

When I researched the Visual BASIC.Net 2002 development tools in beta I noticed those problems and my employer thought I was crazy. They moved on to Dotnet without me, having fired me for getting sick on the job and I eventually ended up so sick from the stress that I ended up disabled. I went on short-term disability for a while, tried a few more jobs, but ended up on disability.

Wow! I never thought I'd see a "crappy Microsoft software made me disabled!" post on Slashdot. Though I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise to me.

Re:pros and cons

[sys.stdout.write]

I just realized that I am now committed to the proposition that Perl "tries to spoonfeed you." I am not sure this is a good position to be in ;-)

Re:Programmers I've worked with

[the_povinator]

The biggest posers I worked with used Visual Studio. The best group of programmers I worked with used text editor. That group could code rings around VS. The best of the best of them used vi.

I'm a great programmer and I use emacs, you insensitive clod!

Dear Computerworld...

[TheModelEskimo]

Our programmers are getting a bad rep because of our coding-for-weenies tradition. Can you please run an article that makes Microsoft programmers look like total badasses?

XOXOXO
-Steve B.

Re:So what?

[gzipped_tar]

I hate Microsoft more than anyone

See, being subjected to IDEs has lowered your ability of detecting faulty code. You're basically saying A > A since this "anyone" includes "you" too. ;)

Interpretive dance?

[Rufty]

Don't know about interpretive dance, but I'm guessing that the MFC was written in abstract pottery.

Re:pros and cons

[Anpheus]

http://www.codeplex.com/singularity

Your words, I want to see you eat them.

Re:Wow!

[roguetrick]

Alright boys, take the love fest over to thedailywtf.

Re:Wow!

[gandhi_2]

In the Army, this is called "back when it was hard".

In this context:

How many developers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

2: one screws it in, the other one talks about how hard it used to be.

Re:Programmers I've worked with

[tjstork]

Please don't do that. I will hunt you down and deliver a round-house open-handed slap to your ear; rupturing your eardrum asunder. Consider that next year I might have to maintain your 512 column code. There is nothing more nauseating than opening someone's code in a standard xterm and seeing single lines fucking wrap around the fuck around the fucking terminal

Wouldn't it be easier to turn off line wrap in your editor?