Ayende @ Rahien

Stuart commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:22:29 GMT

@Stefan -- To your point, yes, it might happen. But to my point, who cares? :) I'll give credit to MS for developing the CLI / ECMA-335 and even for giving a nice implementation in the .Net Framework (with the exception that it only works on their platform). But we developers can take it from here. Microsoft needs to produce good guidance at this point because many people still care what MS says. I look forward to the day when everyone realizes that they, like all corporations, are not the authority on how technology is supposed to be used. --Stuart

tawani commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:14:06 GMT

@Stuart Great point, I'am in the same boat also - ignore all sample apps put out by MS. It didn't take me that long to figure out because I came out of the java world into ASP.NET 1.1 and the sample apps on ASP.NET (AspPortal, Project Management etc ... forgot the names) where so horrible I could not believe that they came from MS. Which make me sometimes wonder if that is how "Windows" looks like under the covers.

Stefan Wenig commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:22:48 GMT

If they get all democratic about guidance, the guidance projects could provide feedback for their higher level framework teams. Once they start doing that, they might as well have an open discussion about their frameworks without that indirection. This is not about nitpicking on every design detail, but about how an application using that framework should be built (and therefore, how that framework should be constructed in order to support this design) Who knows, it might happen sooner than we think.

Ayende Rahien commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:09:21 GMT

Ryan, The problem with organically grown guidance that it is scattered. There is a LOT of value in creating organized, cohesive and structured format for this.

Ryan Cromwell commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 01:19:11 GMT

Why does Guidance need to be "published"? Why can't it grow organically while highlighting points in time for their introduction of certain techniques? Every industry grows and changes as it adapts. Allow the "Guidance" samples to grow with it. Providing an IBuySpy, Northwind,

Nathan commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:58:01 GMT

Stuart, I agree completely with you. The people at Microsoft who work on the core C# language etc clearly know what they're doing, have a long term plan and are executing that really well. Everything else from MS should be treated with extreme skepticism.

Ayende Rahien commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:40:42 GMT

Stuart, That is really great point, and not something that has occurred to me. I think that the answer is a multi part one. a) guidance from Microsoft carry weight, and the active parts of the community want to ensure that this has the proper level of quality. b) the problem isn't with the actual guidance that they put (documents and such), I don't really have much problem with that. I have problem with the code quality that they produced. c) having guidance come down from the mountain no longer works, and we need to involve more view points. But there aren't many people or companies that are willing or able to produce guidance. Microsoft is one such company, and we want to have more guidance (good one), because in the end, it helps everyone.

Stuart commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:05:31 GMT

Ayende, I agree with what you have said. Bad code is the problem, and if someone can look at Kobe and not see bad code then he isn't a good developer. This isn't nearly as subjective as some people are trying to make it. What makes me the happiest and least frustrated is to simply ignore Microsoft as much as possible. It took me years to figure that out, but here I am. Which brings me to my main point: you say that what Microsoft needs to do in order to release guidance that doesn't suck is to subject it to community approval. I agree 100% that this would have the desired effect, in terms of vastly improving the code quality. But step back and look what is happening here (I speak not so much to you but rather to many of your readers). This puts the community into an authoritative position over Micrososft itself. This is exactly opposite of the type of role Microsoft has played in the past, where (in my view, anyway) they have tried to be the Mecca of their platform, the authority on how things are to be done in their ecosystem. So the question becomes: if Microsoft needs to subject their guidance to the community (and they do) what is the point of their guidance in the first place? Who cares what they think? If the community is the authority, why does Microsoft matter? (I might suggest that it's a matter of history that has not yet fully played out. In other words, perhaps Microsoft doesn't matter anymore, but most of the ecosystem that has sprung up around Microsoft technologies hasn't figured that out yet.)

J Healy commented on How Microsoft should release guidance?

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:14:09 GMT

I find it odd that an organization which rigorously vets product and press releases - and has a group called Patterns and Practices - is simply failing on the guidance front. Whether via a public or private process, and as you and others have suggested, all such released reference apps need to be vetted in detail by both internal and external reviewers.