Re: WDSC changing to RDi

I'm in year 5 of being essentially a full time .NET developer. I
occasionally maintain some RPG, but for the most part I live and
breathe .NET. I think that thanks to the design of the .NET
Framework, which finally solved the "DLL Hell" problem and provided
backwards compatibility, Microsoft has finally developed a platform
that is sustainable. This has been evidenced over the last couple of
years by the inclusion of things like WPF (Windows Presentation
Foundation). WPF represents the first real GUI enhancement since the
Windows API first came out around 20 years ago. It is Vector based,
fully scalable, completely real-time, and 3-D oriented. [What really
blows your mind is when you find out it is entirely defined in an XML
language] And yet, with all these core changes, it sits side by side
with the old Windows Forms and Bit-map based models we've been
accustomed to. In fact, these two vastly different technologies can
even be incorporated together in the same application. In the past,
such a fundamental change would have broken the existing code base,
but now everything just keeps on keeping on. And supporting it on the
client machine is as simple as updating the CLR runtime. There are
similar stories with WCF and other technologies.

As for the VB vs. VB.NET issue, I do think MS screwed up there, but as
a C# programmer [thanks to Java] it never really bothered me. The
real problem there was the expectation level of the developers: MS
wanted to make VB.NET a fully object oriented 1st class .NET citizen,
a distinction for which VB6 would have never qualified. As a result,
they really created a new language. This was a great advancement, but
they should have made it something like VB# and never given the
impression that this was just the next version of VB, because it
wasn't, it was much more. Like moving from C to C#. Then, they could
have (and should have) left VB6 alone, which they could have done
since all the old COM and WINAPI support is still present. Heck, they
could have probably even created a VB6 Sandbox easily enough that
would make it function pretend to be part of .NET. But alas, they did
none of the above and instead decided to push the VB6 people out of
the nest. Of course, there were threats of mass desertion, but I
think most of those evaporated.

So the lesson for both MS and IBM is this: treat your developers well.
Loyalty does go a long way, in both directions.

Peace,