Random Technology Ramblings

Microsoft has shaken my belief system! Every sense I started to think of my self as a Software Engineer as defined by Steve McConnell I had believed was that Microsoft was making delivering software solutions easier without a care as to the crappiness of the solutions. Well it was a good plan the more solutions on a platform the more of that platform you will sell but if the solutions make the platform unstable whose fault is it? Look at Lunix and Mac OS, there is a much longer learning curve to do any type of solution development that will weed out the yahoos that should not be developing and any one who is developing there will have to have learned some about the system. With Visual Basic versions 1-6 all you needed to do was to fallow some wizards and not drool on the keyboard too much and you were now a solution developer.

Now I come up through VB and loved it the whole time but I focused on the overall platform and tried to fallow some standards that helped me to avoid most of the pitfalls of VB wizard development. So now again I ask whose fault was it that a bad solution made the platform unstable? Well I think it was Microsoft’s fault for making a great tool that would allow anyone responsible to deliver great solutions is far less time but would also let a manager make a mess in no time.

Well .NET goes a long way to correct this, no they do not stop bad code or bad solutions but they protect the system better and that is good but now they have gone the next step and created a Patterns & Practices group (was PAG) and they have published some great stuff to help the person who wants to be a responsible developer.