http://weblogs.asp.net varies in quality quite a bit, but it’s worth being subscribed just so you always catch ScottGu’s postings. But recently I’ve noticed the Visual WebGui blog. This is effectively a product blog - every post since February is a promo for the Visual WebGui tool. Is this what weblogs.asp.net is about? Should posts like this be a regular feature in the content of this community web site? Is it really in the interest of the community at large? Andrew Stopford also has a blog there, and while he talks about MbUnit a lot, his posts never feel like they were written by a marketing department. He also speaks on quite a range of subjects, so his blog doesn’t leave me with a bad taste in my mouth in the way the Visual WebGui one does.
I guess posters can write whatever they like, but it seems like a waste to turn a good community into an advertising platform.
Jeff Atwood’s always awesome Coding Horror tackles the “Microsoft treadmill”: the range of problems which arise from being a developer in the world of Redmond. Looking at Jeff’s list of recent technology from Microsoft did make me shudder, and indeed made me think back to the announcement that the ADO.NET Entity Framework has been delayed.
I remember wondering what the hell the Entity Framework was to begin with, I mean take a look at this further list from the MS research departments:
LINQ, and…
LINQ for SQL, and… various other LINQs
WPF/E
Silverlight
DLR
.NET 3
.NET 3.5
Orcas
So many acronymns! So many releases! And a couple are even the same thing. In some ways, the Microsoft development world is reminiscent of the Live debacle which was unleashed on the world - too many ideas, too little coherence. It should be an exciting time to be a developer in the Microsoft world, but instead, because there is no good, consistant, focused promotion of the direction which Microsoft will be enticing developers to use, it’s just confusing.
It does feel like I’m in a minority at the moment, in that I am a developer on the Microsoft platform who actually wants to work there, and doesn’t feel that Ruby on Rails or Python is the best thing since sliced bread. Castle is what I need to develop, and it is built using Microsoft technology and open source brainpower. To me, it’s development heaven.
Tim Bray talks about the new face of public relations - the employees. Get those knowledgable workers out there, talking about the stuff they have a passion for, and you’ll get other people excited too. Tim says:
Suppose your employees make you look bad? The answer is obvious: if your employees either don’t understand what your company is trying to accomplish, or can’t do a good job of explaining it, then blogs are the least of your problems.
So get out there, create a buzz. The masters are 37 Signals, purveyors of hype and the ability to follow up on hype…