Swimming against the tide… and losing

Not like it's anything new, but I'll repeat it anyway: There's much too much going on in Microsoft world. Of course, at the time of PDC05 all the news channels naturally pick up… but still, this is getting ridiculous. I'm a fast reader and in a position where information flows are rather organized and readable – but I still have serious trouble staying even remotely up-to-date with everything going on in the Microsoft software development world.
There are plenty of Whidbey things I still don't fully grasp – well actually, that's true even for .NET 1.1! And what is Microsoft doing? Out comes another set of new APIs, a few standards extensions, WPF (former Avalon), WCF (former Indigo) and a load of other stuff. Well let's not forget IE7, Office 12 and of course, Windows Vista.
There was a time when saying "Those who know Microsoft's new products don't understand a bit about how to use them" was mostly backed by envy. But… these days I'm starting to believe it. To fully leverage an enormous technological wave such as Whidbey you need to have a huge amount of knowledge – and experience – under your belt. Actually understanding the possibilities of WPF (just as a single example!) requires a lot of time – time you can't spend in real projects.
Perhaps there's still a little slice of envy behind the words. Of course, it's nice to be on top of the technology geysir. On the other hand, most developers aren't going to be. The majority of programmer job applicants still don't have managed code experience. The other extreme is writing their first WPF applications. We're going to have an "impedance mismatch" far greater than the one the LINQ project is trying to solve.

September 16, 2005 · Jouni Heikniemi · Comments Closed
Posted in: .NET