Microsoft Cancels Major Developers' Conference 114
Kurtz'sKompund writes "Microsoft has cancelled its autumn Professional Developers Conference, citing bad timing in light of the launch of important infrastructure and platform products. This isn't the first time they have cancelled a PDC, for similar reasons."
Gotta Fix 'Em All! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Gotta Fix 'Em All! (Score:5, Funny)
!developers, !developers, !developers...
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Due to lack of Interest ... (Score:1)
Re:Gotta Fix 'Em All! (Score:4, Funny)
WWDC Timing (Score:1)
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Insert obligatory Steve B. quote here (Score:5, Funny)
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"Thank you Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, thank you for chairing the show!"
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You know Ballmer has always wished he could squirt *something*.
Thus the Zune...
Wouldn't that be when it's needed most? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Between the office's ribbon interface and the actual launch of Vista, you'd think that now would be the most important time to have a developers conference. With all the new challenges and the conference still several months away, wouldn't it be wiser to schedule the time now and make sure that critical issues are dealt with early?
I totally agree. This is exactly when they should be promoting development on Vista including things like how to get the most out of Windows Presentation Framework with XAML, handle porting issues, the new security features, etc! A peek at how Apple hypes 10.5 to developers should illuminate the strategy.
See MIX, TechEd US, TechEd Europe and others (Score:1, Interesting)
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Conference Cancelled (Score:1, Funny)
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS... (Score:1)
Calling all Pavlov's Dogs! (Score:1, Flamebait)
On a serious note: Has another company come close to supporting it's developers better than Microsoft?
So, they cancel a PDC. So what?
I keep reminding people that Microsoft is a MARKETING driven organization. No doubt, when they schedule the next PDC, it will be for THEIR benefit, not yours.
Dont like it? There are other options available.
Why bitch, bitches?
Dude! Don't post on /. when you're ... (Score:1)
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Microsoft and developer support (Score:2)
I work with MS products. (Score:3, Interesting)
I adopted MS because the shop I began working IT with served mostly MS customers, and now my shop does as well... just a reality of working in a niche market where MS has been the accesible OS for so many years.
Why, I ask, am I pulling my hair out every other week?
Does a properly run company cause a dedicated client to want to pull his already diminishing supply of hair from his head every time he reads their press releases?
Products that have been *both* delayed and had functionality removed in the last 8 months:
Vista
Viridian (virtualization)
Server 2008 (announced that a major incremental will be released in 2009 to replace the functionality if that actually happens... so who the fuck is going to upgrade in '08?)
I depend on this shit. Why? Because you formed a friggin monopoly and all of my potential customers use your products.
Get your shit together.
Regards.
Re:I work with MS products. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I work with MS products. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, as I have posted on other threads here, most of my customers rely on multiple small applications to run their businesses. Porting them to OSS would be a massive undertaking and would require cash that most of them don't have, and applications that don't exist (take construction-specific management apps for instance).
I have defended MONO and it's developers on this site and others with the stated purpose of promoting an alternative to MS. The fact remains, however, that most of my customers do not have equal options on OSS platforms at the current time.
I would be unable to develop equal options considering the wide variety of applications that have developed in the MS ecosystem over the last 15 years or so, and that my customers depend upon.
I would walk away from MS, but that would involve abandoning my customers who are locked in, and with whom I share the common goal of feeding our families by running our own companies instead of working for others.
Regards.
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First step: admit you have an unhealthy addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
No. You don't really. You like to bitch and moan once in awhile but you really don't mind taking it up the pooper whenever Microsoft wants to shaft you. Harsh? Yup. Happens to be true though, based on what you are writing.
Because you have KNOWN exactly what Microsoft is and how your fortunes (and you customer, etc) are tied to Microsoft's whims for years (hell, decades now) and I didn't hear you mention the FIRST step towards an attempt to correct a situation you yourself realize is ultimately going to hurt you.
Yes you are right, that you and your customers have become ensnared in Microsoft's trap of dependency. And you are at least toying with the first step of admitting you have a dependency problem. Now you need a plan to break the unhealthy addiction. You really needed to start years back to have a leg up on the smart competitors who already figured it out but perhaps it isn't too late for you to save yourself.
Step one: When you are in a hole that is rapidly filling with water, the first step has to be to stop digging. That means make every effort to avoid adding any new dependencies on Microsoft technologies. That means don't touch Vista or any of any of it's new technologies or APIs. Same for Office 2007.
Step two: Develop a roadmap that will lead you where you want to be tomorrow, not where Microsoft wants you to go. Many find the easy path to be web based apps, especially in this era of AJAX. Pitch your customers a client neutral web based version of the apps you currently push on them as
Step three: start finding and deploying alternatives whenever practical. OO.o instead of Office where it will work, Firefox instead of IE anywhere there isn't a lot of ActiveX BS to snarl things up. Outlook/Outlook Express should be trashed anywhere people aren't already addicted to Exchange stuff. The more of those dependencies you can break, both for yourself and your customers, the easier it will be to open up options down the road. Same for file/print servers. They can make a great first step and let you gain practical experience.
Step four: Explore and experiment, learning what is out there is half the struggle. Microsoft crams their stuff down your craw, the free stuff is often waiting for you to go looking for it.
Step five: Don't just look at Linux. Yes a Mac isn't any more RMS pure than Windows and they want the same power Microsoft has, but Microsoft is the threat to independent developers and users today. And a Mac can run Photoshop/etc.
Your post is excellent (Score:2)
My issue is user adoption. My opinion is the opinion of only one of their providers.
You are correct on most points, but like many others fail to address one thing. Users want the simplest solution. They are correct in believing that MS is the simplest solution. They don't mind sacrificing security, freedom, and mobility so that they can have something that is monocult
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Of course, so do I.
> They are correct in believing that MS is the simplest solution.
They may be believe it but they would be wrong. Odds are as a developer in a vertical industry you are more computer literate than they are, but YOU believe it too so you can't correctly advise them.
This is 2007, if there is a Windows victim left who hasn't been wiping and reinstalling (or using Ghost) end user machines at least annually I haven't met em. Add in the cost of the 'pro
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You had me until this part. This is complete fscking hogwash. Since Windows 2000 (that's what, 7 years back now), regular reinstalls are a thing of the past. I maintain a good number of Windows end-user desktops apart from my own, including some used by complete newbies. I've told them how to avoid spyware and they run a decent anti-virus that is
Sure Mr. JMorris is right, Dell, HP, etc are wrong (Score:2)
Holly fuck, surely that is why Dell, HP, Gateway, Lanix, PC-World, Best Buy and even the guy in the corner PC shop keep offering Windows XP/Windows Vista machines... and not only that *drumrolls*.... people keep buying it...
If you haven't experienced a thin client or server hosted homes on a thick client you can't really understand the difference. In my world (with 100
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Re:A fanatic troll (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess you missed the part where I recommended Macs in certain scenarios. Longterm, yea I'm a Free Software believer. But mostly I think Windows is a menace and a disaster. Other than gamers I really don't know of a question where Windows is a good answer.
But more importantly Microsoft is fast becoming a threat to the entire idea of 'personal computers.' I'm becoming convinced they intend, and have a fair chance of attaining, nothing less than the elimination of the general purpose computer, replacing it with something more akin to an X-Box that runs IE and Office. If we can't gain enough control to offer credible competition before they manange to buy a law requiring all unregulated hardware to enforce code signing and DRM we all lose bigtime. On that day all small independent software houses are going to be hosed.
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You don't need to, because... http://www.nbritton.org/uploads/windows_for_mac.p
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Yes it's real.
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Mod parent +5 funny pls. (Score:2)
Regards.
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Life is filled with stress (Score:2)
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If you kick up a stink and threaten them back, they'll drag you through the court system and bankrupt you in the process, all while continuing development of their facsimile of your application, allowing it to go through 4 version upgrades and UI "improvements", forcing customers into accepting that their solution is the *
Disrupt (Score:2)
Sounds like your market is ripe for a disruptive technology.
Do something on linux that's far-and-away better than what exists today - do it in AJAX - and they will come.
oops (Score:4, Funny)
Translation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation...
"The things we wanted to show at the PDC are so far behind schedule that we would look like fools for even demoing the software."
Too busy suing over "patents" (Score:1)
After all, if someone mentions a "business process" during a panel, have to patent that baby for MSFT quick!
Hay! (Score:2, Funny)
The three Vista developers couldn't show (Score:5, Funny)
Go Vista! Go straight into a hillside!
Not really indicative of anything: Tech Ed's on (Score:2, Informative)
PDC is not Microsoft's preeminent developer conference. Tech Ed 200X is [microsoft.com]. My understanding is that TE is Microsoft's biggest developer conference, and it's running next week, June 4-8 (or 3-8 if you registered for the pre-conference sessions.) Picture 10,0000+ geeks trying hard to make dinner conversation, cavernous convention halls, and (literally) dawn-to-dusk classes and sessions for six days. Quite an experience.
Conference
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Not sure if this matters anyway... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the benefits of this approach:
1. We don't have to worry about porting our applications to Vista, because it's Sun's and Oracle's responsibility to make their platforms Vista-compatbile. All we have to do is copy files to a new server. So we can spend our time actually writing code, instead of worrying about porting issues.
2. In the event we DON'T move to Vista, our stuff will work on Linux, or Mac OS/X, or anything else Oracle and Java run on. It's not likely we'll get a mainframe, but if we did, we'd STILL be able to copy our stuff onto it.
3. Our skills have a long shelf-life. New versions of Java tend to ADD capabilities, but the language itself doesn't tend to change in ways that require re-writes. Oracle's the same way, mostly.
Overall, I don't know why anyone still uses Microsoft tools, given the way they like to "churn" their environment. It seems kind of chaotic and random to me. Remember the switch from VB6 to VB.Net, and how people howled about that? Phew...
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Exactly what switch are you talking about? Do you mean that all the sudden VB6 compilers or runtimes stopped working when VB.NET came out?
I work in a team that uses solely MS products. I haven't heard any "howling" when VB.NET came out. In fact I was writing VB6, VB.NET and C# code at the same time in different projects about a year ago. VB6 project which I was on was started on 1993 and it is still used and developed. Some of the oldest codes were rewritten in 1995
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When Microsoft switched from VB6 to VB.Net, I happened to be working in a government agency with a lot of old timers who only knew VB6. They found the whole thing QUITE painful. And there were a number of grassroots movements to complain to Microsoft about the changes.
For instance, Microsoft claimed that there was an easy converter for VB6 code to turn it into VB.Net, but what this actually did was comment out much of the code and pronounce the file "converted". Very cute, but not quite what peopl
Speaking as a native-windows dev... (Score:2)
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First, the VM issue. If you're doing Java, you're usually doing server-side code and your VM is under your control. The user interface is a browser, but the Java's running server-side so you have no compatability issues. If you're writing a Java application, all you have to do is make sure your users upgrade to the most current VM available, and provide a copy of the installer on your install
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Conventions like Beans, ActionListeners, etc are needed because Java lacks language features like Properties, Indexers and Events. Other noteabl
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First of all, who said frameworks are designed to "overcome shortcomings"? They're designed to increase productivity. They get most of the plumbing out of the way so you can get started on the interesting parts. Your precious Microsoft
Second, All a Javabean is is a class that follows
So, to sum up... (Score:2)
Chris Mattern
Cue the video (Score:2)
(OK, joking aside, though I rather dislike Ballmer, that was a really great video of a truly great attitude for him to have had and it's really unfair that gets slagged for it. It's especially unfair that he gets slagged for it on
"...citing bad timing..." (Score:2)
Yep, Leopard and the iPhone. ;-)
Too much microsoft... (Score:2)
Post-Vista Fatigue (Score:1)
New company strategy! (Score:2)
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Thing is, if MS treat their developers with this type of contempt, imagine how lowly their users would rate?
"End users, who needs them? We know they will not have a choice sooner or later, and if they do, we'll kill whoever is opposing us... or at least try to"
Re:and 10,000 OSS developers.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Does NEdit help you to: (Score:2)
Compile, debug, pack, play chess, translate morse code?
I guess not.
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Oh, and the One True Editor is Vim, you heathen scum.
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That's a shame, since it does make quite a big difference when programming in Java (speaking as an old hand at emacs). The big gain I found was from three things:
It's also pretty nice for people working with XML Schema or WSDL, so much so that it makes it just abou
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They're re-doing notepad???
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