Developers: Top 3 Things to Change about MSFT

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J

john

Hello developers,

I am examining trends in developer satisfaction with Microsoft.
Without starting a flame war, I would really appreciate it if you
respond with the top 3 things that, as a developer, you would change
about Microsoft and/or developing on Windows. Please only provide
comments that I can use in a paper. Also, could you let me know what
programming language you primarily use and how you would classify
yourself as a developer (e.g. enterprise IT, large ISV, small ISV,
consultant, etc.)

Thank you everyone in advance!
 
I develop department-lelve applications for a large, global company.
I primarily use VB.Net, but I may be switching over to C# soon.

1) End monopoly pricing on MS Office. I've always been a MS
supporter, but they would not get away with the prices they are
charging if they did not have a monopoly on the Office software
markets.

2) Have MS port .net to Mac & Linux. It would be great it I could
use VS.Net to develop for Linux and Mac. I know that there are
open-source projects out there, but I would like to see MS do more to
support this effort.

3) The last item is a personal pet-peeve. MS access is/was a great
tool for manipulating data. In my opinion however, Access has been
neglected by MS. The last great version of Access was Access 97. The
releases since then have had some interesting new features, but they
have had some major problems. In some cases some of my queries now
take 2x as long as the did in Access 97. Thank you MS.

4) I know you asked for 3, but the last comment leads right into this
one. What is the deal with MSDE anyway? If you want developers to
use MSDE instead of JET in the future would you PLEASE distribute some
administrative tools with it!!!

5) Sorry, but I'm on a role here. The MSDN subscription is a great
idea, but it would be even better if there was a discounted
community-developer edition. I would love to have a MSDN subscription
for personal use so that I can learn and test software at home, but
the prices are just too much for me.
 
I develop VB.Net for a medium sized company. And just to prove that some of
us can count....

1) Help files. Include them. And maybe try testing them first. The vast
majority of my knowledge about Word and Excel (I also do support) derives
from my original use of Word 2 and Excel 4. They had help files that
actually explained things. (btw, anyone heard of array formulae in Excel?
Damn useful, still there, but not mentioned in the last couple of version's
help.)

The help in Visual Studio is, at least to start off with, woeful. After you
get used to it, that improves to maybe 'barely adequate'.

There you go. See? We can count.
 
I develop Department level applications for a mid size company (500+)
employees in AVR.NET (ASNA - .NET Language for interfacing to IBM AS/400's),
C#, VB.NET

1) Although there are many sites and training available in .NET it would be
nice to see a central repository nicely organized with Source code and help
pages. Most examples are fluff or things that can be easily figured out on
our own, more business like examples would be nice.

2) Subscription prices for developers are tooo high for a bulk of us. Esp
since it is our programming that helps MS in the long run. A company with a
bunch of Windows/Web applications written for Windows OS isnt likely to
leave MS after all. It would be nice if Developers could get some kind of
break on the tools we need to do our jobs.

3) Some basic application testing tools similiar to ACT made available to
those of us who arent at the enterprise level. This MAY exist, Im just
beginning to investigate.
 
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