Not the end of the world... not moving it forward either

Scott Hanselman makes the point that the slipped ship date of Yukon and Whidbey is not the end of the world. He's right that, indeed, this is not the end of the world. It's not particularly good for it either.

First of all, Scott, implies that what's good for him is good for everyone because he's shipping product right now. Good for him! He also suggests that “many” of us have a platform that we haven't fully exploited. Tell that to Paul Wilson, who has implemented Whidbey-esque stuff like master pages and ObjectSpaces himself (and is hopefully making a buck or two in the mean time). Heck, I've found an actual verified bug in the framework (which oddly enough still hasn't been documented with a KB article, nearly a year later), so I'm thinking I've gone deep enough with what I have.

If the reason behind the delay was one of development, I might be able to live with that. The now infamous eWeek article, however, seems to indicate that it's not a development issue, but rather one that is purely marketing, pairing the release of Whidbey with Yukon. How annoying is that, when those of us who have acquired Whidbey are impressed with its stability, and pre-beta at that. Members of the .NET team (which have been rather quiet in their blogs lately) have said that they're excited about how clean the first beta will be. That's encouraging.

I guess Scott and those that agree with him either don't use the ASP.NET designer or don't care that it mangles everything you put into it. It's a nightmare for me, because I sell (and giveaway) stuff that people will tweak, hack and change. It gets really hard to support that stuff when VS has messed with what you think they should have.

Make no mistake, I'm not “angry” or anything. My fingers and toes all seem to be intact and the sun did rise this morning, but I still want the product that will make my life easier.

2 Comments

  • BTW, I use the VS.NET designer alot. I agree that it has bugs. I have lost code, just like everyone else. I have also lost code with other development tools. I save often and I do my best to use source-safe as much as possible. Yeah, I know it is a pain and problems like this need to be fixed.



    Regarding the stability of Whidbey, I am impressed that the PDC bits are as stable as they are. I remember the PDC bits from Jul 2000. VS.NET keeled over every couple of minutes on me, if it didn't fail almost immediately on load. However, I have found several limitations in the PDC 2003 bits. While I am impressed at their stability within an alpha state, I would hold on anything else until further releases are made available. I do like some of the changes that I have read are coming.



    And I do wish that MS would release a SP for .NET 1.1.



    I love you last statement about fingers and toes.........



    Wally

  • Furthermore, people lose site of the fact that it's not just about the IDE. Server controls don't produce valid xhtml no matter what editor you use. Even notepad won't make <asp:textBox /> render an <input /> with a closing tag.

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