Lack of content in commentary, or, will someone please turn down the noise?
It's nearly impossible to read an industry rag or website these days without having to wade through page after page of commentary that basically says the same thing:
- Microsoft doesn't innovate
- .NET/C# is a copy of Java
- Using Microsoft results in vendor lock-in
- People aren't using .NET
- .NET == “Web Services“
Scoble points at a typical editorial. What is this guy saying that hasn't been said a million times already by other people supposedly “in the know” in the industry? Is there some editorial-generating script on the internet these folks run?
Point by point:
Microsoft doesn't innovate: I've said this before and I'll say it again: Innovation is useless unless people can use it. Incremental innovation is more easily adopted than sweeping innovation. How many great, innovative products lasted one or two versions before biting the dust? Far too many to count. What if Word had massive, innovative changes every year? Companies don't want to pay for retraining and lost productivity due to massive changes every year. They think that if it works, make it better, don't change it. I'm not saying Microsoft is perfect; of course there are instances where they don't innovate when they could and should. Consider IE. You'd be hard-pressed to find any usability differences between IE 4.0 from 1998 and IE 6, other than the new icon.
But, many say, they buy their innovation. They acquire other companies and their products. So what? It's all IP. How is that any different than hiring great people from other companies and using their brains, the same brains that produced great software elsewhere? Is .NET/c# any less great because Anders was on the team? I can assure you that if Microsoft had bought Borland or the Delphi product, that would be in every editorial about .NET. “Microsoft .NET is simply the next version of Delphi.”
.NET/C# is a copy of Java: Apparently Java is the first platform and programming language. C syntax has been around for decades. Virtual machines have been around forever. Etc, etc. Java is a great technology, but it was evolutionary, just as .NET is.
Using Microsoft results in vendor lock-in: This one kills me. Ok, Java folks, write a production application. Now move it to another application server. Good luck! Java portability is great in the academic world, just as .NET is (see mono, et al), but as soon as you need to do work in the real world, you're writing to vendor-specific APIs. You're locked in. And you're paying more for it.
People aren't using .NET: Cooper says “Big corporations are not dumping their J2EE-based systems just because Steve Ballmer says .Net is a grand idea“. Of course not, why would they? After all, they've probably already gone way over budget and who replaces working solutions if it's not necessary? However, talk to people writing .NET solutions in the real world and you'll hear that people are moving from J2EE to .NET when they're upgrading their systems. At the end of the day decision makers get paid for ROI, not their technological religious affiliation, and .NET generally makes more sense financially.
.NET == “Web Services“: Yes, Microsoft is to blame for this one. However, they dropped that hard marketing line a long time ago and I would hope that people writing about the industry would actually know more about what they write about than what they read on a glossy a couple years ago.
I'm a pretty busy guy and having to wade through stuff like this every day kills me, not only because of the disinformation, but because these people influence others' opinions and they obviously have no idea what they're talking about. I have faith in .NET and trust that the industry and those observing it will come around.