5 ms·

Microsoft also has a habit of constantly changing the names and market positioning of everything, which can make it seem more mercurial than it is. (Not that th

Microsoft also has a habit of constantly changing the names and market positioning of everything, which can make it seem more mercurial than it is. (Not that they haven't had their share of truly ephemeral Next Big Things as well.)

kenjackson 16y ago
I'm kind of curious... really what were the MS technologies that you spent more than 15 minutes on(reading a Dr.Dobbs article) learning that went poof? I've learned over the years: Win32 Visual C/C++ COM .NET C# WPF T-SQL JScript ASP.NET Direct3D Visual Studio (the IDE) Windows Services I literally can't point to a book on my bookshelf that is related to MS technology and say, "that was a waste".
- vetinari 16y ago
  For example: ODBC, ADO, DAO, OLEDB, ADO.NET... is seems, that there is no end to different data access layers. Technologies, that went completely poof: Hailstorm, Passport, VB6(!). Technology on the verge going poof: WPF.
  - vyrotek 16y ago
    What happened to fail early and fail often? Just because they're a huge corporation doesn't mean they're not allowed to try to change the world with a new idea which might fail. They just have the money to try a bit longer before giving up than most companies. I think Microsoft does chase a lot of new shiny things. But they're really giving what the devs are asking for. I know, I'm one of those .Net developers :)
  - smhinsey 16y ago
    I don't think ADO.NET belongs in that category. Even though it's not the primary method of data access in modern .NET software, to my knowledge everything else is built on top of it, and it's useful if you have some understanding of what's going on underneath the hood.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    ODBC and OLEDB are still pretty widely used if you work in the DB space. They just shipped a new version of ODBC last year. And given that ODBC has been out for nearly 20 years, I'd hardly call that something that went poof overnight. I probably see new OLEDB at least once a week. ADO.NET is extremely popular still. I'd argue that its the most popular way to get data in the MS stack to this very day. Hailstorm didn't go poof, it was never released. Passport actually still lives on to this day, but is called Windows Live ID. VB6 is the only one on your list that I'd legitimately say isn't really used much, but that line of VB lived for 11 years -- that's not exactly a short lifespan -- it may well out live Java :-) And WPF doesn't appear to be on the verge of going anywhere. Visual Studio was just rewritten with it. Their designer tool, Blend, is written in it. They just built their new IDE for business apps with it. If you saw at PDC they announced support for fixing Airspace issues (a huge engineering task), SL support, improved threading, integrating new controls, among other things. Next?
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > what were the MS technologies that you spent more than 15 minutes on(reading a Dr.Dobbs article) learning that went poof? Web classes, Site Server (the largest ASP application ever kind of built)
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Given I've never heard of those, I guess I just do a better job picking technologies than you do :-)
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Considering you are still using Microsoft, I have to disagree.
      - kenjackson 16y ago
        Touche
        rbanffy 16y ago
        :-)
- projectileboy 16y ago
  MFC, for one.
  - projectileboy 16y ago
    Just answering the question. Not sure why I was downvoted.

kenjackson 16y ago

I'm kind of curious... really what were the MS technologies that you spent more than 15 minutes on(reading a Dr.Dobbs article) learning that went poof? I've learned over the years: Win32 Visual C/C++ COM .NET C# WPF T-SQL JScript ASP.NET Direct3D Visual Studio (the IDE) Windows Services I literally can't point to a book on my bookshelf that is related to MS technology and say, "that was a waste".

vetinari 16y ago
For example: ODBC, ADO, DAO, OLEDB, ADO.NET... is seems, that there is no end to different data access layers. Technologies, that went completely poof: Hailstorm, Passport, VB6(!). Technology on the verge going poof: WPF.
- vyrotek 16y ago
  What happened to fail early and fail often? Just because they're a huge corporation doesn't mean they're not allowed to try to change the world with a new idea which might fail. They just have the money to try a bit longer before giving up than most companies. I think Microsoft does chase a lot of new shiny things. But they're really giving what the devs are asking for. I know, I'm one of those .Net developers :)
- smhinsey 16y ago
  I don't think ADO.NET belongs in that category. Even though it's not the primary method of data access in modern .NET software, to my knowledge everything else is built on top of it, and it's useful if you have some understanding of what's going on underneath the hood.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  ODBC and OLEDB are still pretty widely used if you work in the DB space. They just shipped a new version of ODBC last year. And given that ODBC has been out for nearly 20 years, I'd hardly call that something that went poof overnight. I probably see new OLEDB at least once a week. ADO.NET is extremely popular still. I'd argue that its the most popular way to get data in the MS stack to this very day. Hailstorm didn't go poof, it was never released. Passport actually still lives on to this day, but is called Windows Live ID. VB6 is the only one on your list that I'd legitimately say isn't really used much, but that line of VB lived for 11 years -- that's not exactly a short lifespan -- it may well out live Java :-) And WPF doesn't appear to be on the verge of going anywhere. Visual Studio was just rewritten with it. Their designer tool, Blend, is written in it. They just built their new IDE for business apps with it. If you saw at PDC they announced support for fixing Airspace issues (a huge engineering task), SL support, improved threading, integrating new controls, among other things. Next?
rbanffy 16y ago
> what were the MS technologies that you spent more than 15 minutes on(reading a Dr.Dobbs article) learning that went poof? Web classes, Site Server (the largest ASP application ever kind of built)
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Given I've never heard of those, I guess I just do a better job picking technologies than you do :-)
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Considering you are still using Microsoft, I have to disagree.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      Touche
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        :-)
projectileboy 16y ago
MFC, for one.
- projectileboy 16y ago
  Just answering the question. Not sure why I was downvoted.