5 ms·

The Garage is a community, not a paid group (sometimes this isn't clear to folks outside of MS). The point you should take from this news though, is that Micro

The Garage is a community, not a paid group (sometimes this isn't clear to folks outside of MS). The point you should take from this news though, is that Microsoft is now helping its developers release their projects they hack on in their spare time as Microsoft, if they meet the quality bars as well as being popular / useful enough inside Microsoft.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
This is my precise issue with Microsoft today. People rush to use Entity Framework, despite more featureful community projects that are better tested and have a wide base of users. There is a poor or nonexistent community surrounding many of the Microsoft technologies. The fact that community projects targeting Microsoft properties have to be released with Microsoft's control and branding is very disappointing.
- xpaulbettsx 15y ago
  I have no idea what you're trying to tell me. How is EF related to developers working on side projects?
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Sorry, I took "The Garage is a community" to mean non-Microsoft employees. More to that apology, a re-read of your comment leaves me wondering just what I was thinking. Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. My point might be summarized or expressed in a different way. I worked with .NET for the last 12 months and I can remember (just off the top of my head) 4 distinct issues that were trivial to fix but where not documented or described anywhere. They were weeks of work. On the other hand, I'm working with non-Microsoft tools and languages now, and I've had more than three of these scale of issues resolved in literally less than a minute in an IRC channel, and if not, in a tweet, or a forum post. My joke is that if Google/Binging is not productive in a .NET technology/tool/etc, my next best hope is posting on a forum with ridiculously buggy forum-software, and waiting two weeks for a response. There have been more than one post about this phenomena on HN as well. To be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a "Microsoft problem", I'm just not sure why the tactics and resources available for more open or community-based projects are so vastly different than the .NET/Azure/Windows scene (again, in my experience).
    - shriphani 15y ago
      There's definitely a very active win32 channel on freenode - if not there's channel 9 (which isn't unusable) and apphub. What were you using ? * Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. * Why use an unrelated thread to give a braindump ? You seemed to have no problems posting trollbait in response to this post.
      - drivebyacct2 15y ago
        First of all, excuse me, I'm not sure what I said to warrant such an adversarial response. Channel9 is not even remotely close to a support or technology centric forum. There are what, 3, 4, main forums with everything just shoved in there. (and sadly, while I'm at it, I checked. It's still the ancient, very broken attempt at a WYSIWYG editor in channel9. I've wasted more countless minutes trying to make a bug report or question look intelligible with this software both here and in the Azure support forums) Not even close to what I'm talking about. Nor is #win32 appropriate for .NET, VS, Azure, WCF questions, and they're quite happy to remind you of it. I've been there before in times of desperation. I didn't find my reply to be troll bait at all (edit, if parent was referring to my other post on this thread, I'm happy to address my reasoning there, and shall). As I mentioned, I'm not the first to bring up the disparity of community among Microsoft products on HN... and while I misinterpreted the original post I replied to, I think my criticism still makes sense on this topic. Why is it necessary for Microsoft employees to release tools under the Microsoft brand and control? This would be far better suited as an open alternative to Synergy, though that will surely never be the case. (Maybe lay off the kool-aid next summer. This isn't a battle, it's a perception as a developer who comes from an open-tool, open-community centric background who found the stark difference of the Microsoft-stack community to be a bit behind the times. I love c-sharp and .NET, we don't need to be extreme about this.) edit: Further, upon more investigation, Garage doesn't even sound that great. It sounds like these projects are often rolled into MS properties (fine) but are otherwise only allowed to be released "every once in a while", only if there is "a lot of request from employees who want to be able to share it with their friends and families", according to this very article.
      - xpaulbettsx 15y ago

drivebyacct2 15y ago

This is my precise issue with Microsoft today. People rush to use Entity Framework, despite more featureful community projects that are better tested and have a wide base of users. There is a poor or nonexistent community surrounding many of the Microsoft technologies. The fact that community projects targeting Microsoft properties have to be released with Microsoft's control and branding is very disappointing.

xpaulbettsx 15y ago
I have no idea what you're trying to tell me. How is EF related to developers working on side projects?
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  Sorry, I took "The Garage is a community" to mean non-Microsoft employees. More to that apology, a re-read of your comment leaves me wondering just what I was thinking. Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. My point might be summarized or expressed in a different way. I worked with .NET for the last 12 months and I can remember (just off the top of my head) 4 distinct issues that were trivial to fix but where not documented or described anywhere. They were weeks of work. On the other hand, I'm working with non-Microsoft tools and languages now, and I've had more than three of these scale of issues resolved in literally less than a minute in an IRC channel, and if not, in a tweet, or a forum post. My joke is that if Google/Binging is not productive in a .NET technology/tool/etc, my next best hope is posting on a forum with ridiculously buggy forum-software, and waiting two weeks for a response. There have been more than one post about this phenomena on HN as well. To be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a "Microsoft problem", I'm just not sure why the tactics and resources available for more open or community-based projects are so vastly different than the .NET/Azure/Windows scene (again, in my experience).
  - shriphani 15y ago
    There's definitely a very active win32 channel on freenode - if not there's channel 9 (which isn't unusable) and apphub. What were you using ? * Alas, I'll continue with my thoughts; feel free to ignore them or consider them OT; I apologize. * Why use an unrelated thread to give a braindump ? You seemed to have no problems posting trollbait in response to this post.
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      First of all, excuse me, I'm not sure what I said to warrant such an adversarial response. Channel9 is not even remotely close to a support or technology centric forum. There are what, 3, 4, main forums with everything just shoved in there. (and sadly, while I'm at it, I checked. It's still the ancient, very broken attempt at a WYSIWYG editor in channel9. I've wasted more countless minutes trying to make a bug report or question look intelligible with this software both here and in the Azure support forums) Not even close to what I'm talking about. Nor is #win32 appropriate for .NET, VS, Azure, WCF questions, and they're quite happy to remind you of it. I've been there before in times of desperation. I didn't find my reply to be troll bait at all (edit, if parent was referring to my other post on this thread, I'm happy to address my reasoning there, and shall). As I mentioned, I'm not the first to bring up the disparity of community among Microsoft products on HN... and while I misinterpreted the original post I replied to, I think my criticism still makes sense on this topic. Why is it necessary for Microsoft employees to release tools under the Microsoft brand and control? This would be far better suited as an open alternative to Synergy, though that will surely never be the case. (Maybe lay off the kool-aid next summer. This isn't a battle, it's a perception as a developer who comes from an open-tool, open-community centric background who found the stark difference of the Microsoft-stack community to be a bit behind the times. I love c-sharp and .NET, we don't need to be extreme about this.) edit: Further, upon more investigation, Garage doesn't even sound that great. It sounds like these projects are often rolled into MS properties (fine) but are otherwise only allowed to be released "every once in a while", only if there is "a lot of request from employees who want to be able to share it with their friends and families", according to this very article.
    - xpaulbettsx 15y ago