Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Welcome to CodePlex

Sara Ford is a kick ass presenter. Microsoft chooses well, whom they wish to put forward as queen of open source, proof they've got the right DNA. They do have a serviceable server-side infrastructure (CodePlex), evolving by leaps and bounds, no question. But do they realize the value of what they've got (different question)?

Like from my angle, IronPython and some of these other agiles were supposed to give "monkey programmers" a new lease on life, give new meaning to Rapid Application Development (RAD), and yet the expert next to me said Visual Studio doesn't work with the DLR all that well, so these two flagships are delinking (ouch!).

"Monkey" is a technical term BTW, means "Mono" i.e. dot Net, the Microsoft Parrot, so "monkey developer" is not a put down, may actually pay quite well off and on, plus takes some real skills (IronPython is every bit as serious a coding language as CPython).

Given the loss of Visual Studio to the dinosaur past, my old fogey brain is going "OK so how might we repurpose the old VFP9 framework around IronPython or something like it?" i.e. isn't quick and easy drag and drop development Microsoft's trademark, what makes it the Disney of application development? It'd be a pity to lose that, after getting all the "right stuff" under one roof (finally).

Dunno if you'll prefer CodePlex, probably use if you're into vendor lock-in with Microsoft, a pleasant enough experience for many of us. It's specifically geared to work with their coworker suites, stuff the GNU/Linux people have likely never heard of. CodePlex itself is heavily tested on FireFox, Chrome and the others, so don't accuse these good folks in Redmond of overly favoring IE. They know what's out there and know customer satisfaction remains their number one objective. I expect Microsoft will keep reinventing itself successfully so long as they keep this in view.

Sara is ultra valuable, thanks again for sending her, glad we went with this talk.