Yukon and Whidbey Slip, and your life goes on. Film at 11.

March 14, 2004 Comment on this post [11] Posted in ASP.NET | XML | Gaming

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Yukon and Whidbey, er, I mean, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 will be available in 2005, and some folks flipped out. Folks, it's not THAT big of a deal. Is it a bummer, sure. Will it affect the schedules of a few other products, maybe yours? Possibly. But remember, you do have a development platform that many of you have yet to fully exploit. Perhaps the bloggers who are so vocally disappointed are so advanced in their development skills or 'early adopter-ness' that they've forgotten that useful software is shipping today?

.NET moved Windows development squarely into the managed world that Java programmers enjoyed. .NET was a shock to the system, and as such, it's taken a while to sink in. For some folks, it clicked, made sense. For others, it's taken a few years to 'sleep on it.' There are a lot of folks out there picking up .NET 1.1 and really creating some fantastic mature software. Now, .NET 2.0 is going to change things and shock the system. That's a good thing. ASP.NET 2.0, generics, ClickOnce, it's going to be great and unquestionably a step foward.

But, I have to ship software today to large banks and financial institutions. We have a great application platform built on .NET that is mature and fabulous. Believe me, we'll exploit the appropriate features of 2.0 when it comes out, but today I'm shipping great stuff. And I will continue to innovate on .NET 1.1 all during 2004. Nothing is stopping me, and I'm certainly not going to sit idlely and wait for 2.0, when I can make great software for my clients now.

Sure I'd love to have Master Pages, but somehow I've made it this far without it. Sure I'd like to have ObjectSpaces, but...well, you get the idea. These things take time, and I'm happy that Microsoft has adopted a more practical 'Carmackian' attitude around software ship dates.

The Press

Last week when the announcement happened, I had two press calls about the slip before noon! Come on people, let's not create drama where there isn't. Many developers inside slower moving banks are just now getting off NT 4.0 and are still trepidacious of XML(!), not to mention .NET and managed code. I'm still out there fighting the good fight to introduce folks to .NET 1.x.

I'll end with Jason Maus's reminder: Don't forget the saying, "Good, Fast, Cheap. You may choose two."

Now, on to things that ARE significant or 'of note':

Notice that the new naming is Visual Studio 2005, not Visual Studio .NET 2005. This is a good thing, obivously intentional, expressing that .NET is firmly here and now. It's so much a part of the fabric of developing on the Windows Platform that it's served it's purpose as a pervasive suffix. I dig it.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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March 14, 2004 7:39

I had a few press inquiries as well, from eWeek in particular. This was no big deal though, I agree with you 100%. For us authors, its another quarter or so to improve our books and to write more great code to use once RTM comes. Its not that bad- a better quality product in the end with more time to ramp up on it. I'm not complaining.

Randy H.

March 15, 2004 0:17

Ok, I agree, not that big a deal. But may I whine because I WOULD like VS.NET to stop re-arranging my HTML when switching to design mode and back to HTML. ;)

I think that was the feature I most looked forward to. VS.NET promised not to touch the code.

nospamplease75@yahoo.com (haacked)

March 15, 2004 5:21

I have no problem with this "slip" at all. I've finally gotten going with 1.1 and VS 2003, and would like a chance to "catch up" -- so maybe I'm being a little bit selfish about it ;)

I do understand how people who have been working heavily with .NET for some time are anxious for the 2005 versions. But these types of slips have been happening FOREVER by MANY software firms. Microsoft wants to get it right, and I'm all for that. The press will always jump on a reason to lash into Microsoft, and they've survived these attacks quite well, so I just ignore the press.

Now, back to my 24x7 education in .NET, just to catch up...

Mark Freedman

March 15, 2004 12:55

This thread is an insult --if not M$ kissing up (paid like SCO?)-- to how deeply offended most of us are that this move. Let me make it simple: M$'s insistence on tying much needed .NET updates (esp. asp.net updates) with an IDE makes .NET a lot less responsive to developer’s needs. Then for M$ to tie that IDE to database only leads those of us who love .NET and want to brag about M$ products to hang our heads once again as M$ proves that only cares about LOCKING us in and squeezing every GD nickel out. Then to add to the mix M$ not fixing -- defending their inaction -- IE, only compounds the matter. There is no business, legal or professional justification for all of the above; it's the byproduct of a big, fat, slow, lazy and greedy corporation. All the spin in the world can’t fix the mounting and very real frustration out here, only M$ devoting itself to timely releases of useful tools will. So, unless you blind defenders of non-sense can offer that as a solutions, please remain on the sidelines.

blog coward

March 15, 2004 13:42

It IS a big of a deal. Perhaps not to you all book writers or teachers, but for people who do every day .NET development is is a big deal.

Some examples:
- MS releases bugfixes for .NET and VS.NET through new versions of these two.
- The ASP.NET editor in VS.NET 2003 is severily broken. Officially MS has stated this is not fixable in VS.NET 2003.
- For passing custom class hierarchies over webservices where your classes have eventhandlers and/or cyclic references and/or interface typed members, you need IXmlSerializable implemented. This is broken in .NET 1.1, but fixed in .NET 2.0. More than 1 year to go before this is possible.
- People like me who write generic frameworks for other developers are waiting for generics. One more year to go.

You can all say it doesn't matter much because we can write software today with .NET 1.1. True, but I also could with VC++ 4.2, so what's the big deal anyway? All the new features coming with whidbey might sound like 'extra' to some of you, but they're not 'extra' or 'sugar' for others. You might think that if these 'extras' are necessary today for someone, that someone is a very 'early adopter'. But that's not the case. .NET was released in feb 2002. That's 2 years ago. If you still think .NET is in it's early adopter's phase you don't know what these phases are all about. For SOME it might be new, for a lot of us it's common stuff for over 2 years already.

I don't need full design support for every control and I don't need features to be able to dragndrop an app together in full. I do need fixes to important elements and new features like IXmlSerializable and generics.

What's also important, and this is completely ignored here, is WHY it has slipped. WHY is it tied to yukon? I haven't met a single person who thinks these two should be tied together and be released together.

But I'm perhaps talking to a wall here. If you think I sound like a retard, just realize that I and with me a lot of others are in the programming trenches each day working with the stuff you talk about and write about. We know a lot of stuff is not working for 100% and we also know it will be fixed with the new version. If that version is slipping away it IS a big deal for the developers in the trenches. You may think everything is nice and dandy with .NET 1.1 and VS.NET 2003. It isn't. A lot of it is usable, but also a lot of it isn't that great. Please remember that next time you think you know what's important to ALL of the .NET users.

Frans Bouma

March 15, 2004 17:23

I think your missing the point of why everyone was/is upset. It isn't because of the date slip, it's because of the seemingly unecessary date slip. All indications point to Whidbey being ready and Yukon slipping. Developers are upset because because once again Microsoft wants to use its monopoly in one area to advance another. For Yukon, you are right, they should "ship it when it's ready". But for whidbey it sounds a lot more like "We'll ship it when we have additional products to go with it to sell".

Also, your reference to Carmack is a lot more accurate than you realize. As far as I know, Id is still considering delaying Doom3 PC so it ships at the same time as Doom3 Xbox. You are living in a dream world if you think "when it's ready" still applies. Developers have a right to be upset.

Karl

March 15, 2004 18:41

Another year grinding out strongly typed collection classes. Just knowing that there is a reasonably functional generics implementation keeps me grinding my teeth as I grind out those damned collection classes, not to mention the other hoops I end up jumping through. Im glad that generics are coming, but I keep wondering "what where they thinking, releasing this language without them". I used to reasure myself that it was only 6 months to go before switching, now I cant.

damien morton

March 15, 2004 18:53

Here's a deal. You sit next to me the next time that VS.NET 2003 mangles my carefully constructed HTML code.

I've been waiting for bug fixes for 2 freak'n years. You don't think I have the right to be upset about that? I've been waiting for a bugfix that VS 2005 claims as a '
feature'.

Chad Thiele

March 15, 2004 19:25

I agree. The introduction of .NET was a watershed event. It brought development forward significantly for those us that don't do C++ (btw, I was C programmer back in 1988-1993, I just fell in love with VB and divorced that psycho C woman ;-) ). .NET 1.1 was an update. Yes, I would love to have generics and masterpages yesterday, but I can live without them for the moment. I don't want to wait forever, but I can wait a little while. Just don't make us till 2007.

Wally

Wallym

March 15, 2004 19:55

Depending on your situation, this is a bigger deal for some. As our company plans on upgrading our product to a .NET version - from VB6 COM+ architecture, planning on releasing in probably 1.5 - 2 years - it makes the design considerations tricky. I would love to recommend using generics throughout our design. I would love to spend the extra time to make it Indigo friendly. I would love to recommend planning to use Yukon features, but as they slip the dates, this becomes a harder sell. Basically, the risk of planning for those featues goes up.
I happen to think that the features will be worth spending the extra time and effort of using beta tools and reading unimplemented specs for design, it makes it a tougher sell.

theCoach

March 15, 2004 20:12

>I'll end with Jason Maus's reminder: Don't forget the saying, "Good,
>Fast, Cheap. You may choose two."

So you're saying its not going to be fast, but it will be good and cheap? Exactly how cheap?

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