Letters from Readers
Letters
A reader responds to our August interview with Scott Guthrie, corporate VP of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform group, about Silverlight 3 ("Scott Guthrie Breaks Down Silverlight 3"):
Microsoft, please add printer support in the future. It kind of burns me that I have to go back to ASP.NET if I want to make a printable report. Oh, and please don't ruin Silverlight by breaking the sandbox model for those few developers that are asking for it. In most cases the sandbox model doesn't eliminate features, it just requires some creativity to get around them. And in those extremely rare cases that it does block a feature, that's what Windows Presentation Foundation is for.
Edgar Harris
Submitted via Internet
Andrew Brust warned in his August column ("Your Platform Needs You") that Microsoft's developer dominance is being threatened. Here's what readers said:
I believe the article is spot on, although the threat may not be as imminent as it portrays. There's one example of a major shortfall that Microsoft knows about in their product-and has known about for some time-yet still doesn't address. This example is Team Foundation Server [TFS]. There's lots of competition for software configuration management [SCM], and Microsoft could gain more market share if it would address some of TFS's shortcomings.
One competitor in the SCM space is Serena Dimensions. It's not a better product by any means: It doesn't work well over a WAN-many don't-and it has a folder tree structure instead of utilizing a database to store and control the code. But it does have security and a deployment mechanism. TFS doesn't. In TFS you can't set up deployment packages and have them approved before promoting them to the next level. For deployments, you need to use a third-party tool.
Then there's the cost. Not only for TFS as a whole, but for Visual Studio Team System. The cost for most large companies is somewhat easy to swallow, but for small companies or individual developers it's cost-prohibitive.
Mike
Redmond, Wash.
Submitted via Internet
This is a direct result of Microsoft hiring ex-IBM staff for its middle management. The company is now fat and lazy. They must take care of developers at all levels. Rather than charging massive fees for MSDN, it should be free to ISVs and partners.
Frede
Australia
Submitted via Internet
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This story was written or compiled based on feedback from the readers of Visual Studio Magazine.