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Whidbey Slips, Falls, and Breaks a Hip

This just plain sucks. Slips are a part of life, even worse we've all come to expect them from MS, but it's the rationale that kills me:

"According to [Director of Product Management for SQL Server Tom Rizzo], both products are on the same timeframe for shipping for a key reason: Namely, Microsoft wants to release the best of its developer tools with the best of its database technology "to really change the industry," he said. "If you look at Oracle [Corp.] and IBM and other competitors in the open-source space, they don't have releases where new and innovative tools are released with a new and innovative database. Customers want that: the next generation of tools that exploit the next generation of database technology."

What customers asked for Whidbey to ship with Yukon? I love when execs blame the customers. Survey of one real customer: I don't want to wait until mid-2005 (a decade in e-commerce) for a tool refresh. Why should developers looking forward to Generics, Code-based RAD, partial classes, anonymous methods, GridView, OPath, and an IDE THAT PRODUCES VALID XHTML have to wait until mid 2005? Because of Yukon??? WTF does one thing have to do with the other???!

I'd bet the MS developers who worked on this stuff are just as disappointed as those of use who were waiting for the IDE. Everyone loses when boneheaded decisions like this are made. If I were the guy in charge of Whidbey I'd kick Rizzo's ass in the parking lot.

Posted by Christian at March 10, 2004 04:56 PM |