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May 29, 2007
Microsoft cancels major developers' conference
Nothing new to show, company claims.
By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service
Microsoft has cancelled its autumn Professional Developers Conference, citing bad timing in light of the launch of important infrastructure and platform products.
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Microsoft dropped the bombshell about PDC, which was to be held in October in Los Angeles, in a posting on its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) site.
"As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones," the company said in the post.
However, Microsoft already will have its key new platform technologies - including Windows Server 2008; the next major release of SQL Server; the next release of its Visual Studio toolset, code-named Orcas; and the new Silverlight technology - available before the show. Microsoft said it wants developers to focus on those in the near term.
The PDC is usually held every other year and is timed to give developers an early look at new releases of some of Microsoft's most strategic software products. For example, at the last PDC, held in 2005, developers got an early look at the new Microsoft Expression toolset for building rich internet applications, which was only released last month. However, Microsoft has cancelled the PDC in the past if it didn't think it had the right products to show developers at the event.
One Microsoft partner who often speaks at the company's developer conferences said the move seems to make sense.
"Microsoft's reasoning for this, essentially, is that between MIX, TechEd Orlando and Barcelona, and (I suspect) its Business Intelligence Conference held two weeks ago - and a slew of recent and soon-to-come alpha and beta releases - developers have enough to chew on for a while," Andrew Brust, chief, new technology for consulting firm Twentysix New York, said in a post on his blog. "If my memory serves me correctly, Microsoft made the same decision two PDCs back and, with hindsight, people appreciated the decision and judged it wise."
TechEd Orlando is scheduled for 4 June, while TechEd Developer is planned for November in Barcelona.
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Comments received
Modoratorrator said on Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Modoratorrator
Between the office's ribbon interface and the actual launch of Vista, you'd think that now would be the most important time to have a developers conference. With all the new challenges and the conference still several months away, wouldn't it be wiser to schedule the time now and make sure that critical issues are dealt with early?
From:developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/2052211&from=rss
Siliconwafer said on Wednesday, 30 May 2007
As a developer I agree with you, but lets not forget that Vista was delayed, the Zune has been sucking ... MS shareholders don't care about "critical issues", they care about revenue for the current quarter and fiscal year.
A developers conference, in the eyes of a shareholder, is a distraction and misalignment of priorities.
From:developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/2052211&from=rss
Uniquitus said on Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Probably they don't want to brief their would-be developers on buggy platforms, or API's still subject to change. The veterans wouldn't hold it against them (they're hardened to such things) but the journeyman-level coders would say the hell with it and turn to Java or Ruby.
From:developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/2052211&from=rss
Libertine R said on Wednesday, 30 May 2007
Calling all Pavlov’s dogs
Microsoft has given you another opportunity to show us your great anti-Microsoft wit. On a serious note: Has another company come close to supporting it's developers better than Microsoft? So, they cancel a PDC. So what?
I keep reminding people that Microsoft is a MARKETING driven organization. No doubt, when they schedule the next PDC, it will be for THEIR benefit, not yours. Dont like it? There are other options available.
From:developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/2052211&from=rss
MosesJones said on Wednesday, 30 May 2007
But do Microsoft really support their developers that well these days? I mean compare VS2005 (note the year folks) with what is coming out of eclipse (let alone the commercial extensions to eclipse) and its hard to justify the claim that VS is the "best" developer IDE, its just that VS folks haven't used the alternatives whereas the Java folks can switch like the wind. So IDE wise they aren't supporting their developers. Even things like the testing framework are an issue, most people use the open source JUnit or NUnit but MS couldn't stand that so created their own, bulkier and worse, alternative, again not great for developers.
From:developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/2052211&from=rss
MosesJOnes said on Wednesday, 30 May 2007
So what about features? Well if you do enterprise software they haven't had a major revision of the set since 2004(!)
There is MDSN which is great for software access (and you pay for it) and some of the forums are pretty good. The problem with MS is that the community is so MS centric, what I mean by this is that when you compare with Java you aren't asking whether Sun support Java people better than MS but whether SAP, Oracle, IBM, BEA, Sun, Open Source, etc support Java people better.
I've regularly sat on both sides of the fence, and I think that competition between vendors tends to give developers better support.
From:developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/2052211&from=rss