Microsoft's mainline products 'break' many development paradigms

At last week’s Microsoft Heroes Happen Here event in Charlotte, NC, I got the chance to ask Microsoft Senior IT Pro Evangelist Blain Barton a handful of questions about systems administration, development, customer feedback, and more.

My first question was a tough one: How is Microsoft addressing the fact that its current batch of mainline products (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft Office 2007) “break” so many paradigms that developers and users had gotten used to?

He said Microsoft knows it’s a tough road and that it will be “like going from Windows 3.0 to Windows 95.” He reminded me that many of the same problems were experienced with Windows 95 and that it took years for everyone to catch up, but they eventually did. This is not the answer I wanted to hear (I remember the Windows 95 transition with not-so-fond memories), but it is a reasonable one.

I agree with him that Microsoft is going in the right direction. Windows really needed security enhancements (at the risk of breaking some applications and being a hassle), and Microsoft Office was pretty hard to use, even if millions of users were used to it.

Read the entire write-up in the TechRepublic Network Administrator blog, and find out what Barton says developers should do to help their desktop apps work side-by-side with mobile applications.

J.Ja

Disclosure of Justin’s industry affiliations: Justin James has a working arrangement with Microsoft to write an article for MSDN Magazine.