Comments to MSDN Magazine: Missing the Point
I've been lucky to have been able to write for MSDN magazine a number of times, and currently co-write a column with Duncan Mackenzie, named Advanced Basics. Every now and then, the folks at MSDN send us a Word document containing all the comments people have posted as they're rating the articles. Most of them are uniformly helpful, and most are positive. A few, however, seem a bit misguided. I love it when someone rates an article 1 (out of 9) simply because they don't like Microsoft, or because they don't agree with the technology. (Got many low scores on the article on multi-threading simply because it's too hard to accomplish safe multi-threading in 1.x, even though the article was on 2.0 technology.) I can't complain--anyone can post whatever they're feeling, and that's the way it should be.
I do find it amazing, however, that this comment appeared (along with a rating of 1 on an article):
You've started putting a lot of your samples solely in VB.NET -- what about us C# users?
This is wrong on so many counts. First of all, a huge fraction of the samples out there are in C# only. Go to any conference, and a huge percentage of the presentations are in C# only. Even on MSDN, many samples are only in C#. And, to be honest, if you're a C# developer, reading Visual Basic should be a no-brainer, right? You're smart. (I will not start or get involved in the "which language is better?" wars, 'cause I really don't care.)
But let's examine the column title: "Advanced Basics". I guess they could have named it "A Column That Helps Visual Basic Developers Find Out Stuff They Might Not Otherwise Have Found Out On Their Own" but that's a rather long title, don't you think? It's called "poetic license." Or advertising. Or something. But it's pretty clear that it's about Visual Basic, I would think. In any case, C# developers complaining about a column devoted to Visual Basic having its code in Visual Basic, not C#, is like adult straight white males complaining that there when they turn on the WB, all the shows don't target their demographic. Just my opinion, of course.
Greetings from lovely Toronto. Here for VS Live, along with Brian Randell and many others.