Yukon and Whidbey, er, I mean, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 will be available in 2005, and some folks flipped out. Folks, it's not THAT big of a deal. Is it a bummer, sure. Will it affect the schedules of a few other products, maybe yours? Possibly. But remember, you do have a development platform that many of you have yet to fully exploit. Perhaps the bloggers who are so vocally disappointed are so advanced in their development skills or 'early adopter-ness' that they've forgotten that useful software is shipping today?
.NET moved Windows development squarely into the managed world that Java programmers enjoyed. .NET was a shock to the system, and as such, it's taken a while to sink in. For some folks, it clicked, made sense. For others, it's taken a few years to 'sleep on it.' There are a lot of folks out there picking up .NET 1.1 and really creating some fantastic mature software. Now, .NET 2.0 is going to change things and shock the system. That's a good thing. ASP.NET 2.0, generics, ClickOnce, it's going to be great and unquestionably a step foward.
But, I have to ship software today to large banks and financial institutions. We have a great application platform built on .NET that is mature and fabulous. Believe me, we'll exploit the appropriate features of 2.0 when it comes out, but today I'm shipping great stuff. And I will continue to innovate on .NET 1.1 all during 2004. Nothing is stopping me, and I'm certainly not going to sit idlely and wait for 2.0, when I can make great software for my clients now.
Sure I'd love to have Master Pages, but somehow I've made it this far without it. Sure I'd like to have ObjectSpaces, but...well, you get the idea. These things take time, and I'm happy that Microsoft has adopted a more practical 'Carmackian' attitude around software ship dates.
The Press
Last week when the announcement happened, I had two press calls about the slip before noon! Come on people, let's not create drama where there isn't. Many developers inside slower moving banks are just now getting off NT 4.0 and are still trepidacious of XML(!), not to mention .NET and managed code. I'm still out there fighting the good fight to introduce folks to .NET 1.x.
I'll end with Jason Maus's reminder: Don't forget the saying, "Good, Fast, Cheap. You may choose two."
Now, on to things that ARE significant or 'of note':
Notice that the new naming is Visual Studio 2005, not Visual Studio .NET 2005. This is a good thing, obivously intentional, expressing that .NET is firmly here and now. It's so much a part of the fabric of developing on the Windows Platform that it's served it's purpose as a pervasive suffix. I dig it.
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