The day I see this in powershell, I’ll switch back.
Right now, this is the ONLY, I repeat, ONLY reason I’m using linux in my lab. The only thing I use on it is bash in yakuake and vim, as I do C++ development.

Yakuake is another secondary reason, but its actually bash that I’m stuck with, though I wouldn’t mind if the powershell gui could look better, I mean really, how can you even look at the default fonts. And I hate going through the process of changing them to Lucida console, though finally I did it.

He appears to have a solution for your problem there.

what can I do?

For the most part, I totally agree with you. It’s part of what I’ve been trying to say. MS has produced a really good framework but they spend too much time trying to solve problems that already have solutions. I find it funny how afraid they are to say “Hey, look at this killer [insert tool here]” and how quick they are to say “Hey! Look we built [MS replacement for said tool that's nowhere near as good]“.

If anything, they should be proud and evangelizing the accomplishments of the community (even if they don’t fit in exactly to the MS mindset). “Hey! Look at [StructureMap, Windsor, Ninject, AutoFac, etc]. These amazing projects were built on .Net and _you_ can use them!” To be fair, I think that’s part of why CodePlex Foundation was created, but there’s slim pickins out of that place so far.

But if, like you said, they keep focusing on the developer, extending and opening things like Silverlight, WPF. And putting out useful tools like IIS Express. Embracing the community, etc. The more they embrace the developer (and especially their products) and make it easier for them to build and especially share them, the better off the ecosystem is going to be.

They need to provide for the developers, and _if_ they insist on backfilling based on need there are two things they need to do:

A) Take a serious stab at it.
B) Do it in a timely fashion (not years after every other community does it)
C) Commit to maintaining it.

The best example I have of this is the MVC framework. However, it only has A and C. Yet, like you said, if Gu keeps pushing the way he is, I think the gap that MS typically has in B will go down. At least, I sincerely hope so.

The last couple months have been positive, I just hope they continue the push. I really don’t see why they wouldn’t, but stranger things have happened.

mendicant

As far as EF – I finally saw what I was looking for in EFv4 when Scott Gu posted this week on the true POCO with no designer edmx ‘data model’.

This is a big and important step forward – as we went from nhibernate w/1 xml mapping file to EF with 3 and no pocos – to pocos still generated from a edmx, to finally a poco only solution.

And the IIS Express can now run anywhere – even though before we had to install a new server OS in order to get IIS 7 features.

1. MSUnit – they recognized the needs for a testing suite in Studio.
2. EF – they recognized ORM’s popularity with NHibernate. They recognized the value of it
3. TFS – testing, deploying, etc… aka CruiseControl
4. Unity – they see the need for Dependency injection framework
5. MVC – this is in everything, to finally release this was huge for them, although I would argue that Webforms was a mistake – something that people adopted because it was shiny and new but ultimately a bad framework whose misconceptions really were revealed when the whole web 2.0 flourished and MS Ajax was poorly done and ‘bolted on’

For quite some time it bothered me as well, but at the same time – MS MUST keep up, and I think Scott Guthrie has seen this and made it happen. They fulfill and fill gaps.

I think there are huge legal obstacles to just throwing open source code into their stack. Scott Guthrie from what I understand took the big leap with getting jQuery in and it took working with the MS lawyers to work through all the details.

The mindshift – at least in Scott Guthrie’s group – has shifted and they move and adjust. I’m glad to see that vs. being stoicly attached with a ‘we know better’ attitude that I believe they used to have. We see that failure in the phone and the tablet (I’m fully against Ballmer’s lack of innovation with the tablet, this continual attempt to throw a desktop OS on a tablet is foolish.. just ask HP…)

(even Apple realized they had to build their OS on a better platform, hence they rewrote the OS to run on a *nix system)

Let’s step back a moment.

For me, they can compete. The technology and tools – they provide a framework and tools to build what we need. I’d argue they have some of the best tools available.

Here is what I’d rather see – and I’d consider this ‘innovative’ – get PAST the this ONLY runs on Windows mentality.

.NET should run everywhere. Their tools should run ANYWHERE. I should be able to run my asp.net mvc solution on Apache. I should be able to develop with Visual Studio on my Mac. I should be able to deploy my WPF app on Ubuntu.

I personally love the iphone and what Apple has done. But in the same manner I think MS should open up — so should Apple. I should be able to develop a silverlight iphone app imo. Same with the android. MS isn’t going to win on the Windows 7 series phone in this regards. Just like WebOS for HP, who is going to write apps for a phone that might only hold 5% of the phone market?

What will occur I believe is – even if less quality – is frameworks like ‘Android’ that can be build on any machine that can install java – be it Mac, Linux, or Windows – and can be run anywhere – is of extremely high value to the development community. Where are we going to invest our time?

We continually hit this bump. I think this is why java will re-emerge – the android will push that, developers wanting to do apps will learn java and build them. It will be a familiar language for .net developers.

To me, for MS this is where they have to see forward and have vision. Sure, they have a stranglehold on the MS development communities, but it’s obviously the MS isn’t going to dominate every market as they did with the desktop OS. They won’t dominate tablets or phones. But why do it?

Instead, fill the gaps. The biggest gap is development outside of Windows. Mono is rough. Monotouch is rough. MonoDevelop is extremely rough.

My 2 cents: let the development community produce the products on top of the framework – OSS in MS is growing and is so far beyond where it was just in the last few years – real innovation is coming from the developers. Microsoft – instead of moving into our space- needs to OPEN OUR SPACE up so that what we build and where we build our .NET projects can be built and run on any system.

Who else can claim that right now? Java. I’d like to add .NET to that category.

Summary: We the developers are innovating and Microsoft is back filling. They are moving forward in critical realms such as Azure. They can help us innovate further by expanding their vision outside of ‘just Windows’.

Last comment: The employees of Microsoft would be better off recognizing the innovations outside of MS. Currently I see Tweets where they like to bash Apple and the iphone, etc… this is a major failing. They are just creating a divide that doesn’t need to exist. Instead of bashing, they should look to see where they can help us developers use those systems … with the .net framework.

The ‘us vs. them’ mentality needs to be put aside to get innovation. As long as guys like Ballmer stick to that age old mentality we all get harmed. It’s no different than Obama blaming Bush for his failures 18 months into his presidency. At first, sure, he had some good arguments, but to blame Bush now is just lack of accountability for his own failings. Same goes with MS – instead of creating divides, they should be working with Apple and Google to figure out, ie. how to get Silverlight running there. They should be creating VS 2010 for the Mac – and giving us ways to deploy our WPF apps anywhere, and our asp.net mvc apps anywhere.

That to me would be pretty innovative eh?

First the things I agree with:

“While I’m at it, I also disagree with the implication that only “new, different, ground-breaking and/or revolutionary” are worth doing.” — I’m not saying they aren’t worth doing. What I’m saying is that they seem so up in arms that they aren’t fully embraced by the leaders and the MVPs now that there’s a “microsoft” solution. The point is, most times, they aren’t doing it ‘a little bit better’. It’s usually just a half baked effort to get something out the door and get the heat off.

ASP.Net MVC is a good example of something that, while still behind the times, they should continue to push and improve. It’s much needed, and I think considering the success they will push and be a good example of a come-from-behind framework.

As for IIS Express, I don’t give it enough credit in terms of functionality. It does have a lot more to it than WEBrick or Mongrel. My main point is, again, why did it take so long? My examples are the two that came to mind. I’m sure if I looked it up, we could find a more fully featured example that would compare with IIS express better. I fully admit that IIS Express is a great and much needed addition to a .Net developers toolbox. I just think that it took far too long to get here.

I also hate a lot on Powershell, but that is mostly because A) I can’t stand scripting with it and B) I hate the actual shell. Tab completion, history, just using it makes me want to hurt small animals. It actually keeps me from truly exploring it as much as I should. I was thinking today about the integration story between PS and things like IIS, Sql Server, Exchange and you can see where it becomes valuable not only to a developer like me, but also to sys admins, BAs and several other roles in an IT setting. I also mentioned the OO aspect of it as being its biggest innovation (and most interesting). I guess my beef is that it feels like it goes out of its way to tie my hands behind my back before I can even get anything done with it.

Disagreements:

Comparing Bash with CMD: Bash (or my prior fav csh, or even zsh, ksh, etc) and cmd are THE command line interfaces to the OS you are using. Can you script out anything using WSH or VBS straight from CMD? No. You have to use their environments, which means that your command line story is still missing. powershell is definitely that missing link that brings that story (and with tight OS/.net integration does take it a step further). Honestly, give me persisted history and all the usability items I’ve mentioned and I’d install the unix utils kit which has grep, sed, awk etc and I probably wouldn’t look back. Functionality doesn’t mean much if I have to jump through hoops to use it.

As for having a GUI shell down to a script, that’s been done over and over again. In fact, I’d say that several administration programs on other OSes began as simply that: a gui that shelled down to a script or executable. You’re right though, with PS you can shell out directly to an assembly if you wanted to. I just don’t see much difference. Maybe because of how easy it is to place a script in a file and have a *nix system just know what language to interpret it with.

All told, if you force me to talk about it, I’d admit Powershell is probably the one where they did come out swinging and, from a technical standpoint, took things to the next level. As for the frameworks and such, I’d far prefer to see more of the JQuery type thing happening. The JQuery situation was so well done and well played. Can you imagine if they had tried to put out their own replacement for it? (I know there is MS Ajax library, but it doesn’t seem to be directly comparable). Imagine if they’d done the same with EF or MSTest? Or unity? Feelings towards those techs would be much different.

As a last point, another place where they did the right thing was with MEF. Rather than cobble together a team and tell them to ‘make this’, instead they went straight to an expert on the subject and brought the guy in (Glenn Block) to do it. I know not everyone gets it or agrees with it, but I have heard far more positive regarding it (I haven’t personally looked into it) and the way in which they dealt with the community and their input with it. The more projects we have like that, the far better off we will all be.