Episode 25: PDC 2008 Podcaster Roundtable with Deep Fried Bytes and StackOverflow (part 2)

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While we were at the Microsoft PDC 2008 conference, we met up with the guys from the Deep Fried Bytes podcast as well as Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow, CodingHorror) for a podcaster roundtable. The first part of this discussion is over at Deep Fried Bytes (Episode 18).

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Herding Code 25: PDC 2008 Podcaster Roundtable with Deep Fried Bytes and StackOverflow (part 2)

Nov 07

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3 Comments Episode 25: PDC 2008 Podcaster Roundtable with Deep Fried Bytes and StackOverflow (part 2)

Episode 18: PDC 2008 Podcaster Roundtable with StackOverflow and Herding Code : Deep Fried Bytes Technology Podcast

November 8th, 2008 at 6:49 am

[...] 2008. The discussion was very lively and after you listen to this first part head over to the Herding Code podcast to listen to the conclusion of the discussion from [...]
Mr anonymous

November 10th, 2008 at 8:20 pm

Wow, you guys are too spoilt! You can get all those Microsoft products for free, and you complain you have to download each one individually. Perhaps Microsoft should be packaging hem on a DVD and sending them postage free to you
admin

November 10th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

Mr. Anonymous – You’re missing the point. We’re not complaining that it’s difficult for us to get software.
We’re saying that Microsoft makes it too difficult for “civilians” – non-developers – to play with their software developer tools.

All of us got started with computers that shipped BASIC at the commandline. Turning on the computer and typing “10 PRINT “Hello World” was a pretty welcoming environment for us as budding young nerds who wanted to play with computers.

Fast-forward 25 years and things have regrettably gotten more difficult. If little Jimmy down the street wants to play with computers, he needs to (1) somehow know there’s a Visual Studio Express product (2) figure out where to get it (3) download it over his slow internet connection (4) install it (5) if he’s made it this far, play. That amount of friction is just plain silly.

And please don’t mention csc.exe. Maybe a REPL style C# console might work, but csc.exe is not at all what I’m talking about.