More Visual Studio shenanigans

I just received an email with some light detail about Visual Studio 2012 update 3 RC.  After having a look at the lean list of fixes included and the news that MS is prepping for VS2013... well I was pretty disapointed.

Suffice to say that effectivly I have not been able to use VS2012 for much of anything.  Its either been feature incomplete or buggy as shit to the point of unusability.  So apart from not progressing a couple of projects... I will essentially have to skip a whole version before (hopefully..) I can make some progress.  Talk about stealing momentum.

While I understand that VS is an "everything and the kitchen sink" type toolbox and getting it to all work is a herculean task... it seems like this version has just sucked constantly.  Its been such a political release with MS trying to strong arm their agenda for Win8 down my throat that I am just disgusted by the whole experience. 

The sad thing is that Win8 would have been picked up and used quite happily as part of the natural cycle and no one would have mentioned it.  We would have migrated everything in our own time and at a comfortable pace. But the whole "forced adoption" policy just broke too many things all at once and really did not leave me with a path forward.  And that left me holding the bag and trying to explain to a lot of clients why I could not deliver what seemed to be a simple update for a new Microsoft Platform.   You just cannot do that and not expect to cop some flack for it.

Diversification is the only way to manage risk across a broad portfolio.  So now, I have to diversify and spread my position away from Microsoft.  I have to maintain a number of possible solutions on a range of platforms and middle ware rather than relying on MS to be both platform and middleware provider.  The trust is gone.  I have spent more time reviewing tools sets and API's from other platforms over the past year than any time previously.  I have had to develop on a dozen different middle ware packages and push more projects into the cloud that otherwise would have been on the MS desktop.  All because they moved my cheese and pissed all over it.

And for what?  Has the MS position in the market place been strengthened?  Hardly.  I still can't find a supplier in the city who cares about selling surface tablets. There are now just as many Mac products amoung my clients as there are PC.  Chrome books and Android tabs are breeding and market place apps are spawning like crazy salmon.  The monopoly is gone; panicing is just making it worse.