Silverlight 2 Tutorials from ScottGu

wisemx wrote:

Would your boss have ever opened with the public like Scott does?

Oh dear, the tired old "Isn't Scott great? He's just like one of us" argument. Sorry, but I don't want him to be "just like one of us" and in the position he's in he damn well shouldn't be.

I'm beginning to think maybe he's just symptomatic of the whole Microsoft problem. It's like "hero development" where everyone's busy patting themselves on the back at the crazy nights and weekends they've worked when instead they should be saying "Why did we have to do so much work? Wouldn't a bit of planning have helped? Shouldn't we be able to get the job done 9 to 5?"

We have a community that says "Isn't it great that Scott blogs, and does tutorials, and gets his laptop out at every opportunity". But this is someone with how many people reporting into him? With responsibility for how many products? Shouldn't someone else be writing tutorials (and getting a second person to verify them)? When I do tutorials for a small product in a company with just 20 employees I get someone to "test drive" them? Why the hell isn't Microsoft, with an impact on hundreds of thousands of developers doing the same??!!!

Maybe I'm just over-reacting to the whole complex ASP.NET WebForms mess and pretty much everything that's followed since (such a mess that Microsoft have had to embrace MVC as a new framework that ships with the product to cope with modern TDD, rather than the usual P&P "guidance" that they've used to deal with these sorts of "real world" issues in the past).  

The fact that a year after IIS7 became available we're getting a "technical preview" of an "admin kit" that does stuff like give you a UI to modify custom errors and the configuration says it all really. And heck, there are umpteen other examples all across the Microsoft product range.

It's hard not to come to the conclusion that Microsoft development is being run like the most amateur, cowboy software house start-up. There are some hilarious (and very scary) "Can we make Silverlight and WPF in any way compatible so that stuff can be used across both?" discussions going on at the moment - shouldn't this nonsense have been sorted out 2-3 years ago when WPF/E was first announced?!!! Ditto for the Expression and VS story: 2-3 years on and still no integrated source control. Don't get me started on the whole "We've got Blend 1, and Blend 2 in beta, and Blend 2.5 in beta as well" nonsense.  It's beyond laughable. We're not talking some two-bit software house here (or actually maybe we are - and that's the whole problem!)

Instead we have "We'll release this little bit here. Then we'll add the working stuff later as some sort of post-release. We don't need documentation - we haven't got time and people can blog instead of producing documentation. We don't need to think strategically, just get that product out the door before rushing onto the next 'fixes all the problems we didn't tell you we had' redesigned new offering, and let's worry about the strategic impact later" etc etc etc.
 
Like I said, "Emporer's New Clothes". Acceptable at some cowboy start-up. Unacceptable for a company the size of Microsoft that's been in the game as long as it has and really should have learnt its lessons by now.

And no, I don't need a hug. I'd just like some software that does what it says it will do on the tin and meet some real world requirements rather than being a "he did it all on a plane trip" toy project, hyped up by ignoramuses who haven't even looked at the thing!

Thanks Jeremy.

We've got the inaugral meeting of the UK Silverlight User Group coming up next Wednesday, started by a bunch of folks from Conchango who've been working with Silverlight 2 through the early adoption programme so if all else fails I can see if they can diagnose the problems.

scottgu wrote:

To answer the origional question:

>>>>>>> Has anybody actually worked through these? If so, care to share how you got to the end?!   

All 8 of my blog post tutorials start with the below text (note the text highlighted in yellow):

This is part three of eight tutorials that walk through how to build a simple Digg client application using the Beta1 release of Silverlight 2.  These tutorials are intended to be read in-order, and help explain some of the core programming concepts of Silverlight. 

You can downloaded the source code of a fully implemented version of this Digg client sample here.

Scott, there's no easy way to say this: I think this is disingenious to say the least! THE HIGHLIGHTED  PARAGRAPHS ABOVE APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN ADDED VERY RECENTLY.

I know because I have a print out I made of all the tutorials I was working from. The paragraphs you've highlighted above are NOT there on ANY of the tutorials I have printed out!

In addition the download shows dlls dated 8th March - some time after the tutorials were launched before MIX08.

While I'd like to think there's some weird CSS going on that made those key paragraphs vanish on printout I don't think you'd have as many comments complaining about the fact the tutorials don't work if this paragraph had been there for any decent length of time for those other complainants to see!  Can I suggest you update your own comments section with the information you've posted here so that those who've had problems are aware that you've updated the entry! 

scottgu wrote:


>>>>>>>> The fact that a year after IIS7 became available we're getting a "technical preview" of an "admin kit" that does stuff like give you a UI to modify custom errors and the configuration says it all really.

The shipping IIS7 admin tool has always provided you with support for configuring IIS7 error pages - this works today.  Click the "Error Pages" module in the IIS7 admin tool to configure this. 

IIS7 optionally allows you to run applications in ISAPI ASP.NET mode, where the pipeline is not integrated and ASP.NET runs in older compatibility mode, and supports its own error page configuration (in the default mode it uses the IIS7 error pages configured in the admin tool already).  Traditionally you configured this using web.config and a text editor (this is what people did with IIS6).  The new admin pack includes an optional admin module that provides a graphical view if you want to set it via the tool. 

The other admin pack modules include additional modules that have never shipped in any IIS admin tool - nor frankly with any competing web server I'm aware of.

Fair points. I stand corrected. Initial release information was minimal to say the least and with so many beta's/CTPs coming out of Microsoft (almost on a daily basis) I didn't get the chance to dig into all the detail.

scottgu wrote:


>>>>>>>>> It's hard not to come to the conclusion that Microsoft development is being run like the most amateur, cowboy software house start-up.

Sorry you feel this way.

If you want complete documentation with final APIs and tutorials then it is best to wait for the final products to be shipped.  Beta1 releases are not marketed as "final" and are intended to get early feedback, early real world development by some set of advanced developers, and identify both bugs and feedback on functional ways to make the products better.

Then this needs to be made much clearer than it is being made across the whole of Microsoft. When phrases like "Go live license is available today" and "Easyjet have gone live" are thrown around on top of endless articles that imply this product is here and ready to go today then it's easy to forget that this is something "intended to get early feedback". 

scottgu wrote:


>>>>>>>>> There are some hilarious (and very scary) "Can we make Silverlight and WPF in any way compatible so that stuff can be used across both?" discussions going on at the moment

We've tried to be clear that Beta1 isn't feature complete or API locked.  There are some compatibility differences between Silverlight Beta1 and WPF.  You'll see many of these (all but a handfull) go away with Beta2.  The few differences are all being carefully vetted and reviewed, and are there for good reasons (we plan to document each difference and also explain the "why" behind them when we ship).

I should note that most of the feedback around "compatibility" between WPF and Silverlight, though, has been centered not on API/behavior differences, but rather on features people would like pulled down from WPF into Silverlight.  Things like triggers in control templates, control to control databinding, basedon styles, etc.  There are all good features, and many will eventually be supported in Silverlight.

The challange with building a small, cross platform RIA platform, though, is that to be small (~5MB) you can't add every feature that is in a 62MB download (WPF alone is today almost 20MB in size).  This necesitates that we be "choosy" about what features are put in and not in each release - otherwise you quickly end up with a download that suffers from deployment challanges because setup/download is too slow (which ends up being a much bigger showstopper and something that people yell about with the full .NET FX today). 

This means that there will be (admittedly cool) convenience features in WPF that people will be upset are missing from Silverlight.  We don't think these missing features will block application scenarios though. 

These also shouldn't block people from taking Silverlight code and migrating it to run in full WPF.  The "core" base of WPF programming concepts like controls, layout management, control templates, styles, and data-binding are in Silverlight, and are compatible with WPF.

These are all good points. It's a shame this is the first time I've read many of them. This needs publicising a lot more - at least if all the noise I'm seeing on different Silverlight blogs is typical of the confusion that abounds.

>>>>>>>>> We have a community that says "Isn't it great that Scott blogs, and does tutorials,

scottgu wrote:


If my blog causes you pain, I'd recommend unsubscribing from it.  Blogging isn't my day job, and isn't intended a substitute for our documentation teams.  My goal is to give updates on releases, as well as starting tutorials on early technology (for which docs aren't always completed). 

Now we're just getting childish! And it's kind of naive given how every damned evangelist on the planet is blogging, pointing at your tutorials as the "de facto" way to learn this major new technology. Sorry to be blunt but this response is extremely disappointing. You must know from the traffic stats alone how importantly everything on your blog is treated by the community at large. Your tutorials are the major starting point for anyone interested in looking at this MAJOR new Microsoft technology. But instead of getting one of those "hundreds of staff" to give the material a quick run through and sanity check you're saying "It's isn't my day job. If you don't like it unsubscribe". Really. I'm flabbergasted and can't agree with you on this at all!

scottgu wrote:


We have hundreds of people who create documentation, videos, official tutorials, books, etc. as products get more mature.  We are getting much better about having even early previews have more detailed documentation (for example: the preview 2 release of ASP.NET has these quickstarts online: http://quickstarts.asp.net/3-5-extensions/mvc/default.aspx)

If you want fully polished stuff that is completely baked and final, I recommend skipping my tutorials and waiting for the betas to mature and wait for more complete documentation to come online.

- Scott

You have THOUSANDS (if not tens of thousands) of people spending time helping you to make a better product for free. If you don't think one or two people spending a couple of hours "sanity checking" what has been touted as THE way to "get into" that "beta" product on your blog then you're living in a different world from me and those I work with and, forgive me for being blunt, are being incredibly naive about how your blog is perceived.

Generally I'm a big fan of your blog, your talks, and the hours you put in, but the response above (particularly what looks suspiciously like the unheralded altering of a blog entry after the event) is the most disappointing Microsoft experience I've had in a LONG time! Shame on you, sir!