Posted By: Charles | Jul 27th, 2006 @ 12:47 PM

As you may recall, last month Bill Gates announced his plans to step down as Chief Software Architect of Microsoft to pursue full time work at the Gates Foundation. If you watched that Channel 9 interview with Bill and Steve, you probably remember hearing about one of his replacements, Craig Mundie.

Do you wonder what Craig's thinking in terms of technical and platform strategy for Microsoft? Did you know he ran a supercomputer company before joining Microsoft? Who is this guy, anyway?

Sit back, relax, and learn all about Craig and what he's responsible for in his new role as Microsoft's CRSO.

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When will formal composition come to software engineering?

In the next ten years, twenty year, ever?

What about the common complaint heard from developers about Microsoft frequent "churn" of software development technologies?

rjdohnert
rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure
Is this the Craig Mundie that Eric Raymond claims to have interrupted one of his presentations to declare himself Microsofts worst nightmare?  Great video guys, heard a lot about Craig its nice to finally "meet" him.
Charles wrote:
There's only one Craig Mundie at Microsoft... Never heard of Eric Raymond. Sounds like a bonehead...

The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source

The Art of UNIX Programming

The New Hacker's Dictionary
Charles wrote:
Ah. Eric S. Raymond... Boy, we're scared...
C


Have you not got the memo? It's totally the year of Linux "d00d" Wink
Charles wrote:
raymond,

Craig answers your "when" question in the interview... It's a very hard problem. We "churn" out new development technologies once every, what, 3-5 years? Boy, that's major churn... Also, you can still write applications in C and C++ that work great on Windows. What's your point, raymond? Please elaborate.

C


Regarding the "churn" question:

Visual Studio 2002, 2003, 2005.

.Net Framework 1.0, 1.2, 2.0, ...3.0, 3.5 or 4.0 (next year).

I am definitely not complaining, but many developers are, and I would have liked to have heard Craig's answer to this common question or complaint. I am well aware that this is a sensitive subject with no easy answer.

I for one would like a predictable schedule such as every two years for a new release of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework instead of  a variable and constantly changing one.

If anything, my complaint is the very long wait for Avalon or Windows Presentation Foundation and the Expression Suite in particular Sparkle or Expression Interactive Designer.

I am still curious as to his thoughts or speculations as to time frame regarding the first question. I do not believe he gave an answer to that question. I for one think we are at least ten years away, some think it will never happen.

Thanks for a great interview!Smiley

Very long wait!?

I'm sure you only think its a long wait because of the MS adoption of CTPs and such. The old MS wouldn't have made anyone aware of Avalon or Indigo untill 6 months to release...

I am very happy about this new approch as it takes companies just as long to get them approved.