Archive for the ‘microsoft’ Category.
21st December 2007, 10:02 am
Sometimes applications don’t respond because, well, they’re busy. But only the most special of apps treat this not as a bug, but something to put up a “nothing to see here, move along” notification:
I mean, the sad part is I actually understand why they likely implemented this instead. At this point in Visual Studio’s lifecycle, it’s easier just to poll to check if the UI is unresponsive than to actually root out the cause of the unresponsiveness. It’s sad, actually. And the fun part is, in preparation for this blog article I didn’t even have to try very hard to get that little balloon to pop up. Took me about 30 seconds (and no I’m not going through the trouble of reporting it to Microsoft because it’s not entirely repeatable and I’m skeptical of what the results would be anyway). Go Visual Studio.
15th October 2007, 12:17 pm
As you may know, I’m not that much of a fan of Microsoft technology, but understand that it’s somewhat unavoidable and allowing for the use of MS products greatly opens the prospects of employment/work. So, at my new gig I’m aware that a healthy chunk of time spent doing development will be using Microsoft tools and all the quirks that go along with them. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, sometimes I’m reminded of why I dislike Microsoft products in general. Lately it’s been more of the latter.
On the current client I’m designing stuff for, we’re using MS SQL Server 2005’s SSIS toolchain, which is a great idea with mediocre execution. For those who are unfamiliar with SSIS, it’s basically the evolution of their DTS package that came with SQL Server 2000, which is designed to simplify the ETL process of getting data from a source (or various sources) into the destination database after all sorts of cleansing and transformation. The DTS package that shipped with SQL Server 2000 was apparently pretty warty, a trait that is common amongst first-gen Microsoft products, and so SSIS is apparently notably cleaner and nicer. But, as most of us are aware, that doesn’t mean it’s wart-free, and I’ve found a nasty wart or two.
Continue reading ‘Not a WTF, but certainly a wart’ »