.NET and Python

[Alex Martelli]

"Van Gale" <cgale1 at _remove_home.com> wrote in message
news:9hCn7.1041$6c5.37802 at news1.rdc1.sdca.home.com...
> > Yeah, I get the same impression.  This time, though, where I meant
> quality,
> > was that better software is being produced by MS programmers.  Word and
> > Excel 97 are somewhat buggy.  The definately improved them in their 2000
> and
> > XP releases.
>
> That was pretty much my point.  Most, if not all, Microsoft products
improve
> with time.  They have the resources to keep plugging away.  The products

I have not used Office XP, but my personal impression is that the
number of bugs in Word & Excel, 97 vs 2000, is roughly equivalent --
yes some old bugs have gone away, but new ones have appeared.  "Just
plugging away" is not necessarily effective at systematic bug removal
particularly when new (mostly cosmetic) features keep having to be
added.  In general, the last *patched version* of some product from
just before the next generation of the product took over tends to
be least buggy -- as patched versions don't add features (or one can
hope at least not many:-), so they don't tend to add bugs either:-).

> they have the hardest time with though, are networking products.  It seems
> to me they have a hard time seeing the differences between the desktop and
> the network.  So, with .NET, we have something that 1) is a framework that
> hasn't been tested and doesn't even fully exist yet, 2) is for networking
> applications, and 3) is getting the full marketing blitz.

Note that the part of .NET that I find works really well (surprisingly
well for a beta, IMHO) is the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET,
*desktop* products that have really very little (if anything) to do
with networking.  As usual, the naming is the pits from the point of
view of clarity (not to mention, try finding ".NET" with typical web
search engines -- good thing many people spell it out as "dotnet" --
just like finding "COM" is impossible, though in that case given the
timing one could hardly fault the namers for not guessing it would
become as pervasive a 'word' as it has:-).


> Sorry, I'm putting my money on the bet that says it's years before .NET
> becomes worth using.

...for *networking* purposes, probably.  It's likely to be pretty
soon a superior way to develop & deploy for the Windows *desktop*,
greatly reducing issues of component versioning and other aspects
of "dll hell":-).


Alex