Except for some details, I really REALLY like Windows. Really what I'm liking is computing, and Windows is a big part of that because I selected Windows instead of Linux.
Over the years there have been some changes: So, we have new hardware, some HUGELY important new communications standards, a huge effort on computer security, etc., and it is crucial that Windows has kept up with the changes. I like that. And I like that I can still run my favorite old programs: Since I do all I can with plain text, my most heavily used program is my favorite text editor KEDIT. And I really like hierarchical file systems so really REALLY like Microsoft's NTFS (new technology file system) and do a lot of tree walking, searching, copying, deleting, etc.
But Microsoft went for an unstated philosophy of a graphical user interface (GUI) where (a) there is a metaphor of direct manipulation of desktop objects and (b) commands and operations are to be learned by experimentation without documentation. I can see some utility there, otherwise I still like command lines because the documentation tends to be better, it is more clear just what is going on, and I can script, automate some of the operations.
And I get to write software, e.g., in .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET for my Web site startup and whatever else seems worthwhile. So far, I like .NET. I do wish Microsoft had explained, just explained in simple text, just what the heck .NET CORE was. By now I've come to a guess that .NET CORE is irrelevant to me and I should f'get about it -- would have been nice to have had some EXPLANATION.
For the future of GUIs, that seems to be just Web pages, i.e., HTML.
For me, the above is the view of Windows I find most important. For the future, I hope that Microsoft does not mess up that view. To have me a happier customer, Microsoft should concentrate on one word, DOCUMENTATION.
I can understand that Microsoft has some middle managers who want to add things to Windows or change Windows to improve it. Now, for changes such as I mentioned above, SURE. Otherwise, please sit down: Each new version of Windows I find to be, in one word, a pain. The changes are not improvements but PAINS. E.g., with the old version of Windows, after hundreds of hours of work I finally learned and documented for myself how to get routine things done. Then with the changes, I have to invest many more hours just to be able to continue to get routine things done and for no gains at all. Sorry Microsoft middle manager: To me you are like TV producers, what they try for, I don't like; what I like, they don't try for.
E.g., as far as I can tell from a command line window
is wrong. Just wrong. It doesn't work. First, set aside that from this "example" can't tell what is a constant and what is a variable. So, try all possible combinations. Second, still, nothing works. Nothing. Go for 1, 2, 3 hours trying everything. Did I mention, nothing works? This is grotesquely bad computing. Just awful. Want to make things better, fix things like that.
But it's worse: Go out on the Internet and can find lots of documentation of that command. Some of the documentation has lots of double quote marks. Nothing worked. Hours; nothing worked. We're talking mud wrestling here. Eventually I got the software to request my administrator password, but that was as far as it went.
This isn't my work. Yet my time, effort, energy are soaked up, repeatedly, over and over, by such system management mud wrestling documentation problems.
Eventually I guessed some of what was going on and found another path that did work. It's not fully clear just why that worked, but it did.
Documentation? I took some good notes, and apparently they are better than anything from Microsoft or readily available on the Internet.
The main bottleneck in my startup is the bad documentation that leads to wasted effort in this mud wrestling. What fraction of my effort goes to such stuff? Essentially 100% -- I can't get back to my real work due to a continuing list of such disasters. They are taking up ALL my time, just mud wrestling from bad documentation.
For Windows, Firefox, Acrobat, etc., sure, important security updates and otherwise I'll consider updates in functionality maybe twice a year, maybe once a year, or once each 2nd year. Except for security, bluntly and quite broadly I don't want your updates but will consider some, say, occasionally. As you force updates on me, I get TORQUED, become a VERY unhappy customer.
E.g., Adobe went too far, essentially taking over my PC, at startup, with updates I don't want, with popups, with "Do you want to ...", and yesterday I deleted everything from Adobe now "Dead to me.". Firefox will read a PDF (portable document format) file, at least the ones I want read, a little better than Acrobat. Adobe, with me, you went too far and BLEW IT.
I have big hopes for the future of computing for myself, Microsoft, the computer industry, the economy, and civilization, but I want do to my part, get on with it, and there is no room in that work for me to click "NO" tens of thousands of times to popup windows stopping my work until I answer some "Do you want to ...", and there is no excuse for the system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.
At one time Microsoft was very interested in "developers, developers, developers!!!". Well, I'm trying to be one. Then I hope to be a good customer for Windows Server and SQL Server. And on Windows XP and Windows 7 I got 100,000 lines of .NET code running apparently as intended. But now I've lost YEARS of time in system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.
I can't be a good customer of Windows Server if you have me stuck in a mud hole wasting time.
> So far, I like .NET. I do wish Microsoft had explained, just explained in simple text, just what the heck .NET CORE was. By now I've come to a guess that .NET CORE is irrelevant to me and I should f'get about it -- would have been nice to have had some EXPLANATION.
I would say that .NET Core is certainly relevant to you and shouldn’t be ignored.
Just read it all. EXCELLENT information. Kept a copy. Indexed it in the appropriate place in my .NET documentation. That information will be a big help in my software writing for my startup.
Microsoft, this document is HELPING you a LOT with me. Did I mention, my view is that the biggest problem in my software writing, startup, Microsoft, the US economy, the future of computing, and progress in civilization now is in just one word, DOCUMENTATION that is missing for Microsoft's software. This is not funny or a joke but very serious.
Okay, .NET Foundation, through version 4.x, was for writing software only on Windows, and CORE was for writing software on nearly any operating system. Now at .NET version 5, Foundation and CORE have become the same thing.
Okay. I suspect that with CORE/.NET version 5, my old code written using .NET 2.x and 4.x and ASP.NET and ADO.NET will still run as before, mostly or entirely except maybe a lot faster. Okay.
I would make some suggestions about
.NET Basics
(1) It's possible to use .NET to write a program that compiles to a file with extension EXE and not just DLL. I did that many times. E.g., part of the software I wrote was a key-value store that runs as a server, console application, is an EXE, and provides its service via TCP/IP.
(2) Say that jargon is a word used with a meaning not in a standard dictionary and used with a narrow meaning in a narrow field. Well, the document would be better defining more of its jargon. Same for acronyms.
(3) Apparently software can run "on" a platform or "under" the CLI or CLR. Using both on and under makes no sense -- stick with one or the other. Since software stack is so common, maybe stick with on and drop under.
(4) The description of interpreted software is nothing like what I have long understood. The document seems to claim that interpreted software is much the same as just in time complied software; here there is a new sequence of machine instructions generated (the instructions are not new but the sequence is). In total contrast, my understanding is that interpreted software is having a program, the interpreter, run the user's software simply by directly doing what that software says. It is like a human reading the software and doing what it says -- no new sequence of machine instructions generated. A good example of interpreted software is the scripting language Rexx. I'm fairly sure, and due to computer security certainly hope, that JavaScript software is executed interpretively.
(5) It seems that the document is claiming that for writing programs with .NET it necessary to use Visual Studio. Gads, I HOPE NOT! I just checked and see that I wrote 11 million bytes of .NET software, and I never used Visual Studio. I fully intend never to use Visual Studio. Instead, all my software source code is just simple plain text I type in with my favorite plain text text editor KEDIT -- ALL of it.
NO WAY do I want any usage of Visual Studio. I tried it once: There was a LOT to learn just to consider writing the standard "Hello World". And for the initial project to write Hello World, I got some huge file system tree with maybe 50 million bytes of I don't know what the heck. And when something went wrong, I'd have to work through 50+ million bytes of undocumented I don't know what. I see writing the software for my startup on Visual Studio a threat like my being lashed to a railroad track with freight train at 80 MPH 100 yards away coming right for me. NO WAY.
I just checked: The way I got my .NET code compiled was just run as a command line the .NET VB compiler EXE program
Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\vbc.exe
Worked fine. Got to "Hello World" right away. Worked fine for 300+ .VB programs. Used TCP/IP, ADO.NET, etc. -- just fine. The compiling on a very cheap AMD processor with a 1.8 GHz clock was really fast. I was a super happy camper, thrilled, and NO Visual Studio in sight.
Debugging? Didn't have any problems a little print tracing didn't easily solve.
Documentation for using .NET objects? Put the tree name on my disk of the relevant Web page I'd downloaded from MSDN in my source code, and with one key stroke my editor would run a macro that did a little parsing and displayed the MSDN Web page. Worked great. No problems.
Now, however, that macro won't work: Somehow Firefox now floods me with popups about "safe mode", "Do you want to ..." and refuses just to display the Web page. So, will have to revise my editor macro to use the old version of Google's Web browser Chrome to display the pages. Firefox messed up, big time, and is no longer qualified to be my "default browser".
A lot of people with famous software have convinced themselves that it is really good NOT to do the work the user is requesting but, instead, to stop the work of the user, refuse to do the work, and put up various windows, popups, video clips, etc., lots and lots of stuff other than the actual work involved. Of course I avoid such software as much as I can. Adobe did that with Acrobat, and now there is NOTHING by Adobe on my computer. Firefox did some of that, and now Firefox is no long my default browser. This popup and "Do you want to ..." stuff is a really good way to get OFF my computers.
THANKS again for the reference. Remarks (1)-(5) aside, the good stuff in
Over the years there have been some changes: So, we have new hardware, some HUGELY important new communications standards, a huge effort on computer security, etc., and it is crucial that Windows has kept up with the changes. I like that. And I like that I can still run my favorite old programs: Since I do all I can with plain text, my most heavily used program is my favorite text editor KEDIT. And I really like hierarchical file systems so really REALLY like Microsoft's NTFS (new technology file system) and do a lot of tree walking, searching, copying, deleting, etc.
But Microsoft went for an unstated philosophy of a graphical user interface (GUI) where (a) there is a metaphor of direct manipulation of desktop objects and (b) commands and operations are to be learned by experimentation without documentation. I can see some utility there, otherwise I still like command lines because the documentation tends to be better, it is more clear just what is going on, and I can script, automate some of the operations.
And I get to write software, e.g., in .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET for my Web site startup and whatever else seems worthwhile. So far, I like .NET. I do wish Microsoft had explained, just explained in simple text, just what the heck .NET CORE was. By now I've come to a guess that .NET CORE is irrelevant to me and I should f'get about it -- would have been nice to have had some EXPLANATION.
For the future of GUIs, that seems to be just Web pages, i.e., HTML.
For me, the above is the view of Windows I find most important. For the future, I hope that Microsoft does not mess up that view. To have me a happier customer, Microsoft should concentrate on one word, DOCUMENTATION.
I can understand that Microsoft has some middle managers who want to add things to Windows or change Windows to improve it. Now, for changes such as I mentioned above, SURE. Otherwise, please sit down: Each new version of Windows I find to be, in one word, a pain. The changes are not improvements but PAINS. E.g., with the old version of Windows, after hundreds of hours of work I finally learned and documented for myself how to get routine things done. Then with the changes, I have to invest many more hours just to be able to continue to get routine things done and for no gains at all. Sorry Microsoft middle manager: To me you are like TV producers, what they try for, I don't like; what I like, they don't try for.
E.g., as far as I can tell from a command line window
Examples:
> runas /noprofile /user:mymachine\administrator cmd
is wrong. Just wrong. It doesn't work. First, set aside that from this "example" can't tell what is a constant and what is a variable. So, try all possible combinations. Second, still, nothing works. Nothing. Go for 1, 2, 3 hours trying everything. Did I mention, nothing works? This is grotesquely bad computing. Just awful. Want to make things better, fix things like that.
But it's worse: Go out on the Internet and can find lots of documentation of that command. Some of the documentation has lots of double quote marks. Nothing worked. Hours; nothing worked. We're talking mud wrestling here. Eventually I got the software to request my administrator password, but that was as far as it went.
This isn't my work. Yet my time, effort, energy are soaked up, repeatedly, over and over, by such system management mud wrestling documentation problems.
Eventually I guessed some of what was going on and found another path that did work. It's not fully clear just why that worked, but it did.
Documentation? I took some good notes, and apparently they are better than anything from Microsoft or readily available on the Internet.
The main bottleneck in my startup is the bad documentation that leads to wasted effort in this mud wrestling. What fraction of my effort goes to such stuff? Essentially 100% -- I can't get back to my real work due to a continuing list of such disasters. They are taking up ALL my time, just mud wrestling from bad documentation.
For Windows, Firefox, Acrobat, etc., sure, important security updates and otherwise I'll consider updates in functionality maybe twice a year, maybe once a year, or once each 2nd year. Except for security, bluntly and quite broadly I don't want your updates but will consider some, say, occasionally. As you force updates on me, I get TORQUED, become a VERY unhappy customer.
E.g., Adobe went too far, essentially taking over my PC, at startup, with updates I don't want, with popups, with "Do you want to ...", and yesterday I deleted everything from Adobe now "Dead to me.". Firefox will read a PDF (portable document format) file, at least the ones I want read, a little better than Acrobat. Adobe, with me, you went too far and BLEW IT.
I have big hopes for the future of computing for myself, Microsoft, the computer industry, the economy, and civilization, but I want do to my part, get on with it, and there is no room in that work for me to click "NO" tens of thousands of times to popup windows stopping my work until I answer some "Do you want to ...", and there is no excuse for the system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.
At one time Microsoft was very interested in "developers, developers, developers!!!". Well, I'm trying to be one. Then I hope to be a good customer for Windows Server and SQL Server. And on Windows XP and Windows 7 I got 100,000 lines of .NET code running apparently as intended. But now I've lost YEARS of time in system management mud wrestling from bad documentation.
I can't be a good customer of Windows Server if you have me stuck in a mud hole wasting time.