Even developers who are 100 percent committed to the Microsoft platform are complaining that its inherent weaknesses are killing them.
There"s a love-in coming to California next week, but it won"t be grooving along in San Francisco"s Haight-Ashbury district. Instead, it"ll be headquartered in a boxy convention center in downtown Los Angeles. The event will be Microsoft"s Professional Developers Conference, where thousands of programmers who create Windows applications and drivers will schmooze, share tips and learn what changes the software company is planning for its next major Windows operating system release. That, of course, will be "Longhorn," which will ship sometime in 2005 or 2006.
Attendees are expecting to receive a CD-ROM containing an early, prebeta release of the graphical operating system, plus previews of new SQL Server and Visual Studio technology and other stuff. But love is a complex emotion, and there are signs that the ties that bind Microsoft and its developer community are undergoing strain. Even developers who are 100 percent committed to the Microsoft platform are complaining that its inherent weaknesses are killing them—and the enterprises that use the applications the developers create.