Microsoft lags in antitrust compliance, U.S. says

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M$ documentation, NOT!

I have been a software developer for over 20 years. Early on MS
had the best development tools and documentation on the
market. I still use the MS C 5.0 library reference on my desk.
Today that is no longer true.

I can go to most any document MS has and find it is at the very
least incomplete. It is often totally wrong and many times the
information that was once there, is no longer provided. Take for
example their Themes API. Gone. Want to see something wrong
and missleading. Look at how to install fonts. They still have
API's for installing bitmap fonts, that did even work 15 years
ago. I guess as developers we have gotten use to this crap. We
can not get answers from MS, so we try and try again until we
make it work. And that is the only reason products get made for
the MS platform. Trouble is, then they change something, break
our products and we have to try and try again. I bet we spend
1/4 of our total development time, just keeping our stuff
running on Windows. But this is not the only problem the small
developer has to face. How about getting your product
installed. MS can over-ride administrative rights, they don't
have to have someone log in as admin to install software. Not
so for the small guy. How about developing for a proven cross
platform, Like netscape plug-ins, and then having MS pull
support for what they call "Security issues". Then we have to
switch to Active-X which is by far, a greater security issue and is
not cross-platform.

No MS does not play fair. And the real question:
Is their documentation bad because they just suck at writing
code and documentation, or because they do it on purpose. I
suspect it is a bit of both, but it works for them!

Posted by: LittleGuy   Posted on: 01/24/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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