Design Patterns: Making C++ Suck Less

...the Design Patterns book, even according to one of the authors (Vlissides), should have been called Making C++ Suck Less.

- Josh Holmes paraphrasing Neal Ford

Freebase Parallax

SharePoint is the Future of Microsoft-centric Software Development

Believe me, I hate this idea, and I resisted it for a long time, but it's now crystal-clear to me.

You'll have to bear with me. This is one of those "big ideas" that I have a hard time explaining; it's mostly intuition right now.

News Flash: ASP.NET is Dead

ASP.NET will continue to exist only in the sense that it's the platform Microsoft uses to build SharePoint, and for SharePoint extensibility purposes.

Now, there's a lot of hoopla surrounding Microsoft's new ASP.NET MVC framework, which is very impressive. There's no denying that the MVC pattern is the future (and perhaps present) of web development. So expect future versions of SharePoint to be MVC-based.

It's All About the Niches, Bitches

In order for something, anything, to survive, it must occupy a niche, which represents the unique advantage it offers over competitors.

SharePoint is already coming to dominate the "enterprise niche" among companies that are invested in Microsoft technologies.  ASP.NET, on its own, has no future in this niche.  This leaves ASP.NET to fight on its own against other web frameworks that exist in the niche that serves applications that are non-enterprise-related.  Unfortunately for ASP.NET developers (like me!), Ruby on Rails and its kin are superior to ASP.NET in this niche. If you're a developer on the Microsoft platform, but you're not interested in SharePoint, be prepared for a bumpy ride as your opportunities dwindle.  Note: this process may take years, as the clueless become clueful, and market forces start to do their thing (as they always do). But it's coming, believe me.

Silverlight + Web Parts = Crazy Delicious?

Another rising star in the Microsoft dev world is Silverlight, which is very promising as a way to embed "islands of richness" in web pages.  If you're a SharePoint developer, you probably know islands of richness by another name: "web parts." SharePoint, web parts, and Silverlight are a match made in heaven (or perhaps hell).  If you're an aspiring Silverlight developer, you too will live in SharePoint World.

SharePoint is the New Windows

Microsoft is hooking everything into SharePoint. Every new product they put out is designed with SharePoint integration in mind. SharePoint is essentially becoming Microsoft's next OS.  If you're someone out there developing some sort of commercial .NET-based product, you had better start thinking about your SharePoint integration strategy (if you're not already) or you'll be left behind.

Yeah, but What About WinForms & WPF?

Are you serious? They're so irrelevant, they're not even worth discussing. The Web won. Get over it.  They're marginal players at best.

Turn My Argument into Swiss Cheese

If you're not buying my story, I'd encourage you to poke holes in it from the comments (or from your own blog).  I honestly hope I'm wrong about all this, but my intuition has a pretty solid track record.

Zed on Feed Readers

Now, I’m sure tons of people will scoff at the idea of not having graphics in their feed. They’ve gotta have that curvy candy coated interface with the flash video about Steampunk Buttplugs posted by BoingBoing blaring right in their fucking face or else they don’t feel alive.

I laughed harder than I had in several weeks when I read that.