I read Geoff’s response to this post, and then I read Bill’s. Geoff makes a valid point about some of the demands being a little over the top, but I think the general trust of the petition (as Bill’s comment underlines) is valid.
Basically I think its a hopeless case, but its a chance for Microsoft to see that THEIR developer community is unhappy about something that is causing them alot of pain.
Do I think Microsoft shouldn’t have released VB.NET and instead done a true VB7? No – I think Microsoft needed to bring a language to the CLR that looked somewhat like Basic in order to encourage people from that pool of developers to migrate over.
And I think everyone who could did but there is a remainder (it might be a pretty big remainder too) that for whatever reason couldn’t make the shift easily – I’d say the biggest one of those being an existing code base which delivers a lot of value and needs to be maintained and SLOWLY ported over to .NET.
Personally however, I don’t buy the skills argument. When I got into this industry I knew that I would need to adapt quickly – in fact I think the job chose me because I could, alot of this stuff just comes naturally. If you are a developer and you are complaining about the relentless evolution (and sometimes revolution) of technology because you are worried about you skills being obsoleted – you are in for a lifetime of pain because it ain’t going to stop any time soon (hey Bill – maybe I’m not such a nice guy after all).
Anyway – I’ve signed the petition.