Microsoft\u2019s Professional Developers Conference has long been a key event in the company\u2019s calendar. CEO Steve Ballmer and his colleagues are famous for their belief that developers make or break a platform, and PDC is where the most committed of those developers learn as much as Microsoft is willing to share of its long-term plans. There have been good \u2013 for example, 2000 C# and .NET launch, 2008 Windows 7 – and bad \u2013 for example, 2001 Hailstorm, 2003 Longhorn – PDCs but they have all been interesting, at least the ones I have attended.<\/p>\n
So how was PDC 2009? While there was a ton of good content there, and an impressive launch for Silverlight 4, there was a noticeable lack of direction; maybe that was why Ballmer decided not to show up. It should have been the Windows Azure PDC, but as I have just written elsewhere, Microsoft has little excitement about its cloud<\/a>. Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie gave almost exactly the same keynote this year that he gave last year; and the body language, as it were, is more about avoiding the cloud than embracing it. Cross-platform clients, commodity pricing, throw away your servers: from Microsoft\u2019s point of view, what\u2019s not to hate?<\/p>\n In theory, mobile computing could have been another big story at the PDC, but Microsoft\u2019s slow progress in Mobile is well known.<\/p>\n My instinct is that Microsoft needs to change but does not know how: the wheels continue to turn and we will get new versions of Windows, ever more complex<\/a> iterations of Windows Server, Exchange, SharePoint, and feature after feature added to Microsoft Office \u2013 does it really need to become PhotoShop<\/a> \u2013 but in the end this is more of the same.<\/p>\n The mitigating factors are the high quality of Windows 7, which will drive a lot of new PC sales for a quarter or two, and the strong products coming out of the developer division. Visual Studio 2010 plus Silverlight is an interesting platform, and ASP.NET MVC is in my opinion a big advance from Web Forms<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not enough though; and we still await a convincing strategic discussion of how Microsoft intends to flourish in the next decade.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s Professional Developers Conference has long been a key event in the company\u2019s calendar. CEO Steve Ballmer and his colleagues are famous for their belief that developers make or break a platform, and PDC is where the most committed of those developers learn as much as Microsoft is willing to share of its long-term plans. … Continue reading Reflections on Microsoft PDC 2009<\/span>