Browse posts by category: "commentary" below.
The great benefit of Microsoft's new development direction transparency is that it reduces the probability of real lemons (i.e. products that no one wants) since there is very early feedback.
Check out the new functionality in the Java "Tiger" release. Looks like the major .NET languages and Java language oriented functionality are going to be walking lockstep for the forseeable future.
Microsoft just made available Beta-1 of the Visual Studio Express range of software developer tools. For some reason the C++ guy in particular made me think of the marketing/web people that created...
Thought I may as well weigh in on Joel Spolsky's post on How Microsoft Lost the API War. It's a great read but I think that Joel is way off on his thoughts on .NET.