The Golden Age of Software Development

There's a lot of negativity sometimes in our profession, just take a look in your Twitter stream.

The tools we use aren't absolutely 100% without imperfection; the vendors of the tools we use don't always go in the direction we want them to; and sometimes the things we invest time in learning go away and it's beyond our control.

We are change

It's amazing to me how many developers seem to hate Windows 8, even to the point of wanting to install start button replacement tools. And that's ok, it’s a personal choice. For me, Windows 8 is the best operating system I've ever used. Another example was the "Visual Studio menus are shouting at me!", for the record I didn't "fix" this "problem" as it didn't bother me. But I know some developers who really hated it.

Perhaps because we are agents of change, we don't like not being in control of change.

I think we're living in a golden age of software development

We have amazing (if imperfect) tools, Visual Studio is great and we have some awesome open source libraries that are super easy to install via NuGet.

Between my Windows Phone and Windows Store apps I've had almost 28,000 downloads. More than downloads though, that's 28,000 people’s lives that I've touched, even if it’s in a small way.

I can have an idea, and within an hour have a prototype running on my touch screen Lumia phone, or my SurfaceRT tablet. This is amazing, really it is, and I take it for granted sometimes.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't highlight problems or disagree with the strategies of our tools vendors. When we do, we can drop f-bombs and call "them" idiots and create more negativity in our profession; or we can call things out with respect and with hope for the future.

It's our community, we get to decide how it feels...

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Comments (2) -

  • Lee

    10/25/2013 5:13:05 PM | Reply

    Hi Jason,

    I share your positive viewpoint on the current state of software development. The ability to devise, design and develop an idea from start to finish in an increasingly fast manner as development tools and frameworks are born and mature is allowing innovation at an increasingly rapid pace. There has never been a better time to be a Windows app developer.

    I also share your perplexion over the disproportionate uproar that seems to follow seemingly minor changes in the development world. The best developers wont waste precious time and energy spouting hate about insignificant things changed, they get over it and adapt. Unfortunately the world is full of antagonists and some of then also happen to be developers.

    I am glad to see the increasing use of product websites where developers can vote for features they want in future releases. I remember voting for a load of features in Windows Phone 7 that were recently implemented in Windows Phone 8.1. This is the ideal place for product feedback. I like you am not sure what publicly denouncing and abusing things with inappropriate language on Twitter achieves.

    With continued hard work and innovative ideas in the fertile land of Windows app development I hope to one day be able to boast download figures for my apps similar to (or greater than) yours Smile

    -- Lee

  • Jason

    10/25/2013 8:19:20 PM | Reply

    Cheers Lee - good luck with your apps!

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