What I Think About 2014 And 2015

As an ASP.NET and C# developer, when meeting developers working in other ecosystems (like Ruby or PHP), the first thing we often envy is their freedom of tools.

They can choose any IDE they want. For instance, they can write PHP code in Sublime Text and debug it seamlessly. Fortunately, many of these gaps between us are being bridged by Microsoft's upcoming releases.

Now, we can write C# code in Sublime Text using OmniSharp, although the experience is not yet as full-featured as Visual Studio.

In 2014, I didn't submit too many bug reports to connect.microsoft.com; I think that platform needs to be retired. It feels like an outdated system that requires too much effort to work with.

Many bugs that I submitted in 2014 were closed without any detailed feedback. When I asked about the resolution, I simply received a response stating that it had been fixed.

A bug report that has been open for 15 or 30 days is suddenly closed with no prior notification. This kind of experience can be discouraging for people who spend their time finding bugs to improve software stability and suggesting workflow enhancements.

Open-source communities like Firefox take bug reports very seriously. For example, reporting issues to Firefox is a much better experience than to Visual Studio. At least a dozen community members, many of whom don't even work for Mozilla directly, jump in to help. On connect.microsoft.com, however, it feels like dealing with a slow government department where nobody seems to care.

When Microsoft released the Community edition of Visual Studio 2013, I wanted to write a post highlighting how the Express version was missing many critical features for web developers. When they finally launched the Community edition, all I wanted to say was, "Thank you for that!"

Last year, Microsoft open-sourced the .NET Framework. Reflecting on it, I didn't get enough time to experiment with all the exciting things released in 2014. In 2015, I hope to become more active in the ASP.NET MVC community.

Recently, I heard that Microsoft is planning to retire Internet Explorer. I am not surprised, as troubleshooting for IE is mostly a waste of time for web developers. I've heard of projects getting delayed solely due to IE compatibility issues.

Two years ago, I wrote this post and received a significant amount of traffic just for addressing a single broken feature in IE.

IE has had two main impacts on a web developer's life. On one hand, it creates work opportunities if you have the specialized skill to troubleshoot it; on the other hand, it is incredibly frustrating when it prevents websites from rendering correctly.

Regardless, I hope Microsoft's future solutions will handle this much better.

Two years ago, I bought a Lumia 520 Windows Phone 8, and it did not perform as well as I had expected. While the hardware was decent, the software felt severely lacking, and I disliked many aspects of it. Recently, I read on a blog that users might be able to run Android apps on Windows Phones in the future. If that actually happens, it could be a game-changer for the Windows Phone platform.

http://www.bluestacks.com/ has done it already for Windows OS. If it comes to the Windows Phone platform, that would be amazing.

A few days ago, GitHub was briefly blocked in India due to concerns over hosting extremist content. Fortunately, the government has since unblocked the site. Such temporary blocks ultimately have little impact because when a service is essential, the community will naturally voice their protest.

I have been reading that in the future, everything will be packaged and modularized. The .NET framework used for desktop development will be separate from the one used for web applications. That sounds like a very cool approach.

Another exciting development is Project Spartan, Microsoft's rumored new browser. I'm curious to see how they will handle bug reports for it. Personally, I am always on the lookout for bugs in any application I use. While finding bugs might not sound like the most glamorous hobby, it plays a vital role in making software better.

It looks like Visual Studio 2015 and Windows 10 are slated to launch this year. Since almost all details are already leaked or shared online, there are very few surprises left, as everyone has some prior knowledge about them.

My primary goal for 2015 is to focus on ASP.NET development, improve my skills, and boost my productivity. Since Visual Studio Community 2015 will be completely free, I look forward to filing even more bugs on connect.microsoft.com. It is a peculiar hobby of mine, but I really enjoy it!

I hope this year will be wonderful for everyone.

Happy coding in 2015!

Wishing you all a very happy New Year!

Don't worry, I know today is already January 3rd and I'm a bit late in posting this. No problem!