I know I should resist this bizarre discussion around 101 reasons why Java (or .NET, or animal crackers, or fudge) is better (or worse) than something else... However I did come across one comment that I really wanted to defend:

"Want to see what I mean? Go visit GotDotNet sometime if you haven't already been there. It's the grassroots community website that Microsoft put up to support .NET just in case there wasn't any grassroots community who actually wanted to do it. Or maybe just in case there was and they couldn't control it." -- John Munsch

Found this quote from Carlos' site.

I know the people that started GotDotNet. I have an opinion as to why we started it (I can only say my opinion, as I'm sure there were lots of reasons that I wasn't privy to). It had nothing to do with fear that there would be no community for .NET - at the time there was already huge community support. I believe that GotDotNet was a way for the product teams (like the "ASP.NET", "Windows Forms", and "C#" teams) to directly be able to engage with their customers.

The ASP.NET team started a lot of this when they began working hard to engage directly with the community. Microsoft has long been critized that we don't work enough with communities, and we are trying to fix that. The reality is that Microsoft is a large corporation. They are a lot of smaller companies trying to do the right thing. The MSDN team (who own the "official" developer portal for Microsoft) has been trying to provide a more "welcoming" experience.

GotDotNet, ASP.NET, and WindowsForms.NET our places that Microsoft tries to work with the community. In addition to these destination sites I believe they spend a huge amount of time on third party sites, newsgroups, and public mailing lists. My hats off to Sara and her team that created GotDotNet!

Oh well, I know that I shouldn't let myself get dragged down into this...

Note Per my disclaimer this is only my opinion, please don't take this as anything more than my own ramblings...

6:58:49 PM    comment []