Why does the MS platform get in the way of how I develop?

From AgileOpenNorthwest

Uber message: It's not enough to say something is possible, make it easier, remove all the friction.

Contents 1 CLR / compiler 2 VS Solution / Project system 3 Sql Server Management Studio 4 Source control 5 IDE productivity 6 Extensibility 7 Misc

CLR / compiler

• Support CLR (not SL) in OSX
• Reuse .NET dlls on any runtime as long as referencing cross compat subset.
• Enable mockability of all types (not == unsealing everything)
• Immutable types
• Haskell Type Classes - i.e. assigning interfaces dynamically.
• Meta programming.
• Compiler as service wanted badly.

VS Solution / Project system

• Allow VS 2010 solutions to be saved as 2008 (if targetting 3.5)
• Allow VS 2008 solutions to be opened in 2010 and stay as 2008....including modifications.
• Really hard to develop cross-platform applications. VS should be smart and I should not have to embed 10000 conditionally compiled #IF statements.

Sql Server Management Studio

• SSMS needs to decide if it's a Solution/Project tool or just a tool to run SQL scripts. As it is the Solution/Project stuff is poor. Dtsx package editing is much easier in Visual Studio -- which seems completely backward.

Source control

• Source control integration sucks. We need an overhaul that meets today's needs
• Source control integration should be based on languages not files, i.e. checking in a method, diff a method, the mental model is about code.
• I like distributed version control, Microsoft only supports the SCM model of 20 years ago.
• I'd like to be able to use TFS for project management without using TFS for SCM. It's not getting to be a world class SCM very quickly. I suspect it never will get there at the rate it's going.
• Ability to check out files from TFS and have the local file date be the checkin date of the file. The date I got the file is meaningless, I only care about the date that the file was checked in.
• TFS is the slowest (of 4) source controls I've used in the past 5 years. It might be a tie with VSS.
• Give me a supported stand alone client for TFS. I'd like to be able to share files that are in source with people in my org without having to email them!!

IDE productivity

• Speed is part of value, if it's slow I won't use it no matter how "cool" it is.
• Developer Productivity (R# type, not Drag and Drop)
• Macro recorder sucks - too slow
• Want intelligent shortcuts in the IDE, see R# for more.
• Better filtering and searching throughout the IDE, most importantly in the settings screens.
• Local versioning of source / project files in the IDE (not source control)
• Make debugging release binaries easier - Have an option to embed / automatically download source.

Extensibility

• Scripting for Extensibility
• VS, LET ME USE MY TOOLS!
• VS be an enabler for others like Jet Brains, rather than doing crappy imitations
• VS needs to be much more pluggable/extensible and ship features / add-ons out-of-band. Eclipse does a great job of this, Microsoft sucks at it.

Misc

• Scriptability of the codedom
• More opennness in how platform solutions are developed like MVC.
• Shorter release cycles.
• C# Script.