It’s a real shame how complicated Microsoft makes certain things…
If you have the problem with VS.NET 2003 disappearing while compiling your app, you may not know that Microsoft has a hotfix for it. Unfortunately, you cannot just get the hotfix. You have to submit a support request, pay your money, get the hotfix, and then get your money back.
They say the hotfix isn’t fully regression tested – well, okay, that’s certainly a concern, but if you install it and all your stuff turns turtle, just uninstall it and you’re back where you were. It wouldn’t be too hard to have a seperate screen that shows up when trying to download it that makes you type something like "I AGREE" to a warning and disclaimer. Total lost time, a few minutes.
Instead, you have a multi day process just to make your tool work the way it’s supposed to.
Heck, I can even understand having a hotfix being hard to get if it’s for something like Windows or Active Directory, because some yahoo who doesn’t know what they’re doing can apply it when it isn’t relevant – but this one, and another one that I had to obtain the same way, are for *big* projects. Joe Schmoe developer who is using a buddy’s stolen copy of VB.NET 2003 isn’t going to create a 100,000+ LOC project in his spare time and need these patches. Professional developers need them, and should be able to get them easliy.
I wish I had cornered Paul Vick at the PDC to get an explanation for why this works the way it works.
Can someone in Microsoft give us a clear explanation why several critical hotfixes for VS.NET are held hostage like this? It isn’t because MS is making money off of the support requests – they will refund the submitted amount.
It just reeks of a process that wasn’t thought through.
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