Peter Seale's weblog

Sunday, July 13, 2008 4:50:49 AM UTC 

Ok, so I'm burned out.

I realized this while digging through my queue of SharePoint-related blog posts. I wasn't reading all the technical bits (which is normal), but I realized I didn't even want to know what any of the blog posts were about. This antipathy is new.

But I'm not writing here, today, just to tell you I'm burned out. I'm going to hit a few topics and hopefully draw them all together at the end. Maybe by the end we'll figure out why I'm so burned out. Let's do this.

Do you have time to learn everything?

I came across a post (via DotNetKicks) asking if we have enough time to learn everything in the Microsoft stack. It's an interesting question, and always leads to good conversation. "How do you keep up?" is a fun question to ask.

Unfortunately the author, in what has to be a misguided set of priorities, has chosen to devote all his learning efforts to LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework. Which is a ridiculously bad idea. Don't worry, I told him the same thing in the comments, I'm not just sniping from afar.

What bugs me about this idea is that it's almost the exact opposite of my learning priorities. LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework are almost dead last on my list—how did he end up choosing these two volatile technologies over everything else?

Think about that for a second. How did he arrive at the misguided conclusion that learning these two things was a good idea?

If you're interested in my specific critiques, they're all in my comment on his page; I won't repost them here.

When doing research, always consider the source

I also came across a discussion started by Andrew Connell on how CMSWatch is biased against SharePoint.

If you're unaware, CMSWatch is a site that sells a $1450 SharePoint report that critiques SharePoint in a variety of categories, as well as provides advice. Andrew Connell is an MVP and is a known authority on SharePoint WCM and developer topics.

AC's point was that not only is CMSWatch biased, but they've also caused him extra trouble in the past—he explained that he had to 'clean up' after them—where he has had to expend extra effort convincing clients that SharePoint can properly do WCM. People who haven't been 'poisoned' by CMSWatch don't require this extra effort.

My comment to him (poorly worded and not in total disagreement) is that I'd rather have CMSWatch and their criticisms of SharePoint than not—I'd rather "clean up" by convincing clients that SharePoint can work, rather than "clean up" by convincing clients that SharePoint isn't the 'everything solution.'

I'm not here to weigh in on the actual discussion of whether CMSWatch is biased or not; I don't know, I haven't seen the report. I will say that this summary written by one of the principals is unfair (go see the 'Ugly' section), but for the most part I'll stay out of it. I don't know.

Instead, the question is: why do I encounter SharePoint overexuberance more often than SharePoint skepticism?

Oren Eine at the Future of .NET Panel on DotNetRocks

A while ago I listened to a podcast, probably my favorite DotNetRocks episode of all time: DotNetRocks Show #346: The Future of .NET Panel. Even if you're totally bored by me, go check out the site and download the podcast, it's a fascinating (and you'll be happy to hear, civil :) ) discussion of .NET development in general.

The thing that really got me going is at ~1:06:00 into the podcast, when Oren Eine describes a challenged deployment of MS CRM customizations:

Question here: why did Oren's story strike such a chord with me? He wasn't talking about SharePoint at all!

Do Less. Get More. Develop On SharePoint. - www.mssharepointdeveloper.com

Also launched sometime recently is the SharePoint Developer introduction for .NET developers. Instead of writing, I'll express myself by defacing a screenshot of the front page of the site:

The question for you, dear reader, is why am I so virulently opposed to including Silverlight in the list above? It's the future, right?

And what's the deal with the Entity Framework vote of no confidence?

This is way too big a topic to cover properly; I'll just assume you know what I'm talking about and skip straight to my leading question.

Why does anyone care if the Entity Framework is released as-is or not? What difference does it make to them; they can just use something else to do data access! Why can't they just live and let live?

"SharePoint is a guild", by Tony Byrne

I also recently attended a presentation by Tony Byrne (from CMSWatch, yes, see section above). I've covered the session in more detail here, if you're interested; the quick summary is that he was providing a quick critical review of SharePoint, a sort of summary of their report. One statement that caught my attention was that he likened SharePoint to a guild. I don't recommend you take this metaphor too far, I'm not a medieval scholar and I don't think he is either—but the idea is that there are a select chosen few who are in the "guild" and have collected secret, arcane knowledge. Those outside the "guild" are not privy to the same knowledge and benefits of those in the "guild".

We could have a very long and unproductive conversation about this, there's several ways to go with it. But why does this crazy idea of a SharePoint "guild" have any merit at all?

Ok, let's pull all this together

We've wandered far and wide today. We've talked about some random guy's technical learning queue; we've discussed the impartiality of CMSWatch; we've heard a story of a painful MS CRM deployment; I've defaced a screenshot; we've approached the topic of the Entity Framework before running away; and finally, we've talked about medieval guilds.

Where does all this relate again?

Ok, I'll try to boil this down. [re-reading the section below, it appears that I failed to 'boil it down'. Too bad; we're stuck with it. -ed]

Overexuberance, belief that improvement is inevitable

What I experience on a regular basis is an overexuberance, a faith in the current crop of Microsoft's technology, as well as the common belief that future improvements are inevitable. In reality, however, no technology is perfect, and many improvements perceived as inevitabilities will not materialize.

Some of this overexuberance is the result of aggressive marketing. But I'm starting to realize as well—we're duping ourselves. We don't even need marketing to tell us that, say, Silverlight is going to be 'the best development toolset provided for the web'—no need for marketing, we'll do that all by ourselves!

We believe that SharePoint's WCM featureset will improve, without any evidence or indication from Microsoft that this is the case! Will SharePoint 14's HTML be accessible out of the box? Are you sure about that? Who told you that? No one?

Learning investments with limited time

What seems to be completely ignored by Microsoft is the hidden cost of learning—for each technology or framework or product released, there's an associated cost. Learning is the number one cost of introducing any new technology!

So why is it then, if our attention is so valuable, that when we are presented with the foundations of SharePoint development, we see Silverlight in the list? Not only is Silverlight completely useless to me for SharePoint development today, 2008-07-12 (note I timestamped this assertion), but it's probably actively worse than the competing technologies (which are some combination of InfoPath, HTML, and/or something "not in SharePoint at all")? Microsoft, instead of attempting to ease my learning burden, sneaked in the additional burden of Silverlight…which is useless!

Now hey, I hear what you're saying: so what if they threw a little marketing in there? You can just ignore it, right?  I can. You can. But what about the guy who has heard about this "SharePoint" stuff, and has also seen something about "Silverlight", and hey, look at the website! It says you can make these two things work together! Sounds easy!

Now fast forward a bit. When this poor guy can't deliver, whose fault is it? Sure it's his fault, somewhat. But is it his fault he was distracted for 3 weeks trying to get his Silverlight applet working in a SharePoint farm?

So is this why everyone's so excitable about the Entity Framework? Because it will make their jobs harder in the years to come—not easier?

Now let's hop back to SharePoint's WCM again, but this time, in the context of learning. If you installed the product sometime in 2007 and discovered a) emitted HTML was not accessible, b) branding was difficult, c) content deployment jobs failed often (hopefully you catch this one before go-live!), then were you supposed to think? Sure, if you knew all the right things, you could work around the problem. But what if you didn't? Is it your fault you can't deliver? If Andrew Connell, MVP, can do it, why can't you? If hawaiianair.com (which as I understand does not use MOSS's WCM features) looks so cool, why can't you brand your portal as successfully?

…Oops, sorry, I kind of drifted off while you were talking there, I was reading an article about how to AJAX-enable my web parts. It says here that I can throw in an UpdatePanel in two minutes! What could go wrong?

And the capper. What kind of crazy world do we live in, where someone is encouraged to learn the most volatile and transient technologies over fundamentals! His post had 11 kicks on DotNetKicks; 11 people agreed with him? He's not alone in his opinions?

So I'm burned out

I'm going to go on an "information diet," for as long as I can hold out; I'll be fine, I've been through this before. No technical learning outside of work, outside of my immediate duties. Shut down the Google Reader, close the book, hide the laptop at home. Not a problem, I'll make it back refreshed.

But if I can summarize my ranting above, it is:

Overexuberance in the current crop of technologies, along with faith in unproven, possibly actively unhelpful or worse future frameworks, makes my job harder, today.

Microsoft's strategy of releasing frameworks at an overwhelming rate has left every Microsoft developer overburdened with technical learning. Microsoft (and we ourselves!) worsen this problem by pushing new, unproven, possibly useless-out-of-the-gate technologies on ourselves, before they are even ready—and this will make my job increasingly harder for the forseeable future.

Aside: Houston ALT.NET 'geek dinner' at Star Pizza 6PM on Monday, July 14th

If you made it this far, then maybe you'll be interested in attending the ALT.NET informal gathering this Monday, July 14th, at 6PM at Star Pizza.

And as always, the "sweet place to hang out" is on the houstonaltdotnet mailing list; all the cool kids are subscribed.