Developer Focus

Chris Brumme posts this
interesting piece. My favorite quote:

In V1, ASP.NET hit
a home run by focusing like a laser beam on the developer experience.  Everyone
put so much effort into building apps, questioning why each step was necessary, and
refining the process.  It's great to see that they continue to follow that same
discipline.  In the drill-down sessions, over and over again I saw that focus
resulting in a near perfect experience for developers.  There
are some other teams, like Avalon, that seem to have a similar religion and are obtaining
similar results.  (Though Avalon desperately
needs some tools support.  Notepad is
fine for authoring XAML in demos, but I wouldn't want to build a real application
this way).

This
really reinforces what I've been learning over the last year, as the amount of "real
code" I've been writing has skyrocketed from my previous mostly-research-and-sample-code
lifestyle. API design is tough, but when you get it right, it makes a world of difference. Don talks
about this on MSDN
TV, where he speaks at some length about the value and danger of abstractions.
It's one of the main reasons I have hope for Indigo. And it's one of the main reasons
that I worry about WinFS: if the API anything like the ADSI model (or the OLEDB model),
forget it: no one will ever use it. Those that do will hate it. But I've looked
at neither in depth, so this jury is still out.