Ok, deliberately provocative title but I was reading Rob Conery's blog and stumbled across this comment to a recent screencast he put out:
@robconery: you owe the .net community an apology
To be honest, my first reaction was 'what a xxxx'...but that's unprofessional and I couldn't possibly say something like that. So, what was Rob's crime that this individual thought he should apologize for? He hasn't mastered TDD...now Rob dealt with the criticism very politely and elegantly (far better than this Scottish hothead would have). As I commented on his blog I had planned to post some screencasts here which showed my process of learning some of our technologies...this has really put me off the idea.
Here's a scoop, no-one (with the exception of Scott Guthrie and Bill Gates) at Microsoft knows everything...we actually have to learn stuff just like everyone else.
I've been dealing with this a little myself recently working with some of our recent releases, everyone learns stuff and unless we say 'this is definitive' or it's a 'final release' (in my case), expect mistakes! Constructive feedback is the reason for our two most recent releases , it's also the reason they're on non-traditional release platforms (Codeplex and Code Gallery)...they aren't final releases...we know there's mistakes in there (and frankly we can't absolutely guarantee they won't destroy your machine) and we want you to help us find them so we can improve things.
One big thing I've learnt on this team is that we don't think we're perfect...we live and die by our community...it's why we spend so much time talking to you and putting out these releases (believe me, it's much easier just to sit back and hope everything is OK when we release it!). We fret over everything we do to make things better for you and we take feedback seriously, but at least be civil!