Elementary, my dear Watson

<rant> I don’t know about any other .NET developer out there, but I’m finding the current speculation with regards to what’s going to happen with vNext of the .NET developer tool stack to be totally frustrating to say the least.  This is causing so much angst and damage in the .NET developer community.  The uncertainty about what’s going to happen with technology stacks like SL, WPF etc. and the unwillingness of MS to be open about their future is killing a lot of momentum and goodwill and just adding more fuel onto the “oh-what-is-MS-up-to-now-again” discussions.  Yes, I know, all will become crystal clear at the BUILD conference somewhere in September, but why didn’t MS keep quiet until then?  Figure out what you want to do with the different technology stacks, restructure and get enough prototyping done BEFORE starting to communicate to the developer community.  Why even mention something like “HTML 5 and JavaScript is the way to go” with the first demo preview of Windows 8.  Surely MS should have expected the reaction by developers wanting to know what the future holds for the other technology stacks?  Anyway, I hope MS gets this right and that v1 of the next, seemingly consolidated UX platform, does not set us back another 2/3 years in waiting for it to become a really usable technology stack. </rant>

So until BUILD in September we are left to act as Sherlock Holmes – looking at information surfacing via leaked e-mails and other blog posts.  Alternatively we can just let it be and hope that everything will indeed fall together in a big “ah-hah moment” come September.  I just hope that an already fatigued .NET developer community will have enough energy left to buy into whatever MS is going to preach next and that it will be “Elementary, my dear Watson.  Elementary indeed.”  Time to get some rest before September then