There was a new guy at the local Vermont .NET User's Group meeting on Monday night. He mentioned his name, but I forgot. (If you're reading this, Friend, I'm talking about someone else....)
Sam Gentile gave us a taste of Indigo at the end of his presentation and answered the question most of us had: How do we approach our .NET 1.1 and 2.0 data architecture to facilitate the transition to Indigo? (Answer: Focus on a Web Service orientation, use WSE 3.0 since it's binary compatible with Indigo, and don't use Remoting in any new projects.) Not mentioned, but what I took away was the need to maintain good separation between the business and data layers, isolating data access as much as possible for a future Indigo re-fit.
So this new guy raises his hand in front of God and everybody and says something like, "Doesn't Microsoft appreciate who their customers are? I mean, I'm writing applications in VB to emulate dumb terminals. I begged my boss to give me a .NET project--which I still haven't gotten. But here I am, still waiting to make the transition to .NET, and Microsoft is radically changing everything with Indigo!"
Everyone was a bit stunned. Sam said he didn't understand the question. Then when the guy repeated his question Sam--with great self-restraint, I think--asked the guy if he was asking for a new job. Then Julie Lerman diffused the incident, in her usual [gave-me-a-cavity-from-just-listening] sweetness, saying something like, "Oh, it's like that for all of us sometimes. Really!"
I don't know. God loves us all equally, and each of us are special in our own way, but this guy is a Fucking Idiot. He complains in a .NET User Group about Microsoft changing technology. So now I guess he'll be three generations behind in his skillset instead of just two. It has to be Microsoft's fault because he's doing dumb terminal emulation in VB6 in 2005. And during 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 he said to himself, "Yeah, I've got a sweet little day job I think I'm gonna hang with."
"Doesn't Microsoft appreciate who their customers are?" Yeah, Dickhead. Their customers are people who bust their butts learning something new every day so they can do their jobs more efficiently and more productively.