Provoking Criticism on .NET

Richard Grimes's farewell column in Doctor Dobbs Journal is a pretty provoking commentary. My exposure to .NET is rudimentary at this point (I'll be getting much deeper into it over the next few months), but some of the central points Grimes makes really ring true to me. Yes, I'm excited about the technology and power .NET brings to the development process, but too much of .NET seems to have been shoved out the door with rubberstamp approval rather than serious thought from the get-go. Grimes's comments on the cumbersome framework and VB.NET are blistering, as are his insights on underlying technology. Dr. Scott Meyers made some similar comments during his presentation at SD Expo West in March of 2004. He pointed out some silly, confusing (I'd say idiotic) inconsistencies in basic things such as having Array.Length vs. ArrayList.Count. Would it have been too much to ask that simple standards have been set at the start of the effort? I guess these folks didn't read their McConnell. There's a very interesting response on the blog of Dan Fernandez, Microsoft's C# product manager. Richard Grimes has a very good response in that blog entry's comments. (via Slashdot)