Yesterday Chris Anderson confessed that Microsoft might have been neglecting some development approaches. I was mighty heartened to see Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life write:
I've actually been quite upset by how many programming language camps Microsoft has neglected in its blind pursuit of competition with Java and the JVM. ... We have neglected DHTML developers who have been building web sites and web applications against Internet Explorer, we don't even have a Javascript IDE let alone a story for people trying to build complex AJAX/DHTML applications like GMail or Google Maps.
... The focus of the developer division at Microsoft is the .NET Framework and related technologies which is primarily a competitor to Java/JVM and related technologies. However when it comes to areas where there isn't a strong, single competitor that can be focused on (e.g. RAD development, scripting languages, web application development) we tend to flounder and stagnate. Eventually I'm sure customer pressure will get us of our butts, it's just unfortunate that we have to be forced to do these things instead of doing them right the first time around.
I came across this .NET focus recently when talking to someone at MS about the Windows Web Browsing platform. I continue to find it weird that .NET is an obsession that, as Dare notes, precludes all other approaches; it is not clear to me why or what problem it is meant to be solving. MS are living, or have been living in a very 2D world as far as Windows is concerned, witness the dropping the ball on IE as well. Perhaps there is a growing realisation that they actually live in a multi-dimensional world and that they need good stories in many dimensions.