Saturday, September 11, 2010

Find the hidden Microsoft message...

After rebuilding my Windows 7 VM from scratch, I (of course) installed the latest Visual Studio 2010. The first time I ran it, it prompted me to choose my default settings. This is nothing new - Visual Studio has had this dialog for as many versions as I remember. The difference is, this time I actually noticed the "flavor text" that they include to describe the different configurations - I'd never previously paid any attention to it.

First, I saw the description for my default choice, C#:


Then I decided to compare notes with the different configurations. Good ol' C++:


And the new kid on the block, F#:


And finally, I wanted to see how the Visual Basic configuration is described:


I hope I'm not the only one who sees the remarkably heavy-handed marketing propaganda here - along with the serious implication that C#, C++, and F# developers don't care about building "world-class applications" - whatever that is supposed to mean!

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