3.5 SP1: All the Drag-and-Drop You Can Eat

Last night the Microsoft Traveling Circus rolled into town for a special session of “What’s new in .NET 3.5 SP1.”

I’ve been working with WCF quite a lot lately. Having read that SP1 affects WCF, the data contract serializer specifically, I expected to find out more about it. Core improvements to the CLR were of particular interest, too.

What it turned out to be was a never-ending parade of Dynamic Data tricks, “O/R mapping”, generation of “domain models” with the help of wizards, designers, and the like. The terms domain, model, entity and table, column, designer were thrown around with much abandon. It’s the old story of I drag my table here, I get my “domain model” and the scaffolding gives me this awful-looking, boring grid “user interface” with in-place editing.

I think it is safe to say Microsoft still doesn’t get it. What’s even more upsetting is that most of the crowd just sat there and ate it. Those who had the foresight to see through the BS, left early.

Oh, my favorite part: marketing guy performing a drag-and-drop act and saying, “Now we hit ’Play’”. Dude, it’s “Run”, or to be more precise, “Start debugging.”