[SecurityMatters]

I don't know about accessing OLAP databases, but it seems like a bad idea, anyway. The programmability of OpenOffice is quite powerful and workflows can and are automated with it.

Visual Studio is not bad for people with little understanding of development. Unfortunately, CS schools turn out many people like that these days. I don't know why people want tools that get in the way and slow you down as much as Visual Studio, but it is popular.

To me, the built in unreliability of Windows is something I wonder why more people don't focus on. Building your business processes around something that needs proprietary tools that can disappear with little notice just seems crazy.

[NumberFiveAlive]

I also don't get the built in unreliability comment, either. Windows has been pretty darn stable since they went to the NT kernel. Really, all three main desktop OSs are pretty stable these days. I get a BSOD on Windows 7 maybe once every six months or so, and that's with ~8 hours a day in front of a windows box at work. I'd rate my OSX home box just slightly less stable than that, but when you're talking about such infrequent crashes, who really cares? These aren't the halcyon days of Windows 95/OS 7 with half a dozen lockups a day.

[SecurityMatters]

I was talking about reliability, not stability. The activation Windows has used for a while makes the product unreliable. This may not be obvious at first. I had a client with a computer problem, which ended up needing some replacement hardware. The computer needed reactivation, and the owner asked me what assurance she had that it could be activated in another 3 years when some other part died. The computer was running a very expensive piece of vertical industry software that only ran on one version of Windows. I read everything I could find and talked to several senior Microsoft engineers. The answer is that nothing assures that I'll be able to activate Windows to keep a business critical process running. I get vague statements that the engineers can't see why Microsoft would stop the activations, but nothing I can tell someone to bet their business on. I can understand why most people don't see this problem. I did not see it, until prompted by a customer.

[NumberFiveAlive]

Ok, yeah, I've run into that before, and it is a pain. But I've heard that if you call Microsoft they'll always reactivate a license in that situation.

[bruceboughton]

> Visual Studio is not bad for people with little understanding of development.

You do know that Visual Studio is not just a drag-and-drop visual designer tool right? This is the most insulting gibberish I've read all day.

[SecurityMatters]

Yes, I know that. And, I have seen developers at a loss of what to do when some gui developer tool is not available. One problem is the use of the gui tool seems to put people too far from what is really going on. Most users probably need a gui to be productive. A gui may be productive for some developer tasks, but a developer should understand what is really happening and be able to work without one.

I work mostly in Python, and that affects my view, I am sure. But, even when I did mostly c/c++, I knew it was useful to be able to ssh to a foreign machine, edit a file and recompile and execute a program.

The view I expresses is one I also hear from other developers. I cannot help how you perceive it, but it is still true.