The Replies Come Piling In

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So far I've had about a dozen emails and a cluster of posts about what a "Live" version of VS could look like. The ideas are really good (meaning, of course, that I agree with them ;-). Some interesting ones:

  • Pair Programming via RTC. Greg Duncan suggested this (though he didn't quite phrase it like this) but the idea that you could with with a partner in pair programming without having them right there, is interesting. If nothing else, these suggestions would open up the IDE to collaboration in a new way.
  • Ship Agility. TZagotta hit on the notion that we could/should get more agile in how/when we ship updates if we went this route, which is something I wholeheartedly agree with.
  • Hosted VSTS. ARuiter scored big with the idea of hosting TFS, Team Test, and a whole bunch of our SDLC solution. This is obviously a big surface area with lots of nuances. I talked with Brian Harry (the TFS PUM) about this idea in December and he told me that TFS was architected to support this kind of scenario and then had to get off the phone so that he could work on shipping V1 of TFS. :-)
  • Better Online. Xepol touched on a concern I've heard from other customers: that whatever we build shouldn't be totally dependent on a network connection and that if we build a set of services they have to be rock-solid. Totally agree.

Another theme that's coming out: whatever we do, it has to be better than opening a window in IE and as easy to work with as visiting a Web site or using a Hosted Exchange account.

I love these ideas and keep them coming!