Whidbey Hype vs. Content for Current Versions

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Many customers have been complaining about the lack of new articles, samples and excitement around VS.NET 2003. This https://windowsforms.net forums post is an example. Great language skills aside, he makes a point. A very significant portion of new MSDN articles, samples and overall buzz is around Whidbey and not the current version of VS.NET and the .NET Framework.

I guess there are a few reasons for this. Human nature leads us to be excited about things that are *new*. Also, Whidbey is the product that everyone in Microsoft's developer division has been working on for the last 2+ years. We've poured our ideas and energy into this product and we want to tell the world about it.

Think about what you were working on 2 and half years ago. Would you rather discuss that project or what you're working on now?

 

<update after 7 replies>

 

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for their insightful comments. When you are working on a new version of a product, it can be easy to get caught up in the hype and overlook the thousands (millions?) of existing customers using the current version. Thanks for helping me remember that.

 

There are lots of existing articles and code samples for VS.NET 2003. A quick look on the windowsforms.net samples page shows controls and other code libraries that encapsulate functionality you can use right away and also show how things are done so you can learn and extend. As far as articles, the windowsforms.net articles page has hunderds of articles only a few of which are about Whidbey. Another great VS.NET 2003 sample that was added recently is the Windows Forms markup parser Joe Stegman wrote.

 

The Patterns and practices group are producing many great application code blocks which can be used to build robust functionality into your applications.

 

In general, there is quite a bit of information out there today about VS.NET 2003 and VS.NET 2002.  If you have specific Windows Forms sample or article requests, please let me know and I'll pass them on to the team.