If I was doing a screen cast I would say ‘I’m Chris Kolenko I work for Interesting!’. Only because I’m proud to work here. Not to create crediblity.

By John bagging out Rob, isn’t that in fact a way to stand out from the croud and get some attention. I’m waiting for John to put some sort of spin to create credibility for himself. Any publicity is good publicity.

Back to the fact. If you have watched all of his screen casts. He has always said, he is giving this a go, and sharing his experiences with the community. Correct me if I’m wrong Rob.

That goes for both TDD and the Alternate Repository pattern (Repository+).

The only bad thing about what Rob is doing, is every muppet developer out there is going to get his hands on it and hack it into a customers websites. Borning another munch of bad programmers. Can Microsoft invent something to stop them? lol.. sorry past experiences coming out.

If you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others….

Are you kidding me? I really hope that this is an aberration and the majority of the .NET community doesn’t feel this way.”
——————

Has anyone checked out the Microsoft Homepage lately?

“Hero’s happen here. Meet the experts.” - Seems Microsoft themselves feel they have the experts.

At any rate, I’ve read Rob’s blog for quite some time and it’s pretty much public speaking 101 to:

1.) Tell people who you are and
2.) Establish credibility

By saying, “Hi I’m Rob Conery, and I work for Microsoft”, he is attempting to do just that, just as he used to start the CSK screencasts, with “Hi I’m Rob Conery, and I’m the Chief Architect of the CSK.”

Tell people who you are and establish credibility.

Personally, I view Rob Conery as a blogger-for-hire for Microsoft. He’s kinda the Potsie of coding, so I’m willing to overlook a lot of what he says, but for people trying to learn TDD, he definitely didn’t position the screencast as a learning process, so they would be suceptible to receiving poor information. Frankly, I think Bellware did the Microsoft community a favor by calling him on it. These ’softies can’t be allowed to run rough-shod over the community because they say “Hi I’m A. Dude and I work for Microsoft.”

++Alan

Since when did we forget how to think for ourselves? When Microsoft employees became complicit en-masse in an effort toward promulgating and leveraging Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in Microsoft customer community. It’s very long tail is still very much in play, influencing and sometimes directly controlling the extent to which customers use intelligence and discernment to make decisions.

You’ve only recently left Microsoft. You’ve got a ways to go before you’ll be willing to accept the full extent of the reality of how Microsoft is willing to degrade customer success potential to serve its own sense of entitlement to continued lethargy and the predisposition toward hubris and negligence that is the after-effects of the FUD long tail on Microsoft’s own culture and attitudes.

Couple that with the fact that there is very little guidance coming from anywhere else (and sorry, 50 or so alt.net bloggers isn’t making a big enough difference), I think that Bellware & co are right to demand that whatever guidance comes from Microsoft be absolutely accurate.

ps Great post.

I get that MS is a tool vendor. The .NET community hasn’t quite grown up to recognize this and looked to the overall software community for guidance in design, architecture, values, principles, practices, etc.

Scott was merely calling out the fact most developers viewing an MS employee showing development is also a recommendation for how to develop.

@Chad - “we meet againnnnn” :). The interesting thing for me, WRT to your argument about the “MS Expert” thing is that it inherently doesn’t scale. When I wrote my post about beer… well shoot that doesn’t work cause unfortunately i know WAY too much about beer…

Hmmm - might have to rethink this expert thing. “Yyyyyeesssss… the POOWWWWEEEERRRRR”… Smithers! Fetch me my Colostomy Bag!