m$ dev sucks
i am never going to suggest building a project using vb.net ever again especially if it involves heavy commercial API usage. what i really find lacking in the vb.net development community is good support, which needless to say, java has. you would expect commercial APIs to come with much better documentation and support than, say, an open-source variant. but it is sadly the other way around. not only do commercial entities have the balls to charge a lot of money for their products, but they are sorely lacking in open support.
maybe it’s wrong for me to believe that support information should be widely available, such as simple help topics like how do i use this dang thing? commercial APIs and development kits simply do not have the convenience of a large user base unlike open source alternatives, where user forums and open discussions are freely available. again, open source clearly shines here.
i’ve had the painful experience of finding out how to use a particular feature of a commercial API I was evaluating (it clearly says on the website that this thing supports PDU messages). however, no documentation was found. support has not replied any of my emails. and i have already built 80% of my application around this stupid thing. and i am losing my time as well as my cool. the alternatives i’ve had to consider were: building an api from scratch, use a lower-level api for serial communication and blow my brains over threading issues and message formats, or use yet another dumb commercial API. they have to be commercial because there aren’t any freeware (you can hardly find anything on google using open source and vb.net on this topic) alternatives.
so, boo on microsoft. the whole development community is made up of a large number of people who are out to make money and more money.
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