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When I start to blog recently and about 3 blogs in just a week people expected me to blog on regular basis specially knowing the fact that am in Austria and nothing much to do. Well I was preparing myself for WPF certification, and was busy in reading “MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-502): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Presentation Foundation” by Matthew A. Stoecker.

I was really impressed after going through the structure of the book. It was well organized and the flow of topics was well maintained. It covers most of the topics and concepts required for getting started with WPF and building your application but the author expects you to have a good knowledge of .Net framework and basic programming knowledge. Examples like in most of the books are provided in C# and VB, so language over here is not more of an issue, and yes XAML is used too.

After reading this book I found it more focused to a developer and many of designer related topics like 2D and 3D are missing, but after going through the skill set required for this exam I found it to be quite comprehensive.

Also the point that I will like to make is that this book is totally meant for preparing for the exam and not quite useful if you are new to WPF and want to start learning it right away. For this will really recommend Pro WPF in C# 2008, with a caution that this book is language specific while the preparation guide is not.

My final verdict:

·  In-depth coverage of exam objectives and sub-objectives—plus instructive case studies and troubleshooting scenarios to enhance your performance on the job

·  300+ practice and review questions (in CD that comes along with the book)

·  Test engine that enables customized testing, pre-assessment and post-assessment, and automated scoring and feedback (in CD that comes along with the book)

·  Handy exam-mapping grid available at the end of index.

When I wrote my blog about Mircosoft , I received extreme reactions from my friends; those loyal to MS (Microsoft) blasted me out on my data collection technique and tried to prove me wrong in all possible way, while those who oppose MS applauded me on writing such a blog knowing the fact, that myself being MS MVP, MS patron and whose bread and butter is earned by working on these technologies. But the most important thing was none came up with a reasonable justification (atleast for me) for the same.

The point that I want to make is the patrons are just loyal to their brand, I guess it should be the other way around too. I would like to associate my self with the technology that am interested to work in rather than who created it. I was Java programmer in my academic days but when I moved to professional world I started to work on MS technologies just as I found that it was increasing my productivity, which was more important in my career at that point of time.

I had faced the similar problems when I wanted to by a new bike for myself. After taking test drive of couple of bikes I was confused about which bike to go for and even posted the same on some famous bike forums,over there I received a similar response. People actually transformed the topic to brand wars. Patrons were just loyal to their brands, not wanted to accept the fact about the other brand is better is some places. Each one trying to prove the brand the follow is immaculate, while the other one is not even worth a penny

This might be slightly OT but at some places the brand just takes the name for a specific technology. Still back in

Well in my point it should be cycle of loyalty, brands being more loyal to their customers return them with better products in the market and in return they find more patrons.

I was traveling in tram to my office listening to my zune player(bought it from those $150 available to MVP’s ) and in front of me was a lady listing to her Ipod that’s when a thought struck in my mind, is Microsoft really into innovation as most of the stuff Microsoft is into is really are actually derived from some or the other pre existing product.

Be it Zune player which is more or less like Ipod, which definitely came into market existence after Ipod was a huge success. Even the rumors about ZunePhone to be launched are out having features much like iPhone. From phones I go to the software part of it i.e. the Compact OS For Mobile phones/PDA , Microsoft does have Windows Mobile with a good market share but this also came into existence after Symbian and Palm already had a presence in the market.

If we start to talk about OS, DOS never belonged to Microsoft and even the first versions of Windows OS were derived from iMac (source Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine). Later operating systems Like XP and Vista have a good resemblance to Mac OS and some flavor of Linux. If I talk about  Server based operating system Windows NT model was largely derived from VMS(not so well known though), but it was VMS which actually turned the tide for mainframes.

This mysterious series of replication stuff also continued when Microsoft announced Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS) now known as .NET framework which I fell is very much Java-like software programming language.

Now lets move to web, our very famous Internet explorer’s development started after the launch of Netscape Navigator. It gave a good competition to Netscape, but the later versions are highly inspired from Mozilla Firefox.Hotmail also was never developed by them, they just bought it. To keep its footprint in the search engine market they still don’t have a good answer to Google, rather the only answer they have is to buy out Yahoo.

Talking about  database systems, this concept was a major topic of discussion when in 1970’s Mr. E.F.Codd   drafted his 12 rules, Oracle and DB2 were the first to enter the market with their products, Microsoft entered at a very latter stage with SQL Server.

Microsoft’s Office products were also largely inspired from Lotus 1-2-3 the most famous spread sheet application which belonged to IBM (am not so sure about the real owner but right now it’s IBM).

Even in the gaming console business Microsoft has a fairly successful product XboX in the market but even over here they are not pioneer, just followers as in other cases.

This list goes on and on for me. The only place where I was unable to find any inspiration for a Microsoft product is its Surface. Also might be the case where Microsoft might have been the pioneers but they didn’t come out with the product before thier competitors. Even you might have figured out by now that while their competitors have just foothold in one or very limited area of business, they have mostly found a good foothold in most of the business/ventures they have entered into being more like Jackal of all trades, of course market leaders in many too.

To end on a lighter (much heavier for someone) note: The most innovative stuff I like about Microsoft is the blue screen of death, which I guess no other OS has been able to provide it as easily as Windows OS provide it.

Disclaimer: I am not Anti-Microsoft, I am a developer by profession and I work only on Microsoft technologies, it was just a thought of my mind and I posted it over the blog. The information may be wrong; I don’t mean to hurt anyone (especially Bill Gates and his army of loyal followers/programmers).