Sad :-( Over 313 Votes of no confidence for ADO .NET Entity Framework
This makes me sad. So far over 313 people have given a vote of no confidence in the ADO .NET Entity Framework, and it's rising by the hour.
It's sad for two reasons:
- It's a public kicking of someone's hard work. It probably wasn't meant to be that way, but that's how I see it. I feel for the development team.
- Microsoft seem to have screwed EF up. If that's the case, developers will be led away from best practice, and a great opportunity to educate people has been missed.
I've not downloaded and studied the Entity Framework, so I wouldn't personally vote until I've made my own judgement.
On the plus side, if EF truly does fall short of the bar, then the problems might be addressed and we might all get the high quality tool we want, that encompasses best practice drawn from the last few decades of experience.
It's a shame it's taken this kind of stunt to raise the awareness, I just hope everyone gets their happy ending.
Looking forward to downloading EF and finding out for myself!
Comments
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Everyone knows it stings to have our tangible works criticized, but this is how we learn and grow. Just because we’re adults now doesn’t mean that we have an entitlement to not be called on the carpet for questionable deeds.
Hard work has it’s own merit, but hard work doesn’t derserve the merit of good works. We’re ok with that, and based on our conversations with the Entity Framework folks in the past couple of days, they’re ok with it, too.
Try not to see this as a scenario where an unsuspecting innocent was jumped by surprise.
We spent four weeks on the text of that letter and we did our best to be as respectable and as forthright as possible. We’ve been in dialog with the Entity Framework team for over a year. I doubt that anyone on either side of this issue was surprised that the authors of the letter would act upon a sense of responsibility to the community and voice concerns about the risks of using the Entity Framework in its current state.
There are 350 signatories of that letter. Many of them are respected software technologists, and many are regular guys out in the field making a living with Microsoft technology.
If we make this an issue of bad taste on the part of the signiatories, it’s disrespectful to their willingness to have the courage of their convictions and to do so in full view of the community. The Microsoft community is starving for people with the courage of their convictions, and the persistence to stay with an issue until it is resolved – regardless of how long or how arduous that might be.
The Entity Framework team has made some mistakes in full knowledge that they were making these mistakes and chose to push forward with the ship date rather than make the hard decision to delay. There were business imperatives involved. We’re aware of that. But that doesn’t mute the basis of ethics and responsibility that saw to us writing the open letter to the Microsoft customer community.
This action on the part of the community of practice and expertise in entity architectures has already started to bear fruit and the timeline for addressing the issues with the Entity Framework has been accelerated accordingly.
The effort was worth it. It was uncomfortable at times, but discomfort is often the price of learning and improving. We could do a lot better if we as a community and a culture if we would learn to accept the discomfort of growth again rather than continue to pursue insulation from discomfort at the cost of improvement.