Why I Love Microsoft

It's because I hate open source software. Don't get me wrong; there's lots of interesting software available from open source suppliers. But the problem with Free software is that it costs too much. Case in point are the tools used to produce applications for Palm OS. Sure, my C is rusty, but now that I have a really nice Palm PDA, why not play around with developing a couple of really simple applications. All the development tools you need are available free of charge on the web. However they require a lot of knowledge and a lot of fiddling around to get them installed. The Installer program is different than any I've ever seen. By default it doesn't install everything you need. The user interface is difficult. The instructions are written by a master coder, not a documentation professional. Having downloaded and installed 2 packages from an online installer, I need to "mount" the right location. Then I need to download 2 packages for the SDK (software development kit, without which the rest is useless). One of the SDK kits has an installer, but the other doesn't - you are expected to unzip the files and copy them over top of the older files in the first SDK package. Then you have to run the post-setup program. Unfortunately they don't tell you where it is.

With Microsoft you click one button and it installs. With Microsoft I would have spent the last hour writing software (i.e. playing). Now I'm so frustrated I don't even know if I want to try developing Palm OS software.