Are We Meeting Your Needs?
The Developer Network wants to hear from you. Really.
Nigel Thompson
Technical Writer, Developer Network Technology GroupThis is a plea for feedback. We here at the Developer Network hole ourselves up in our offices day after day, researching, writing, editing, rewriting, re-editing articles. But in the midst of this frenzied activity, it's important for us not to lose sight of what you—our readership—want and need.
We'd like to do everything. But, frankly, we can't. There are currently six technical writers in the Developer Network (not counting Dr. GUI, because he mostly just sharpens scalpels and samples medicinal brandy). These courageous half-dozen scribblers arrive at work each day to confront hundreds of function calls in Windows, hundreds of calls in OLE, hundreds of member functions in the Microsoft Foundation Class Library, and hundreds of data structures. On top of that, several versions of Windows are either shipping or under development.
Given this vast sea of potential subject matter (with more being added all the time), what should we write about? In the beginning this was actually an easy decision. We simply picked the most common questions logged by our Product Support Services group. We tried not only to answer the questions but also to show how Windows works internally, and thus hopefully give readers a better understanding of the problems. Because most questions concerned the user interface (and how to get it to look the way you want), one of our writers spent many months writing exclusively on this topic.
As the Developer Network matured (or at least got out of diapers), things changed a bit. The common questions ran out, Windows NT shipped, and Windows 95 (Chicago in a former life) development went full-speed ahead. So our writing team could for the first time explain operating system features and how to use them before a product shipped. Some of us moved to developing under Windows NT and wrote about that experience. One writer spent months inside the Windows NT source code (and its developers' offices) researching a series of articles on how memory is managed in Windows NT and what it means for developers. This was a radical departure from our earlier style, where we were trying to play catch-up with Windows-based programming problems.
Through all this, our team tended to focus on trying to produce well-researched, comprehensive technical articles. We chose this approach because it interests us, and also because we hope these articles serve our audience best. On the other side of the coin, it takes us a lot of work—and time—to produce each article.
Your input is requested
The question is: Is it worth it to you, dear reader? For example, do you feel that you're getting what you want from our technical articles? Are they worth all the time we spend researching them, or would you prefer that we shift our focus and crank out lots of sample applications more in the style of the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK)—lots of code and "neat" features but little or no text to accompany them?
And really that's why we are running this article. We want to hear from you—seriously. We know that you are a busy person, and that your computer is way too old and too slow. And that the fax machine is constantly on the fritz, and that you love e-mail like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. All that aside, we still want to know what you think. As they say in all elections: "Your vote counts." So here are a few questions that we'd like you to answer. Feel free to make up your own questions if you don't like ours.
1. What areas would you like to see covered?
2. Is it helpful to include documentation for the functions and structures used?
3. Is it helpful to provide an "overview" article and then a follow-up article that goes into more detail?
4. Would you prefer to have samples that are more "functional" (the trade-off being that the sample would be larger, so determining how to do some simple thing would take a bit longer)?
5. What areas have already been covered well enough (and we should therefore quit writing about them)?
6. Is it useful to see articles on beta systems even if you don't have the system or the SDK?
7. We have a lot of C++ articles now. As a C programmer, do they still provide what you want?
8. Do you need to know more about OLE?
9. Do you understand the merits of the different Windows platforms and what it takes to support them?
10. Anything else you can think of.
We really would like to hear from you. We're all having fun here, experimenting and writing articles, but unless you benefit from our efforts what's the point?
You can get in touch with us in several ways:
Internet: msdn@microsoft.com
CompuServe: INTERNET:>msdn@microsoft.com
Fax: (206) 936-7329, Attn: Developer Network
Mail: Microsoft Developer Network, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-5399
It would be helpful if you put "How're we doing?" on the subject head for your correspondence.
Nigel Thompson is a writer in the Developer Network Technology Group and author of Animation Techniques in Win32. He is setting up an advanced snorkeling school in the Cayman Islands.