It's a pleasure to see such straight-faced parody. Bravo to Ars, although I was kind of sad to see them include the disclaimer at the end for those who don't get the joke.

As someone who prefers to develop on Mac and Linux, I'm still a bit jealous of F# and the IDE integration it enjoys. And yes, I know about MonoDevelop.

Re: the last paragraph:

Sadly I lost that battle. I didn't want to include it, but sometimes we writers do not get to make those decisions.

After reading the piece, I think a good case could be made that Visual Studio 2010 is, in fact, a game. I'm already imagining two lawyers presenting their cases to a jury.

(If you think such things never happen, consider the case of Nix v. Hedden, which concerned the question, "Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?" That case went all the way to the US Supreme Court! Botanists argued that they're fruit because they're the part of the plant that contains the seeds. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden )

Or the Radiolab short recently about how Marvel Comics went to the Supreme Court to prove that X-Men are not human.

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2011/dec/22/muta...

In fact, you could even more broadly make the case that programming is the ultimate video game...

Or the Radiolab short recently about how Marvel Comics went to the Supreme Court to prove that X-Men are not human.

That's too bad. I wish your editor had had more respect for your readers.

Although maybe he was right: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/oorgn/microsoft_keep...

The reaction to VS achievements is kind of interesting, people seem to be taking it seriously, at least as some sort of symbol. Who knows, maybe it is the thin edge of the knife that will lead to the "gamification" of programming. At any rate,anyone who uses VS and C# with any frequency probably understands it to be tongue in cheek. I don't think I will change my coding practices to get achievements... Well maybe I will, I've just got to get those last two!

Isn't software development already kind of gamified? It's full of little bursts of dopamines and adrenaline -- from that first little "Hello World" to finally tracking down a bug, to seeing your code in production. Its addictive and it already comes with distinct achievements.

Hence the ascendance of dynamic languages! The compressed feedback loops keep you munching those power pellets:

Action RPGs (Ruby, PHP, Javascript, Python, anything with a REPL) vs. PBEM chess (C, Java, C++, your favorite statically typed & compiled language).

Different genres with widely divergent playstyles and reward structures.

I think it's not so much a difference between "dynamic" and "static" as it is between higher and lower levels of abstraction.

I saw this statement in a guy's sig a few years back, which made me realize why I got into programming in the first place:

"The computer is the game."

I think in a sense it is. Not strictly quantified yet. I was thinking about the adulation or sense of defeat you can get from code reviews. Code is a spectator sport with arbitrary rules that keep changing. Just like Calvinball!

I tossed together git-achievements one weekend for fun ( https://github.com/icefox/git-achievements ) and it has taken off as the most popular project I have ever made with hundreds of forks and watchers. There is something about Achievements that people _really_ enjoy.

I'm not surprised. Achievements are another form of positive feedback and in the case of programming, can provide an additional incentive for continuing to code.

Your comment made me see a parallel between VS achievements and sites like StackOverflow which offer a system of rewards which incentivize increasing one's programming knowledge.

Expecially since potential employers look for StackOverflow accounts now.

I sometimes love Microsoft. This is one of those cases.

Software development tools, especially those meant for the enterprise, are sometimes too serious, boring and soul-sucking. Turning it into an RPG game is genius if you do it right: not only do you have some innocent fun, but it might make you learn some good practices in the process.

They are for 0 points, so they're not really rewards.

They also have a "running with scissors" icon.

Downvote me if you feel like it, but I'm honest when I say I enjoyed this article, and the way it was written. Sometimes, it just doesn't have to be fully serious to make a point.

  Downvote me if you feel like it, but...

Whatever you want to say, please just say it:

http://raganwald.posterous.com/youre-probably-going-to-downv...

That's wrong. Sometime, you know you have a valid point and will get down voted because people won't spend the time to understand correctly your meaning. By saying it before hand, people will understand that you know it's a bit of a controversial subject but still spent the time to make your point.. and thus, won't just down-vote you because they thought you were wrong at first glance.

Heh, I know how true that is, but I think it's healthier to look at it in a different way: if I have a valid point but people don't understand it, it's my fault--I did not write clearly enough. I take it as a signal that I need to sit down with that idea and work out exactly what I mean as opposed to what I say.

Of course, there are always exceptions: missed allusions, overlooked subtleties and well-reasoned but unconventional points can be downvoted incorrectly. However, most of the time, it's healthier to think of it as your fault.

Fair point. I didn't see it that way, but yes, I promise never to use it again.

(Heh, promises over the Internet, you rarely see those. I intend to keep mine, though.)

It's no laughing matter, Microsoft takes humour very seriously:

http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/Training/Competenci...

There should be a level 5: doing stand-up comedy shows on software development.

Here's a hilarious one https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

ah so that is where mysql's trigger implementation came from

Straight-up humor isn't actually banned by HN community standards, it's just the bar is quite high. It should be something that took some effort, not a one-line meme reference or something equally trivial or obvious.

Being honest is not enough, you should try to add something interesting to the discussion. (It is hard: I, also, sinned)

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but, I wasn't going to upvote you, and then I saw you wrote 'downvote me if you feel like it' so I knee-jerk upvoted you to counteract someone else's knee-jerk downvote without reading the rest of your comment. I'd read it now, but a vegetarian friend of mine just texted me about the salad he's eating, so I have to go get a burger to make up for it.

As someone who thinks "Photopia" is one of the greatest pieces of fiction I've ever read, I got a kick out of this article. Nicely done.

Can I ask, why Photopia?

The story really deeply affected me, and I think it was an amazingly effective use of the medium. I can't really think of any other way that it could have been presented in any medium that would have established our concern for Alison (by "being" her parents, the kid with a crush on her, Wendy). It's agonizing to realize what's going to happen, and to be powerless to do anything about it.

The final act of turning off the light is so, so sad.

I wonder if whatever censor approved the final headline didn't notice the URL, or just thought it wouldn't offend anyone?

I can't imagine an Ars reader being offended by the word "pimp", considering they occasionally use quite strong profanity in the meat of their posts.

Even if they redirect to a new url, there are still links everywhere using the original url which they probably wouldn't want to break.

Of course, one reason this works so well is that programming really can be like a game. Growing up, I didn't play console/pc games, I wrote code!

When did ars technica become The Onion?

LOLcats have replaced good old-fashioned parody. I eat this stuff up!

Pretty sure a Social Gaming plugin is part of TextMate 2 also.

I found this article to be so abstract it could apply to any IDE. XCode, Eclipse, whatever. It didn't specifically address any of VS 2010's actual shortcomings.

The concept that spawned this article was achievements in Visual Studio 2010. Xcode (spelling!), Eclipse, and other IDEs don't have these achievements.

Oh my... I missed that... I feel sick now... What is going on with this world?

Humor aside, is MS trying to shoot themselves in the foot. Why drive potential devs away with a crippled free version, and outrageously expensive full version.

Text-based. That's why they call it "Visual". Perhaps it would be nicer to have a text-free touchscreen with big buttons?

Haha. I am embarrassed how long it took me to catch on.

Do you get a bonus achievement for unwinding your loops gwbasic style to avoid the memory leak.

Probably not, alas.

Obviously we need user-supplied achievements in plugin packs :-)

They should add this for the base OS. Seriously, they should make it possible for people to debug their OSes and provide them with rewards and financial rewards as well.

At least this way some old bugs would actually go away.

This is actually completely brilliant. Sure, it's hollow and somewhat manipulative, but by the nine, it will teach some people what their computer can actually do. As someone who works in tech support, and therefore routinely has to waste my time doing utterly basic things for people, I would absolutely love if Microsoft/Apple/Ubuntu/some beginner-friendly OS did something like that.