I don’t work with Microsoft stuff as much anymore, but my big beefs with Microsoft product documentation are:
- It is was often unclear what version of the “thing” was in scope. An article from product version X will reference X-1 documention.
- Microsoft will gaslight you. If you interact with them on a significant issue, you need to snapshot their product docs. I’ve worked with Premier on issues when pushing products to the edge of their limits, and the product group will edit the product specs in near real-time.
Microsoft is a complex and big entity. While most of it is doing a bad job whatever it is, some parts are quite good. In particular now that the C# stack is fully open, it's very easy to report a bug (on GitHub) and developers are reactive from my experience (submitted a bug impacting the dotnet SDK).
That issue left a sour taste in my mouth. As a customer, I don’t really need to be in the middle of corporate politics, I have my own poisonous politics to deal with!
I share it because many folks can’t conceive that sort of thing being possible.
I found the same. C# being on GitHub combined with the Microsoft documentation has made working with it a breeze. If I ever have any doubt, I just step into the code itself and figure it out.
- It is was often unclear what version of the “thing” was in scope. An article from product version X will reference X-1 documention.
- Microsoft will gaslight you. If you interact with them on a significant issue, you need to snapshot their product docs. I’ve worked with Premier on issues when pushing products to the edge of their limits, and the product group will edit the product specs in near real-time.