Software the users would love

Saw a post from G. Andrew Duthie regarding some more new features coming in ASP.NET which is all good, but one of the most significant of those for me (even though relatively minor) is the SQL Cache invalidation. I like to design with caching where possible, but having immediate update of data as well as the benefits of cached data together has not been easy and this feature alone could be immediately usable in a number of enterprise apps I have designed/developed. Great stuff. (p.s. You can find G. Andrew Duthie sys-con radio interview here)

Also saw a post from Martin Spedding regarding user experience and building software that users would love. It reminds me of numerous conversations with my wife, who is not very computer literate, about the useability of software. As far as she is concerned, every application should only have one big button on one big form that has the label “Just do it” and that button should “just do what she wants”. Hmmm ... might be a while before I can develop an application that intuitive. Still working on my “System.Telepathy” namespace....;-)

Actually received some comments on my previous blog entry re: remoting and Indigo most of which says that remoting is not going away, MS wouldn't do that, I should re-read the posts and so on, most of which I agree with (apart from re-reading the posts) but I still think remoting (in its current form anyway) will fade to some degree and be a part of the underlying technology and implementation, rather than this clear distinction between remoting and web services as there is now. But hey, thats the nature of speculation...might be wrong, might be right... would love to be at the PDC getting the info from the horses mouth, but I'll have to be content with virtual attendance through the current attendees blogs...:-)