But another part of me is loudly grousing. It wouldn’t bother me at all if there were accurate and complete documentation of this stuff on MSDN. But there isn’t. Big shock, here comes another one of the development team members with a book about it to fill in the gaps. Too bad Microsoft couldn’t pay someone to put some of this documentation on MSDN.

I don’t really begrudge developers the right to make some extra money on the side selling a few books, and I assume they’re writing these on their own time. But on the other hand, it’s very clear that the team and Microsoft have (I won’t say deliberately) left a gaping hole in the documentation big enough to drive a truckload of books through. Or rather, big enough, as Jeffrey Snover (the team lead) would say, to stack a tower of books in.

If there’s anyone left on the team that hasn’t written a book yet, can I humbly suggest that documenting the XML schemas would make a nice booklet? It might not be a 300 page tome like this one, but I’m sure there’s a market for it. .