> The very first search result for "windows dev kit"
Somewhere I saw a link, URL, to a Microsoft Web page describing the Dev Kit and followed that link. The link was not the one you gave. And I didn't get the link from a Google search or from this Hacker News thread. In another post to this thread, I gave the URLs I tried, and none of them was the URL you gave.
How did I waste some hours on this? For the URLs I tried, it was tough to make any sense out of what they were talking about -- the writing assumed too much background for the reader and used too much poorly defined jargon.
E.g., I didn't know what a
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute Platform
was! That is from QUALCOMM. One of the founders was Andrew Viterbi, and he was a good mathematician who worked in coding theory. I had a graduate course in coding theory that mentioned Viterbi. So, on QUALCOMM, I have a background in some of the technical work of one of the founders. Alas, the course didn't mention a
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute Platform
I've taught computer science ugrad at Georgetown U and grad level at Ohio State U but never mentioned the
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute Platform
I suspect that could find a lot of graduate computer science courses at MIT, CMU, ..., Stanford that never mention the
Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 Compute Platform
Net, there is an epidemic problem in the practical computer industry -- too much poorly defined jargon.
The sheer volume of text you have written about this is very strange. You may want to seek guidance on how to interact with other people. Have a good weekend.
Right: Some people here at Hacker News like to attack others that don't fit in with some of the norms. Mere technical discussions are not always welcome.
My background is quite different, is with people who can engage in technical communications with objectivity.
Yup, you are right: Some people at Hacker News have trouble being objective. To interact with them, be like a politician who is careful never to say much of anything except they like motherhood and apple pie.
In part my goal was to let Microsoft and much of the tech community know that they very much need to improve their technical writing. Microsoft has made a lot of improvements, but for their Dev Kit they fell back into poor writing again. One rule that would help a lot would be to avoid undefined or poorly defined jargon, terminology, or acronyms.
Your arguments about URLs fails to make a valid point: There are a lot of URLs about the Dev Kit, and the ones you mentioned and their sources are not necessarily where I got the URLs I followed. So, your claim that I ignored good URLs that were right in front of me was wrong: The sources you mentioned were not the ones I happened to use.
I'm 100% correct: Some of the Microsoft publicity, promotion, and documentation of their Dev Kit has some really obscure technical writing that can waste a lot of time for people without a quite narrow background. For making this point, you have attacked ME. Hmm ....
I just checked: I just followed the URL
to a Microsoft site you gave -- somehow
that is not the URL I followed in the hour
I wasted.
I checked my notes, and I did not bother
to keep the URLs I did follow. I take a
LOT of notes, but I'm in a hurry and do
not take notes on everything, especially
things that don't work.
Okay, I'll try to get my standard Web
browser Firefox to tell me what URLs I did
visit. From that Firefox data I see that
I visited:
Apparently via Google you found a good explanation of the Dev Kit.
Gee, maybe the Microsoft Web pages should have given the links you found!
Yes, eventually I did do a Google search. I found a little information, better than the Microsoft Web pages.
But a "device"? What was meant by a "device"? My life, my work in computing, my work for my startup, are all awash in various devices. Heck, my kitchen has a lot of "devices". So does my car. I have a sack of gorgeous Nikon camera equipment, all "devices".
Somewhere some description needs to get simpler, down to the level of the Common Man in the Street, to the 6th grade, with an introductory explanation: I've done a LOT in computing and still am doing so, but a "device" is just too vague to be meaningful. People for whom that jargon is meaningful have a background I am missing. For my current work, I have no need for that background.
The Microsoft Web pages kept promising to tell me what was in the kit, product, offering, box, unit, device, whatever. Sooo, I kept clicking, thinking that maybe I just missed the Web page that actually explained what the Dev Kit was.
So, the "Dev Kit", the thing Microsoft was talking about, is a COMPUTER, complete with a DC power supply, central processor, main memory, solid state memory for a file system, ports, maybe some version of USB (Intel's universal serial bus) for connecting a keyboard, a mouse, and one or more video displays, an operating system, and some software tools from Microsoft, and for most of this still I have no actual source and am just guessing. NONE of that was at all clear.
My interest was as a founder of a startup, a Web site, and the programmer of that Web site. I've done the programming using Microsoft's .NET software and their SQL Server. And I wrote the code on Windows XL and then Windows 7.
That was a long time ago -- I got delayed by some unpredictable, independent, unfortunate outside events. But now I'm returning and trying to rush to going on-line as a Web site available to everyone on the Internet.
Early in the work, I got from Microsoft a version of SQL Server for free. What I wanted to know a few days ago from the "Dev Kit" was, is a free (developer) version of SQL Server still available? What other versions of SQL Server are available? Should I consider converting to PostgreSQL? What other Microsoft software is available? Eventually it became clear that somehow whatever the Dev Kit was, it was not really for people developing a Web site.
Soooo, maybe somewhere there is a little company developing and selling software to help, say, a pizza shop. The little company writes the software using .NET. Some of the pizza shop customers are using computers with ARM processors instead of x86 processors and some version of Unix instead of Windows. So, the Dev Kit is aimed at software developers in such companies. Okay. Microsoft never made any of this at all clear, but eventually, okay, now it's clear.
This Dev Kit is not for me. Now I understand this.
Then I did another Google search and got a good, clear, surprisingly nice explanation for my question about SQL Server:
SQL Server 2019 Express is a free
edition of SQL Server, ideal for
development and production for
desktop, web, and small server
applications.
Sure, I'd still like to know what $ I'm in for if my startup is successful and I need a non toy version of SQL Server? Ah, getting information like that is asking for too much!
But some such information is available sometimes!!! Last month I finally found a path to some serious people at my ISP, Comcast, about what they could do for me when I bring my Web site live! Most of their answers were good, clear, and more favorable than I had guessed.
So, sometimes in business it's actually IS possible to get some clear information!!!!
It appears to me that in the last year or so Microsoft has made good progress in the main, foundational challenge -- describing their work. Before, long it appeared that getting such information was not like pulling teeth from lions but pulling tusks from elephants.
"Device": Whoever at Microsoft described the Dev Kit as a "device" needs some serious counseling.
In my first use of SQL Server, I had no problems designing the database, understanding "normal forms", but spent a solid week trying to get a "connection string" to work. Finally I sent to Microsoft so much in email and phone calls that I got to apparently some mid-level executive in the SQL Server organization who told me right away how to get a connection string. WOW, only a week wasted!!!!
> Apparently via Google you found a good explanation of the Dev Kit. Gee, maybe the Microsoft Web pages should have given the links you found!
It's literally the same link as the very first one in the body of article this comment thread is about.
> The Microsoft Web pages kept promising to tell me what was in the kit, product, offering, box, unit, device, whatever. Sooo, I kept clicking, thinking that maybe I just missed the Web page that actually explained what the Dev Kit was.
As ripley12 says, there's a 'Tech Specs' tab (I realize that 'tab' might be a new concept for you, but if you'll go to that page and scroll down a little bit you'll see a section that looks like |Overview | Tech Specs | FAQ| and each of those is a 'tab')
> for most of this still I have no actual source and am just guessing. NONE of that was at all clear
In addition to the 'Tech Specs' tab there is a 'FAQ' tab. As you might know, this stands for 'Frequently Asked Questions' ('frequently' means 'often'). In there you will see a list of questions with ">" symbols next to them (this ">" does not mean that they are less than some value, it's just a typographical symbol).
The first of those (when read from top to bottom) is "What are some of the specific challenges Windows Dev Kit 2023 will help solve for developers? "
If you 'click', with your 'mouse', on that it will reveal (which means 'to show which was hidden'), and the revealed text reads:
Today, if a developer wants to build an app that targets Arm, they generally write their code and build the app binaries on a x64 Windows PC, and then copy the built binaries over to an Arm device upon which to run or test the app. If they need to debug the app, they have to hookup a remote debugging session from their x64 PC.
Windows Dev Kit 2023, as an Arm-powered device powered by the Snapdragon® 8cx Gen 3 compute platform, will enable Windows developers to build, test and debug Arm-native apps alongside all their favorite productivity tools, including Visual Studio, Windows Terminal, WSL, VSCode, Microsoft Office and Teams.
I realize there are a lot of words there, but sometimes in this industry we have to read them.
"Everything you need to develop Windows apps for Arm. Powerful AI. All on one device."
"Introducing a developer-class desktop device to build, debug, and test native Windows apps for Arm."
A tech specs tab shows you exactly what the hardware is.
How did you spend hours on this?