MSDN the Microsoft Developers Network is a heaven for any self respecting geek or wonk who ever did something to do with windows.
When I give presentations I make one thing very clear to my audience. I tell them if you are a developer, an architect or no matter where your footings in the SDLC model, without MSDN you are always going to be a loser.
People don’t argue on this but even if they do they don’t realize that content they get from else where although in some cases better of and easier to understand always evolves from the MSDN.
A huge team of people work behind the scenes currently under the leadership of Sara Williams. She has brought some great features to MSDN lately.
MSDN now has Developer Centers catering to specific vertical topics. It’s a lot easier to find information on MSDN then ever. But the search is still poor as most Microsoft employees would agree with me. I know first hand that they use google instead (sometimes), I hope Sara’s reading this, the new search is a way better but still needs to go a long way. I suggest page ranking details to be merged with the current search algorithm.
The pre managed era content (c++, MFC, VB, COM and what not) has been cleaned of in its majority and the old MSDN or that part of MSDN is unfortunately not available online anymore. That’s a bad decision they should have kept it at least for history sake, I guess its right place will we a tech museum some years later.
Well that was just to introduce the MSDN to the novices, you will find all you need to know about 'your thing' there and when you don't you have the knowledge base or the ever popular news groups at your service.
Lastly professionals who do go there can save on a lot of typing by simply pointing to ‘MSDN’.com and not the long sub domain we knew before. Guys and gals get clicking. See you at the MSDN.