Are Device Developers Second Class Citizens?

Some of you may remember that when [VS2005] shipped I had a few words to say about the fact that the Windows Mobile 5 SDK(s) weren’t in the box.  Of course these decisions come down to what will/won’t fit in the box (well on the ISO as in this case). With the release of the Windows Mobile 6 SDKs and VS Orcas just around the corner, will device developers have to download 2 SDKs if they want to work with both platforms?  The irony here is that at the core they are the same version of Windows CE, so IMHO there should be a single project type that handles both OS types!


Another interesting (but almost useless) bit of trivia is regarding the Remote Tools that are available for device developers.  I’ve often wondered why these are in the Start menu (Start->Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio 2005->Visual Studio Remote Tools) and not in the External Tools section under Tools within Visual Studio. Turns out this is another packaging decision: In order to ship within Visual Studio the tool must be available in all 9 languages that Visual Studio ships in.

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