The initial comfort level I had with the Ruby community were key in encouraging me to persue this new weird thing called “Ruby on Rails.” But few people seem to ever have that experience with the Microsoft community. Experiments like Channel 9 seemed fresh at the start but quickly emerged as choreographed marketing. Like when the camera pans back to reveal the Western saloon storefront is really a big cardboard facade in a modern movie studio lot.

Today I want to pass along a couple of links regarding the role of the community that forms around particular technologies, both prompted by the recent demise of the NDoc project.

First, Philip (Java devloper) articulates the differences between the Microsoft developer community and other ones including Rails; while Sean (seasoned .NET developer) provides excellent insight as well.