...the lot of a programmer who writes software for Microsoft products. Which is to say, for damn near all software, and thus damn near all programmers. The only place to learn about the interfaces, the languages, the proprietary technology, is a Web site called Microsoft Developer's Network. Gigabytes of impenetrable jargon, most of the material written by technical writers who haven't a clue, "explanations" of error messages consisting of paraphrase ("access denied" = "You have been denied access to this resource"), material removed to "encourage" you to abandon your investment in learning last year's technology and move on (and pay up) to Microsoft's latest and greatest, and greatly flawed, brainstorm....

...welcome to my world.

At least you have a choice in the matter!