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Microsoft’s Problematic Lack Of Nightly Builds For IE

Really interesting insight into Microsoft’s development cycles for Internet Explorer in an article over at Ars Technica.

It makes me wonder what obstacles Microsoft’s IE Team has that prevents it from making quicker releases and getting crucial feedback from developers so that Microsoft can deliver “…what developers really want in their browser”. Without that frequent release cycle, how else do you get that feedback?

It’s an interesting contrast with, say, the SQL Server team or some of the other developer tools teams, where the CTP is the rule, and getting releases in front of users quicker is the name of the game. How much before the official release of SQL Server 2008 did Microsoft start selling licenses to run CTP builds of SQL Server in a production environment?

And, I’m willing to admit that maybe they really do have those frequent release cycles internally; heck, I know we’re releasing things internally long, long before a customer ever sees them. That doesn’t mean I agree with it, though.