If you’re a Windows programmer you should know who Charles Petzold is. Ten years ago his Programming Windows book was the best source of information on the win32 API, and now he has written a handful of .Net books. Apparently he’s come to the conclusion that Visual Studio Rots the Mind and his lengthy rant is excellent. Personally I don’t think this is Visual Studio’s fault, especially since in many ways Visual Studio is just keeping up with competitors like Eclipse, but is more a commentary on how current development tools encourage development to follow certain patterns that focus on productivity instead of creativity.