Did this bug report get me banned from Visual Studio?

 As an avid user of Visual Studio and a developer of many Visual Studio extensions, I have a strong interest in enhancing the discoverability and user-friendliness of extensions. I was pleased to learn about the recent implementation of a requested feature and eagerly went to explore it.

Recently, I've also been exploring the use of WinGet DSC to configure a new laptop and have been experimenting with .vsconfig files to streamline the process.

During these investigations, I encountered an issue regarding the use of extensions containing "Extension Packs" (references to other extensions that should also be installed). Unfortunately, attempting to include them resulted in installation failures without any accompanying explanation for this limitation. Through a process of elimination, I confirmed that the inclusion of extension packs was the cause.

I submitted a bug report detailing my findings, which can be found [link to the original report, which was unfortunately removed]. Regrettably, I discovered that my access to the site has since been restricted, citing violations of the Community Code of Conduct. 

Upon revisiting my initial post, I can only speculate that my direct and passionate writing style may have been misunderstood as impolite or disrespectful, but am unsure if this is the issue. I acknowledge the importance of maintaining politeness and respect in online interactions and am committed to improving in this regard.

I am left wondering if utilizing AI to refine my expressions to ensure a consistently polite and respectful tone may be a helpful approach moving forward. Perhaps this precautionary measure could prevent unintentional misinterpretations. 

Below is what I posted.

I share it here as an example (and warning?) to others. Be polite and respectful!

Themes of DDD North 2024

This last weekend, I was excited to get to speak at the DDD North conference again.

As a one-day, five-track conference there was a lot going on and a lot of varied content.

Of the sessions I attended and the discussions I had with other attendees, I noticed lots of mentions of:

• AI
• Testing (in a positive light)
• General good development practices rather than talk about specific tools or technologies.

Yes, I recognise that the talk I gave about the importance of documentation and testing as we use more AI tooling while developing software likely skewed my thinking and what I was more inclined to notice. It was just nice to not be the only person saying positive things about testing software. (Although at least two speakers did make jokes about writing tests so there's still a long way to go.)

The increased focus on generally applicable "good" practices was also good to see. While learning about a new framework or technology is useful in the short-terms or for specific tasks, spending time on things that will be valuable whatever the future holds feels like a better use of time.

While I'm still waiting for the official feedback from my talk (sorry, no video) upon reflection, I'm glad I did it and it was a good thing for me to do. I don't want to give a talk that anyone could give and so basing it on my experiences (& stories) is good rather than reading official descriptions of technologies, describing APIs, or showing trivial demos. I also want to do in-person events in ways that benefit from being "in person". This talk wouldn't have worked the same way as a recording and I wouldn't have got as much from it either. If I could just record myself talking about the subject and released it as audio or a video I'd have done that but it wouldn't be the same or as good. Although, it might have been less work. Maybe I'll do that in the future though.

 Here's me during the talk in front of a perfectly timed slide ;)

Lack of nuance

 No nuance is almost always incorrect!

Yes, "almost" is very important in that statement.

If you get a response/answer/instruction without any acknowledgement of the nuances, you're almost certainly not getting the full picture. 

How do you know the importance of what is missing, if you don't know what's missing?

Always use a regex rather than string manipulation

 Although, maybe not always:

It's almost as if absolute claims aren't always correct.

The required amount of documentation and testing will vary

The amount of documentation and the number of tests required will vary between:

• code bases
• the stage of development
• the people working on it
• what the code does
• more....