Man, this gets more and more daunting by the day. After 12 years as an "infrastructure-only" computer nerd, who'd tried (and failed) many times to force myself to learn how to write code, I *finally* found something (i.e. VS2005 + .NET 2.0) that gave me a reasonable balance between "learn before doing" and "never getting any gratificaiton before throwing up my hands in frustration and chucking it for another year".
After plugging away in my spare time (I'm still mostly an infrastructure goon by day) for over a year, I'm starting to feel comfortable enough with managed code development that I'm willing to branch out into related areas. I've tackled a couple of VSTO projects (with fair-to-middling success), I've plugged away at XSLT 1.0 templates (but not without vowing never to touch such an ill-thought-out programming construct MANY times), and I'm now contemplating writing myself a life-enhancing add-on for VMC (so that I can possibly increase the likelihood of
sharing the Photos that I'm currently accumulating - and rarely reviewing - on my VMC system).
I can appreciate the gratification that you've achieved in conquering something so f'n convoluted and intentionally-more-difficult-than-it-needs-to-be. [I warn you that the first time I'm able to actually render a customized report using a from-scratch XSLT template, I'll be dancing naked through the streets! Don't come anywhere near Portland during that time unless you're the type of person who looks closely at carnage & gore while passing a car wreck. ;)]
However, this smells of
Stockholm syndrome to me - not the kind of thing most people would willingly subject themselves to, but the after-the-fact positive associations that are in part a subconscious defense mechanism to rationalize the inordinate agony they've been through.
If you had it to do all over again - and had the choice between two equally rich, flexible and powerful programming models, the only difference being one is standards-oriented (e.g. pure .NET + XAML, assuming XAML is truly bigger than just Microsoft) and the other is proprietary to that application (e.g. .NET + MCML, or even .NET + XBAP/XAML) - would you still choose to subject yourself to the proprietary solution? [I guess that's a rhetorical, or at least a leading, question - don't bother.]
The idea that I have to teach myself a complicated, hard-to-understand, only-good-for-VMC-apps "framework", and that I'll only be able to leverage that learning if I happen to continue to develop further for the VMC [platform]/product, doesn't feel all that encouraging to me. If I could tell myself that I'm learning something that's reusable across the Microsoft family of platforms (such as XAML at least hinted at), or that it really was just a temporary oversight that Microsoft was scrambling to resolve, then I'd feel much more enthusiastic.
However, after the past five days of research into this, I'm left with the feeling that I'm in for a miserable experience, that I'll be able to commiserate with a very small handful of helpful souls like yourselves, and that
perhaps someday down the road, some poor soul will be able to leverage my hard-won but sadly small amount of reusable code.
Man, maybe I need a drink/some sleep/a stronger SSRI ;) ... or maybe I need to go back to XSLT to remind myself of how much
worse it can be...