I recently had to develop a small application for the MS ecosystem (An Office add-in) and as I use Pop OS as my daily driver, I had to switch to my Windows partition. While this was considerably simpler than what you describe, it was a very bad experience developing on Windows for the MS ecosystem. Bad and bloated documentation and boiler plate code of very low quality. It seems like MS responds to the competition with quantity instead of actually building some quality packages and frameworks.
> It seems like MS responds to the competition with quantity instead of actually building some quality packages and frameworks.
This! 100%! For many many years now. It's painful for all people involved (including the .NET community). Microsoft doesn't mind though, they love developing a shitload of competing frameworks, because once a framework hits version 3 or 4 where it starts to feel slightly mature then the internal incentives require the teams to dump the project and "invent" something new to stay relevant internally.
Yeah, developing Office add-ins is a nightmare and the Office team has totally screwed up Office extensibility.
FWIW they march to their own drum, they are largely independent of Windows and Developer Division. I would not tar all of Microsoft’s efforts with the same brush.
