Microsoft introduced a new stand-alone product today called LightSwitch, that is intended to facilitate client application development for the business user who may not necessarily be a professional developer. The UI looks slick, very much .Net 4, WPF/WCF, and the demo appeared to present the product as extremely easy to use. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, and although I typically applaud new developer stuff Microsoft puts out, this one concerns me.

One person commented on Jason Zander‘s (@jlzander) blog how he feels this will give management the impression that application development is easy all-around, and when they create a 5 minute app and insist on changes that are outside of LightSwitch’s scope they’ll grumble about why it takes us so long to do it when it took them 5 minutes. Agreed, and explaining the reason to the business users or management is not that easy. I think we’ve all experienced this before, a lead, supervisor, manager, director, or other business user who works in a technical capacity but is not as skilled in development wants to hear you but tunes you out as soon as you start talking shop. I share this concern…but it’s still cool!

Here’s the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2010/08/03/introducing-microsoft-visual-studio-lightswitch.aspx