This article was very popular and made it's way through the blogosphere a long time ago. I guess I'm just behind the times! Anyway, Joel Spolsky wrote an article about Microsoft losing the API war, and how moving to the web will hurt Microsoft's core business.

I revisited the article because I remembered that he talked about two camps in Microsoft - Raymond Chen vs. MSDN. The reason that was important to me was because I remembered the Raymond Chen camp, but not the other one. I was looking because those are the names of my divisions in my fantasy football league (geeky, I know!).

Anyway, while looking through the article to find the other camp, I read a bit of it. It's definitely an interesting read, one that if you haven't seen the article yet, and you're a developer, you should definitely take the time to read it.

It's interesting to have a look at this now that Windows Vista is more prominent. I don't necessarily agree with Joel on some of his statements, mainly because I think Microsoft is making an attempt to bring the Web into the OS, and make it work seemlessly with the Web - ala Vista's inherit ability to support RSS, but the article does make you think.