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Well, it is very easy to bash VS.NET or indeed VS.anything. However, IDEs can make things a lot easier. If you think that Intellisense is a bad idea, then you should also think that the equivalent feature in Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA is just as bad.

Whilst I agree that Intellisense (and its ilk) is pretty much a broken feature for C++ development, it is not a broken feature for Java and/or C# which are languages that truly benefit from it. Personally, I do not use api-assistance to "learn" the api. The API of Java (and I suspect C#) is so huge that keeping it all in your brain is a big waste of time. You brain is for having ideas not remebering obscure APIs. Using tools to help leverage your brain is a GOOD idea, not a bad one.

I just wish that C/C++ was a sufficiently closed language that api-assistance could be made to work properly.

Having said the above, virtually everything else in the article makes sense. The lack of (visible) openness and extensibility is a problem with MS environments . Of course, they are targetting developers who do not think all that deeply about their work, so automated this n' that is exactly what that kind of developer needs. These people are working in the (mono)cultural desert. You cannot see anything wrong when all you know is one tool.

And who are we to judge such people harshly?

They get things done. Their employer is happy with them. Is this wrong?

No.

It may not be what you (or I) would call sophisticated but it is effective (for them).

There IS a lot of extensibility in Visual Studio. But I guess the author didn't take the time to learn his API.

If it wasn't extensible, then how would there be:

http://www.sapphiresteel.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/07/CodeAndSeek/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/12/VisualStudioAddins/
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=0f086d87-de5f-4ac0-9f20-f044c0826d0a