Microsoft resources for developers
I recently had reason to put together a list of general resources available from Microsoft aimed at software developers. I know there are many more out there but this was intended as a list of high level resources to get people started. If you have other suggestions in a similar vein feel free to suggest in the comments.
Sample code
The TechNet gallery has over 6,000 script examples available:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/
The MSDN Developer Samples repository has over 2,000 samples:
https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/
The 1code project on CodePlex is a phenomenal resource developed and maintained by our team that operate our online forums. The 1code library of sample code can be searched and browsed with the 1code sample browser application.
The Windows SDK samples page is here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms717483.aspx
With additional .NET samples here:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=192044
Feedback and support
The Connect site is our portal site where people can join “Connects” for individual products that are in various stages of development, post bugs, browse and search bugs, suggest features, etc.:
https://connect.microsoft.com/
Our primary portal for support is here https://support.microsoft.com/.
Although not directly focussed on the developer audience, the Fix It resource is a phenomenal resource that is continuing to evolve to auto diagnose and in many cases fix common issues:
https://support.microsoft.com/fixit/
and the emerging https://fixitcenter.support.microsoft.com is worth a look.
With a couple of clicks you can get from there to the Product Support Centres for Developer Tools:
https://support.microsoft.com/gp/hublist_developer
The MSDN portal is intended as the main entry point for all things developer:
Once logged in, subscribers get access to priority support in forums:
Online concierge:
Subscriber downloads:
And free eLearning resources:
There is also an MSDN support hub which can be reached via this URL:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/support
or by clicking the Support link on the main link bar on the MSDN portal:
Product group operated sites and other portals
For ASP.NET and IIS we have product group maintained hub sites at https://www.asp.net and https://www.iis.net which are great sites although they are also in the process of getting a major update.
The .NET Framework has its entry hub here:
And the Visual Studio entry hub is here:
https://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio
The MSDN blogs site is where 1,000s of Microsoft employees working across development related roles in product teams, support, consulting and field engineering share their insight and expertise:
It can be quite insightful to subscribe to the top level RSS feed for this and be prepared for the deluge of new post notifications.
Channel9 of course is a legendary resource for getting insight into the minds of our product teams:
HTH
Doug