Is there a real profit of Developer Networks like for example MSDN?

Question

Hi there,

so every now and then i try to get in contact with other Programmers who struggle with the same Problems than i do...

I read a lot of Tutorials und Reports in such Networks..just in order to get to know what other Programmers do and how they "try" to explain that.

Do you think there is a real benefit from getting involved in such Networks? Some of them seem like a big commercial for me. Stackoverflow is a great example how Developer/Geeks etc can work together.

I spend a lot of time here reading questions and answers. So why is it not Companies like Sun or Microsoft came up with such a great Community Idea. Maybe i am bad informed...feel free to enlighten me. :-)

Answer 1

• MSDN Forums
• MSDN
• MSDN Library
• MSDN Community Center

There's not much selling going on in these places, especially not in the forums.

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For some reason, I got the same question several times today, so I wrote Where to Find Forums on Microsoft Development. Comments and criticisms always welcome.

Answer 2

MSDN actually has community support, but for some reason people don't tend to use it very much which is unfortunate as there are a lot of sections of MSDN where they simply state the obvious and don't provide any useful examples.