Charles at his best

Everyday, for development activities, we leverage the power of Integrated Development Environments (IDE) such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, Borland Delphi et al. The power comes at a price. We tend to become habituated to the quirks and approaches of the IDE. The challenge, metaphorically put, is that we drive the IDE like a car and not become overly dependent on auto-pilot.
Charles Petzold – an authority on Windows Programming delivered a speech to the NYC .NET Developers’ group entitled "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind". The speech expresses similar thoughts in a different style. It’s thoughtful (17 pages) – http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html. Do read it in your spare time regardless of whether you work on Microsoft technology, Java or Delphi.