Ask Paul: June 25 (Premium)

With Microsoft announcing a major new version of Windows for the first time in several years, it’s not surprising where this week’s questions lean.
In-person conferences
will asks:

Curious if you have heard anything about how and when Microsoft conferences will happen going forward? While online is nice, I can say that nothing beats getting together with peers and I have missed it. I was not sure if Microsoft was looking to make changes to its conference structure for things like Ignite and Build?

Microsoft hasn’t said, and they’re wise to move slowly on this based on the legal exposure, etc. So I don’t expect to see a live (or hybrid) Ignite this fall, and I think that places the next major Microsoft in-person event in 2022. But maybe we’ll at least see a live Surface event this year? That’s possible.

There are also third-party conferences happening. I was surprised to see Richard Campbell hosting a new Dev Intersections conference in Florida recently, for example, and that organization is promising a bigger show in November (I think in Las Vegas.)
Uno Platform
jt5 asks:

I know you have mentioned doing another programming series, have you taken a look at the Uno Platform for cross platform app development?

Yeah, but not seriously. Uno contacts me fairly regularly, and I’m interested, but I want to focus on the Microsoft in-house stuff at least for now. My understanding is that Uno is quite impressive.
McAfee
drjohnnyray asks:

Curious about your thoughts on John McAfee.

He was nuts. Everyone knows his name because of the pervasive McAfee anti-virus/anti-malware software that still comes on many PCs, but he sold the company in 1994 after founding it in 1987 and walked away with what today would be considered a very small amount of money ($100 million). He lost almost all of that in the 2008 financial crisis and was forced to sell off all his properties in the U.S. and live like a vagabond (and potential neighbor murderer, which I can somewhat relate to), running into legal issues everywhere. What a mess.

If you’re interested in John McAfee, there are all kinds of retrospectives available now because of his surprising end---this one from the New York Times is particularly good and it links to some prior articles that are also worth reading---and a documentary called Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, which I believe I saw on Netflix or similar (it’s not there anymore).

Honestly, this guy is only notable because the software he played absolutely no role in popularizing in recent years.
Commenting
hrlngrv asks:

I realize you don't develop or maintain the commenting system on this site, but are the ANY plans to allow editing comments ever again? Possibly the greatest downside to current commenting compared to what used to be possible.

Yes, I assume so. I have collected a list of problems that were created when we switched over the commenting system and am as frustrated as anyo...