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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

'Another dark day': Users slam Microsoft over Polyglot Notebooks deprecation [theregister.com]

Microsoft has abruptly announced the deprecation of Polyglot Notebooks with less than two months' notice, throwing the future of the .NET Interactive project into doubt.

The deprecation will come into effect on March 27, whereupon bug fixes and support will cease, and no new features will be added. However, the extension won't be automatically uninstalled from a user's Visual Studio Code installation.

Polyglot Notebooks is an important element of the Microsoft .NET Interactive project, which Microsoft describes as "an engine and API for running and editing code interactively." .NET Interactive can run as a kernel for notebooks and "enables a polyglot (multi-language) notebook experience," according to Microsoft. "For the best experience when working with multi-language notebooks, we recommend installing the Polyglot Notebooks extension for Visual Studio Code."

That recommendation presumably remains in place until Microsoft pulls the plug.

The deprecation announcement was made in the project's GitHub repository and the thread was locked, limiting conversation. However, users were quick to raise additional issues, questioning the reasoning behind the deprecation and the short time frame.

One pointed out the Polyglot Notebooks extension in Visual Studio Code was Microsoft's recommendation for data analysts, since Azure Data Studio is retiring at the end of this month. Microsoft's reaction was to remove the recommendation.

It appears the author of the Azure Data Studio retirement documentation was unaware of the impending doom facing the Polyglot Notebooks extension. An individual claiming to be the author posted: "As a result of the deprecation announcement for Polyglot Notebooks, I am legally bound to remove that recommendation from the Azure Data Studio article, because it would mislead customers to keep it in."

Which is true. However, as another user noted: "Removing that documentation from the Azure Data Studio page – and giving no transition path at all for those users (like myself) who depend on those Azure Data Studio features – seems a pretty user-hostile approach. We've already followed Microsoft's transition guidance once and ended up in this situation. Should we now look elsewhere for this functionality?"

The short notice and mixed messaging speaks more of dysfunctional management and communication within Microsoft than anything else. If only there were some tool at the company's disposal for Teams to communicate and collaborate.

We'll give the final word to another user reacting to the deprecation announcement, who said: "This is just another dark day for Microsoft customers, and the decision makers are nowhere to be seen taking accountability for the impact of their decisions."

Original Submission