Two weeks after Microsoft release an update to their Atlas project that, well, completely changes the client-side API, and I'm still catching up trying to re-write my code to get it back to the working state it used to be in.

And then they go and release .NET 3.0. There are no relevant breaking changes there, so you'd think it was good news, right? Well, to make up for the lack of breakage they've resorted to a few other nasty tricks.

I actually read the instructions telling me to uninstall the beta versions of the products, and what order to uninstall them. I even did exactly what I was told. Then I installed .NET 3.0. And that was fine. Then I tried to install the Visual Studio bits for .NET 3.0, and it failed, saying I had a beta of .NET 3.0 installed. The installer wouldn't continue.

So I used the tool Microsoft provide for just this situation. It said uninstall .NET 3.0 and then run the tool. I uninstalled .NET 3.0. I ran the tool. It said I had a .NET 3.0 beta installed (at least it's consistent), and it offered to uninstall it for me. So naturally I let it.

It did indeed uninstall the .NET 3.0 beta (this is the .NET 3.0 beta that I didn't have installed, remember). It also, quite thoughtfully, uninstalled a couple of gigabytes of MSDN documentation and my SQL Server Express installation too. I'm installing SQL Server Express again (aw crap, I've just realised I'm not installing SP1 with Advanced Services – I'm going to have to do it again…) I'm not sure what to do about the documentation – it looks thoroughly broken.

And they call this progress.