Microsoft to make programing fun

In an attempt to make programming fun Microsoft is adding what can be best described as “Programmer Achievements” to Visual Studio.  That’s right: now you can program and get achievements that can be shared on Twitter and Facebook, as well as be tracked in Microsoft’s own leaderboards. 

The Visual Studio Achievements plug-in will offer 32 achievements to start with that are spread across 6 categories.  The actual reasoning behind the achievements (besides showing off) is a careful selection of achievements to get programmers to explore new features, as well as to track significant programming milestones. 

It remains to be seen exactly how popular it will be with the programming set, but we suspect that it could spawn an entire Achievement frenzy from Microsoft.  Imagine getting achievements for creating a report using macros with Microsoft Word or developing an interactive diagram with Visio; or maybe being able to complete your Microsoft Project ahead of the created timeline.  The idea of productivity achievements just boggles the mind.  Only Microsoft knows how far they are going to take this.