Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/13/2013)
I get your point. It's somewhat fair, but not completely fair.SSMS2012 works fine for me. Zero display issues, remembers my folders, no hangs (although it is slow). Some of your complaints sound like issues inside your environment/setup, some (like sp_helptext) may be bugs. I'm curious, do you have VS2012 issues? They're based on the same shell.
I think your analogy of only playing out one speaker is highly flawed. It's more like "i play my stereo outside and on a 200ft extention cord and it's not as loud as they said". You are noting specific flaws, and not general functionality. I'd argue SSMS is way more complex than TVs or stereos in terms of what it does.
Not to let MS go on some of these bugs. They certainly let slip some big ones through, and they ignore others, which is maddening. I certainly share your frustration, but about different things. In some sense, that's the issue; we cancel each other out.
I wish that some of these companies would get sued and be held more responsible for the shoddy work. They ought to be required to reduce their level of bugs below some level. Zero isn't possible, and most cars/TVs/etc don't have zero, but they should be low.
I don't currently have VS2012 installed, to my knowledge. I have VS2010 and that does seem to work OK - then again, I only use the basic functionality of it.
Yes my example was extreme, granted. The point being though: you wouldn't be happy with a product you had gone out and brought having faults, so why accept them in software?
Another, hopefully better example then: If you brought a blu-ray player, only to find that the menus don't work - would you see that as shoddy? I would, and I would be thinking, 'if they got that wrong, what else have they missed?'