Peter Fisk points out the kind of thing that big companies fall prey to: internal discontinuity that leads to external confusion:

The .Net libraries contain *two* complete user interface libraries - one based on WinForms (Win32 API) and one based on WPF (vector graphics). And to make life interesting, a lot of the components have exactly the same names (eg Button, ListBox, etc) even although they are totally incompatible. Ok - maybe a smart developer should be able to figure it out (old style vs new style). But then, there is a third set of components (WPF/e) which is supposed to play a big role, but nobody will say what is going to be in the libraries (* because it’s still a secret *).

Mind you, smaller outfits run into this kind of problem as well (quick - count the number of parsers hidden inside VisualWorks :) ) - but it's far more prevalent in big organizations. MS is getting closer and closer to that brick wall...

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