"Ease-of-use" is one of those buzz terms that software marketeers routinely inject into their promotional copy to describe their product. The term is one of those unarguable concepts; after all, who's not in favor of ease-of-use?

Of course, the term is never qualified, quantified, or compared. We're just supposed to nod our heads in acknowledgment that the particular product being described is easy to use, and, implicitly, we're supposed to be quite happy that we're not being saddled with one of those horrible products that is difficult-to-use.

The term, therefore, has little or no actual use. Universally deployed but rarely described, "ease-of-use" usually just takes up space in marketing brochures that could otherwise be taken up by helpful terms such as "flexible," "comprehensive," or "seamless interoperability."

But the idea of software that is easy to use is an important one, and one that is as important to developers as it is to end users. This issue of .NET Developer's Journal examines it in some detail in a number of articles.

Developers have long had tools, frameworks, and environments that are powerful. The past three decades of the IT industry have been characterized by software that continues to take advantage of, even push the limits of, the continuous increase of computing power in a world driven by Moore's Law.

But much of the work is overly time-consuming, tedious, and prone to a high number of errors. Making things easier for developers doesn't create lazy developers, it creates better developers. It lets them design, test, and deploy things more quickly and efficiently. It lets them interact with a growing welter of languages, approaches, and philosophies that show no signs of becoming less complex anytime soon.

In this issue, whether you are reading about ASP 2.0, DDL, or Rich Internet Applications, you'll see that theme of "ease" recur repeatedly, as the best minds in the software business seek ever-better ways of handling routine tasks and complex builds.

The scripting revolution that is upon us adds both a new thicket of complexity as well as shortcuts through it. The RIA/AJAX/Atlas revolution liberates all of us from a static Web 1.0 world while emburdening developers with often-uncharted challenges in creating the dynamic Web 2.0 world we all seem to seek. Meanwhile, the present generation of developers struggles with moving data from platform to platform (seldom seamlessly), just as in the past.

It will never be easy in any platonic description of this term. And "ease-of-use" will continue to be generic market fodder. Yet making things easier for developers remains a primary goal for those who create development software. It is our hope that a readthrough of this issue of .NET Developer's Journal will make things just a little bit easier for you.