.Net More Expensive Than Once thought

Which brings to mind this question:

If it costs money just to own the product that will enable .Net development, as opposed to not spending anything for something like Linux, PHP, Apache, an SQL server, etc, in addition to having a functional desktop without something like Solitaire or Minesweeper taking up space, then why do we keep hearing about the failures of .Net before it's even turned into a real product?

Great article, 'Kat. I particularly liked:

Some people are hesitant to put Internet Information Server (behind a public Web site) because of security issues. Well, .Net doesn't really address those problems,' Driver said. 'IIS is still just as vulnerable with .Net running behind it as the older ASP (Active Server Pages) code running behind it.'

Such a scholarly article! LOL!!! Did you read:

'The new development tool package also ushers in ASP.Net, a specialized type of software called a class library, replacing an older technology called Active Server Pages'

I think the author was just throwing darts at a dictionary.

I've worked with .NET, and I'd rather use Java.

I've spent the past 9 months doing .Net projects for a CA government agency. In my opinion the bottom line is this.

For desktop (client-run) applicaitons, VB/C#.Net brings nothing to the table. The 6.0 series of products (Visual Basic, Visual C++, etc.) was easier to use and 'better.' This is another way of saying that it's not worth the headache moving to .Net if all you're doing are standard code-and-install desktop apps. VB.Net is not 'bad' it's just not any 'better' than 6.0 for most (standard) business applications.

For server-side Active Server Page applicatons (and web-development in general) ASP.NET is very, very good. It brings the drag-drop and code-behind-the-forms VB paradigm to the development of web pages. You can create highly complex web apps in no time at all using the Visual Studio tools. With ASP.NET you don't have to hire a rocket-guru to do a web application. The presentation (HTML) is seperate from the 'get the data' logic and not a kludged-up, mish-mash like ASP 3.0 /VBscript or in PHP, etc.

I'm sure it won't be long before the Java/PHP folks have a design tool that will be as good or better than Visual Studio.Net.

While I'm a M$ developer, I run Mandrake Linux 8.2 on my personal machine (still learning it.) and working on getting PHP / Java skills. If the non-M$ companies/groups can come up with a tool as easy to use as Visual Studio.net, it will blow MS.net out of the water.

Maybe such an IDE exists, but I don't know about it.

M$ has done what every corporate web programmer or manager has wanted.... a quick and easy way to develop a complex web site where the HTML is seperate and apart from the business logic. Do that for Java/PHP and I don't think anyone would give .Net a second look. For all it's hype and marketing, all .NET brings to the developer's table is a 'better' IDE and a simple to use/understand paradigm... one already known to millions of VB 6.0 developers.

Al Canton President Adams-Blake Company, Inc.

The big problem with this though is that it fools people into doing things that don't actually work. The HTML layout it produces is fragile and easily broken if the recipient has a slightly different setup (i.e. different font sizes). It takes just a few seconds to produce something that looks as though it'll work, then due to use of absolute positioning will overlap labels, buttons and textboxes etc. It also produces a lot of non-standard/broken HTML/CSS/DOM markup. It may just work on the intranet or a controlled environment, but put it on the internet and things will fall apart very quickly. It doesn't even supply a standards complient target (rather having to be targetted to a specific browser).

It merely makes VB forms designers capable of creating very broken websites that will fail given the slightest opportunity.

After takin' a swig o' grog, Ian Davey belched out this bit o' wisdom:

I've been noticing that kind of problem on a few sites when using Opera or Galeon instead of IE.

They're got the chokehold, they're going to continue to use it.

That's been true well before .NET; the problems I have most are with IE on Microsoft sites, wherein the scripts break distressingly often.

I have only worked with ASP on a highly controlled corporate intranet and I have no doubt that much or all of the above is valid. The sysadmin for the state agency I'm contracting to is scared to death of putting an IIS server out there on the part of the intranet connected to the Internet. Right now the agency website is run on an Apache server and no one is in a great hurry to move anything to a 'live' IIS server due to security (or lack of it!) reasons.