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This according to Raymond Chen, anyway.

I kinda think the Mono project has the right idea: if someone wants a particular feature, pay for us to develop it. Otherwise, we do the features we want in the order we want.

I think service and support is a viable option though. Even when someone truly puts in effort to make it easy to use, it will be hard for somebody. There will also still be bugs to fix in even the best software.
This guy goes into why that is pretty well. Not that I am claiming that Microsoft makes the best software, but they do throw a lot of resources at trying.

You're not distinguishing between Linux the kernel and Linux the OS. The parent was almost certainly talking about the latter.

Userland backwards compatability on Linux is OK but we've certainly had our fair share of cockups. The rollout of the new threading systems (NPTL and the new TLS system) was pretty much a backwards compatability disaster. I currently have to run XMMS of all things with LD_ASSUME_KERNEL because of NPTL. Oh sure, I tried to debug it. Doesn't work when gdb pukes and dies - again due to threading. Don't even get me started on the breakage Wine has had to deal with.

The glibc/kernel guys claim they know how to write backwards compatible software but in reality they don't. They don't, because unlike Microsoft they treat backwards compatability as a science, as a fixed set of rules that if they follow they think can be held blameless. Of course when you get situations like NPTL where the old system was so broken everybody had workarounds which stop working in obscure ways when the underlying bugs were fixed, this logic breaks. They still break backwards compatability, they just end up playing the blame game instead, which is stupid.

We could have much better backwards compat without the huge hacks Microsoft use with even a few small changes to process, but I'm not seeing people interested in making those changes.

Given the intensity with which it is probably being scrutinised, I'd imagine any "obvious" embarassments would have already surfaced by now.

Hell, if you want a laugh (and if you're a win32 dev you will learn something too) go read Raymond Chens blog. Not only is this guy a near-genius level coder, but he's been working on Win32 (and USER in particular) for a very long time now. Yes, I know some of you think that's an oxymoron. He often posts interesting stories about its development and about the bizarre hacks they put in to work around broken apps (some parts of windows even go so far as to detect and correct stack corruption).

you know, as far as a design tool goes, id say webmatrix shows a lot of promise. while it is microsft (bad) and version 0.6 (hm), it allows quite a large flexbility in creating quick and dirty solutions. you dont have to do any asp; its just as functional as an html page creator. it seems to be good for actual design solutions versus looking really pretty.

on a number of occassions, ive thrown a layout together, sent it out. since it is an interactive page, people can use it and see where issues might occur. the biggest problem with photoshop is that its difficult to see HOW people will use the site. this is, in my opinion, more important than the visual accetability of the site.

you can use panels in webmatrix like layers in photoshop. you can hide or show them as you wish. i think its going to be a nice product when it comes out (assuming it stays free).

http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/

The link I gave in another comment (and orginally got from someone's comment on the k5 story) explains that ms works to make sure that all major apps don't break, even if this requires hacks. This is not just for tools used for and made by ms.

I'm not a software engineer, but it seems to me that the OS should offer a rigid set of services and functions to the programs that are supposed to run within the environment provided to them. Am I wrong about this?

My property macro for VS.NET is located here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/cnagel/archive/2004/01/21/6 1153.aspx#61172
I tried to paste it here, but the filters won't let me :)

Here's your macro: http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2003/04/29/6168 .aspx
There are plenty of people working on tons of free libraries out there. The gotdotnet workspaces are pretty good place to search for things, but your best best is to follow the weblogs on asp.net.

Let's put it this way: it happens so often with Microsoft's competitors that it seems likely that either Microsoft is deliberately sabotaging rivals who code for Windows or Windows itself has some serious issues and causes a lot of programs to glitch. Either way it doesn't look good for Microsoft.

If you really do think this, I'd suggest reading Raymond Chen's blog. Raymond is a Windows shell programmer (and author of the famously popular TweakUI) and has been working with Windows since long before Windows 95. He's constantly adding entries on "why we did this" or "why it works like this" that shed a whole new light on the internal workings of Windows. Some of the more interesting articles are on his archived site, like The Story of the Shell Folders Key or What about BOZOSLIVEHERE and TABTHETEXTOUTFORWIMPS? Raymond does actively monitor comments to his blog postings and if you have a coherent question or comment, he will usually respond.

Raymond Chens web log. Lately he's been discussing IA 64 programming. I don't pretend to understand 1/2 of what he's talking about but I thought some of the readers here might be interested in what he has to say.

I hope accomplishing this didn't involve modifying undocumented internal structures.

Raymond Chen will be pissed.

Then, with more and more languages, especially ones with VMs, you get further and further away from the hardware. The end result: you lose performance. It does more and more for you, but at the expense of real optimizations, the kind that only you can do.

Now the zealots will come out and say, "Language X is better than language Y, see!" To me this argument is boring. I tend to use the appropriate tool for the job. So:

• Python for scripts, prototypes, proofs of concept, or components where performance generally is not an issue.
• For desktop apps, Visual Basic (yep, most IT apps are in VB). There is no justifiable reason for an IT department group to write a sales force reporting system in C++! If you want C++, go get a job at a software company. Stop wasting money and time making yourself feel like a hotshot. [I'd consider Kylix here if it was based on Basic. Why? Because honestly, Pascal is just about dead, and Basic is the king of the simple app. Let's just live with it and move on. I do want a cross-platform VB . . . ]
• For web apps, well, I stick around PHP/ASP.NET. Why? Portability! And moreover, the sticking point in a web-based app is not the UI layer; it's usually the underlying data extraction and formatting. Don't waste your time with lower level languages there. IMHO it's just not worth it. JSP and Java stuff, yuck! Too much time for too little bang.
• Java/C# (also consider mono/LISP for most production apps. Why? Portability! I want no vendor holding me by the balls. I want platform independence on the back end, and these are the few ways to achieve it. I'd include Haskell/OCAML here when appropriate. Perl? I'm loathe to use Perl as production, considering most Perl code cannot be understood 2 weeks after it's written. I'd rather take the hit in performance and be able to pass the code to someone else later.
• C++/C for components--just components--where performance is at an absolute premium or there exists some critical library that only has this kind of interface. But this step has to be justified by the team, with considerable explanation why a different architecture could not suffice. Otherwise, the team could waste time checking for dangling pointers when instead it could be doing other things, like finishing up other projects.
• Assembly? Only when there is not a C complier around. Embedded stuff. Nowadays, you just do not have the time to play.

Yes, my teams use many languages, but they also put their effort to where they get the biggest bang for the buck. And in any business approach, that's the key goal. You don't see carpenters use saws to hammer in nails or drive screws. Wise up!

Check out Monad, the OO extendable command shell for Longhorn. Quite interesting.

Btw, on 2000 and XP (maybe 9x too), you can assign a shortcut to the command prompt, say Ctrl+Alt+S, so hitting that will get you a command prompt quickly. And enabling autocomplete to and QuickEdit and Insert modes on cmd.exe adds a lot to productivity too.

Your typical IT project

Just goes to show that you should never underestimate the importance of good communication skills.

the best way for Moft to keep an eye on their employees' blogs is to encourage them to run them at Moft sites like ASP.net and gotdotnet.com.

1. Code Project
2. SQL Server Central
3. .NET Weblogs, SQL Junkies
4. ASP.NET forums
5. 4 Guys from Rolla
6. ASP Alliance mailing lists
7. CodeGuru discussion forums
8. TopXML discussion forums - this is mostly about Microsoft XML technologies
9. .NET Junkies
10. SQL Team .

1. Code Project
2. SQL Server Central
3. .NET Weblogs, SQL Junkies
4. ASP.NET forums
5. 4 Guys from Rolla
6. ASP Alliance mailing lists
7. CodeGuru discussion forums
8. TopXML discussion forums - this is mostly about Microsoft XML technologies
9. .NET Junkies
10. SQL Team .

There are sites like the Watergate hotel's reservation system that show the potential with Flash. But it is still damnably difficult for non-designers.

The answer is a product Macromedia has under development called Royale. Royale will allow developers to create Flash apps entirely in a code editor. It's been referred to as Flash for programmers.

Even noted Macromedia critic (and dot net apologist) Jesse Ezell has nice things to say about Royale.

You can read the Royale FAQ here

Macromedia will show Royale for the first time in public at their developers convention in late November.

Man Holmes

can be found at http://weblogs.asp.net/. It's an aggregate of .NET developer blogs, many of whom are at the PDC. Lots of pictures, reviews of speaches/demos/presentations/etc. Worth checking out, I prefer the reviews from in the trenches, like this one or this one, rather than the standard Yahoo/Reuters/media crap.

can be found at http://weblogs.asp.net/. It's an aggregate of .NET developer blogs, many of whom are at the PDC. Lots of pictures, reviews of speaches/demos/presentations/etc. Worth checking out, I prefer the reviews from in the trenches, like this one or this one, rather than the standard Yahoo/Reuters/media crap.

can be found at http://weblogs.asp.net/. It's an aggregate of .NET developer blogs, many of whom are at the PDC. Lots of pictures, reviews of speaches/demos/presentations/etc. Worth checking out, I prefer the reviews from in the trenches, like this one or this one, rather than the standard Yahoo/Reuters/media crap.

• Composite files built at request time,
• The results of running a script,
• Interaction with a web application 1 2 3 4,
• Remote procedure calls and object access 1 2,
• Instant messenger communications, and sometimes
• Static files.

Bear in mind though, that I said it was 'source-released'; I'm not sure if it fits the open source definition.

I generally object to a bloaty IDE

I'll grant you VS.NET is bloaty, but you can use a plethora of other tools if you like: DreamWeaver, any ol' text editor, or a ASP.NET-specific editor free from Microsoft that can fit on a floppy - Web Matrix....proprietary HTML

HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0 standards are proprietary? Most people think the w3c's standards to be "open."

...and a complete inability to separate content from code

??? You can have your visual HTML elements in one file and your code in a completely separate file. Isn't this the very definition of code and content separability?

I agree with a number of your points if you are talking about classic ASP, but not ASP.NET.

There are 2 open-source IDEs for the .Net Environment of note:

1. Web Matrix, an ASP.Net oriented IDE. Can be downloaded from:

http://www.asp.net/webmatrix

2. #develop, a more general IDE for C# and VB.Net. Can be downloaded from:

http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.a spx

Both of these IDEs are only available for Microsoft OSs at this time.

3. A C# plug-in is available for Eclipse. It can be downloaded from:

http://www.improve-technologies.com/alpha/esharp/

It should run on Linux, using Mono.

The lesson here is to run MS update.

I thought that was good advice too, until last week when I ran it to protect from the Blaster worm. After installing the patch, my webserver stopped working! I had to fiddle with my security settings to "work around" it. The problem is detailed here:

MS patch breaks IIS

MS hasn't fixed this one yet AFAIK. So what can I do now. I'm screwed if I patch, or if I don't patch.

> If Microsoft decides to treat better their clients, it will involve many expenses (they can afford them anyway), but I don't think they will really appreciate it.

The Seattle Times has conducted an interesting interview with Microsoft Vice President and CIO Rick Devenuti, in which he comments on the company's internal testing procedure called dogfooding and explains why he has a PC running Red Hat Linux in his office. Devenuti's comments about ATMs needing "five nines" uptime is especially ironic given this incident. Picture here

Man, how did this make Slashdot

Here is a more interesting story...

The Seattle Times has conducted an interesting interview with Rick Devenuti, Microsoft Vice President and CIO, in which he comments on the company's internal testing procedure called dogfooding and explains why he has a PC running RedHat Linux in his office. Devenuti's comments about ATMs needing "five nines" uptime is especially ironic given this incident. Picture here

Match.com has ported their website to .NET. One of the developers of the site, Jason Alexander, has posted a post mortem on his blog. While they have 45 servers in their web farm running the site, he may be a very important source that can answer your question.

- Jalil Vaidya

Hello,
I have been Developing a .NET Portal Application for the past few months. I ran a quick Test on our application just to see how it would run.
Specs Are as Follows:

App Server:
Duron 800
512 MB RAM
40GB HD 7200RPM


DB Server:
Celeron 500
640 MB RAM
20GB HD 7200RPM


As you can see, these are not server class machines, but they seem to run the app alright. I ran a simulation of this application based on the IBS Portal www.asp.net running 150 Concurrent Requests Per Second:

The average Requests per second on this app were 98.51. So, IMHO on low quaility hardware, the .NET platform can handle about 100 Requests per second before it starts to get hot.

You can't just download MSDE and be on your way without paying Microsoft for some other product.

Actually if you are building an ASP.NET application using Web Matrix and it's for a local intranet you can download MSDE and use it. And since Web Matrix is free as well.....

You can't just download MSDE and be on your way without paying Microsoft for some other product.

Actually if you are building an ASP.NET application using Web Matrix and it's for a local intranet you can download MSDE and use it. And since Web Matrix is free as well.....

How about this:

http://www.asp.net/customers/default.aspx?tabIndex =8&tabid=1

• Framework 1.1 redistibutable (23MB) The minimum requirement to get anywhere with .net, but you might prefer the rather more comprehensive:
• Framework 1.1 SDK (106.2MB) All the commandline tools including the compilers for C# and vb.net, documentation as well as the framework libraries. If you don't want an IDE at all, this download is all you'll need.
• Web Matrix (1.3MB) Free ASP.net IDE which fits on a floppy, requires only the redistributable rather than the whole SDK, and includes a working local-only webserver derived from:
• Cassini Web Server (217kB) Open sourced, very simple web server for running ASP.net apps provided as a code sample. Only works on calls from the local machine but rem out one line of code and (if you're brave/foolhardy) this no longer applies. If you'd prefer to keep if Free as well as free (apart from the SDK of course), you could look at:
• SharpDevelop (8.3MB source or 5.3MB executable) An open source GPLed IDE for C# with a little bit (so far) of VB.net support

• Framework 1.1 redistibutable (23MB) The minimum requirement to get anywhere with .net, but you might prefer the rather more comprehensive:
• Framework 1.1 SDK (106.2MB) All the commandline tools including the compilers for C# and vb.net, documentation as well as the framework libraries. If you don't want an IDE at all, this download is all you'll need.
• Web Matrix (1.3MB) Free ASP.net IDE which fits on a floppy, requires only the redistributable rather than the whole SDK, and includes a working local-only webserver derived from:
• Cassini Web Server (217kB) Open sourced, very simple web server for running ASP.net apps provided as a code sample. Only works on calls from the local machine but rem out one line of code and (if you're brave/foolhardy) this no longer applies. If you'd prefer to keep if Free as well as free (apart from the SDK of course), you could look at:
• SharpDevelop (8.3MB source or 5.3MB executable) An open source GPLed IDE for C# with a little bit (so far) of VB.net support

I've programmed in Java and C# and I have to say that I love C#. Java can't even come close to the ease of use you get with Visual Studio and C#. When I started with Java I would spend hours trying to figure out paths and dealing with all that nonsense. I tried the IDEs but they never seemed to work right. I fire up Visual Studio and it works great. There were bugs in the original IDE but most of them have been fixed.

Right now I am working on a multi-tier business application for the Fortune 1000 company I work for and the amount that two developers can get done with C# and .NET is staggering. We wrote the eCommerce site for the comapany and it does over $600,000 a day in revenue on Windows server and C#.NET.

If you are interested in developing web applications but don't want to buy Visual Studio give WebMatrix a shot. It is a great looking and totally free IDE. A lot of people here would fall in love with C# and .NET if it had come from anywhere else other than Redmond. It's a shame since it really is a great platform.

Hmm.. it doesn't come with the OS, but the ASP.NET Web Matrix is one hell of a free development tool. You can create all the .NET programs (windows and console) and web pages (ASP.NET) you want, and hey.. if you want a free DB to go with that, just download MSDE, which is, as far as i know, 100% compatible with SQL Server and even feel free to redistribute it with the apps you create with the ASP.NET Web Matrix.

Doesn't sound all that bad to me since i say: "Screw cross-platformness!" :D

Start with Windows, add the .Net Framework or the SDK, download and install Sharp Develop and you've got everything you need to develop console apps, WinForms apps, Libraries, etc... For free.

SharpDevelop is basically "Visual Studio .Net Lite" and it costs nothing.

For ASP.Net applications, grab the WebMatrix tool from ASP.Net.

Neither one is perfect or can fully replace Visual Studio .Net but they're free and really quite functional.

Free GUI's for .Net programming:

ASP.net Web Matrix is a free GUI for ASP.NET projects by "Never give away anything" Microsoft... WROX even has a PDF book on it... Wrox Press ASP.NET Web Matrix>

SharpDevelop an Open Source IDE that is currently Beta .95, and looks like it has promise. Allows for console, service and web projects in VB, C# and Web Form projects in C#. My experience is that the Web Form designer still needs some work, but this looks like it will rock.

Free GUI's for .Net programming:

ASP.net Web Matrix is a free GUI for ASP.NET projects by "Never give away anything" Microsoft... WROX even has a PDF book on it... Wrox Press ASP.NET Web Matrix>

SharpDevelop an Open Source IDE that is currently Beta .95, and looks like it has promise. Allows for console, service and web projects in VB, C# and Web Form projects in C#. My experience is that the Web Form designer still needs some work, but this looks like it will rock.

I started learning to program in the 80â(TM)s and Iâ(TM)d rather have the options the kids today have. Windows might not have a basic interpreter, but there is a scripting host. You can also download the .Net SDK and the free .Net Web Matrix which gives you a stripped down visual studio type interface in a 1.2 MB package.

Why not download one of the ASP.NET Starter Kits and check it out yourself?

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft but this is not an official endorsement nor rebuttal of the claims in the article. I'm simply pointing people to where they can verify the claims in the article for themselves

The WebMatrix IDE (for ASP.NET) which the grandparent post mentioned was developed by Microsoft employees. I don't think they are worried it'll be competition for VS.Net anytime soon.

1. in the web development circles, it's used for next-generation tools and services for writing web applications. for example, ASP.NET, SOAP RPC, and various other web- and XML-based services
   
   
2. in the web customer services domain, it was going to be a secure roaming account scheme, a.k.a. the Passport .NET
   
   
3. most interestingly, in the windows application development domain, .NET is also used to describe the .NET Framework, a new set of libraries that's meant to slowly replace the standard Win32/64 libraries (see articles at ars technica for really detailed info). the framework is basically a cleaned-up, garbage-collected, language-agnostic version of Win32. it's great. but hardly anyone thinks about it when they hear .NET-this or .NET-that. :)
   

We're discussing ASP.NET, not ASP. Totally different, it would be like comparing Perl CGI scripts to JSP.

As for most of your other complaints, they all involve cost. So here we have this Mono implementation. On top of that the .NET SDK from Microsoft is free, that includes compilers and everything. Microsoft has an ASP.NET development environment called Web Matrix that's free. They have an Open source web server you can use that's free, and so on and so forth.

"Please someone tell me what's the big deal of all this crap?"

If all you know about is Linux news you saw on /. you probably aren't knowledgeable to call anything else crap.

Notice the additional space inserted into the URL. Here's a link to the reply from Microsoft: http://asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&Pos tID=88049.

Please read this to get both sides of the story, it brings several items to light, including an overview of the purpose of the contact.

Or they could just run Microsoft's developer's/desktop SQL engine for free.

Microsoft has never insisted that ASP.NET requires IIS. Unlike ASP, ASP.NET is very nicely separated from IIS and stored directly in .NET under the System.Web.Hosting namespace of System.Web.dll. Microsoft have themselves produced an ASP.NET web server called Cassini which was released as a part of the ASP.NET WebMatrix project (free designer for ASP.NET web pages and services) as a testing entity. Ted Neward has written a document that goes over ASP.NET hosting. It should be relatively trivial to add ASP.NET to any web server.

Honestly, I don't have to much trouble with .NET. From what I've seen, it seems to merge many of MS's technologies, and since the .NET framework and SDKs are free downloads, that's fine.

Actually, I'm pretty impressed with ASP.NET Web Matrix. It's free, WYSIWYG and code-friendly, and small (1.2MB).

1. Newsgroups: Most microsoft technologies have a newsgroup in the microsoft.public.* hierarchy that are read not only by Microsoft employees but by dozens of regular developers who just want to help others who are having problems. I personally monitor microsoft.public.xml and microsoft.public.dotnet.xml where I answer a lot of questions and pass many of those I can't answer to the actual devs who work on the applications and APIs in question.
   
   
2. Online Communities: There are a number of strong online communities where Windows developers congregate to share information, tips and tricks. These range from Microsoft sponsored sites like GotDotNet, ASP.NET, and Windows Forms.NET that are run by MSFT employees who participate actively in these communities to independent sites like 4 Guys from Rolla, Code Project, Dev Hood, DevelopMentor and CodeGuru
   
   
3. Microsoft Websites: Few places beat MSDN as a source of information about Microsoft technologies. By the way, if you are into XML check out my Extreme XML column
   
   
4. Mailing Lists: There are number of mailing lists hosted by various parties about Microsoft technologies. The ones I've seen with the most vibrance have been the DevelopMentor mailing lists and the ASP Friends lists