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What Do Programmers Like About .NET?
prostoalex writes "Software Development Times did a special report asking the .NET developers what they liked about the platform, since it's been 18 months since the .NET introduction by Microsoft. While the positive responses generally acclaimed Microsoft on integrating C++/C# logic development and VB GUI generation into one environment, some complaints are out there as well. From the article: "When Mark Lindley, manager of development services at Cimco, was working with .NET version 1.0 in September 2002, he needed to implement SSL transactions over TCP/IP. 'It took a long time to figure out that this functionality hadn't been implemented in .NET yet,' recalled Lindley." The article also mentions Honeywell Automated Control Systems, a .NET/J2EE software operation, considering moving their operations to .NET platform."
The article kept hitting on this point:
... "With .NET we are saying, 'Don't write the code. Connect two things with an object, and hit a button.' It's a big change."
.NET represents a fundamental or substantial cultural change in the manner in which we develop software. The development I've done in .NET never compressed down to the level of "connecting two things with objects and hitting a button." Sure I use the base libraries all the time but they are just general purpose programming tools. They can give you stuff like Hashtable and ReaderWriterLock classes. If before .NET you found yourself spending a lot of time writing these kinds of classes, you probably spent a lot of time reinventing the wheel. The bulk of my programming time has always been spent on business or application specific logic.
"It's a cultural change
I really don't understand how
I don't agree about C# being an inferior Java clone. First things that come to my mind is that Java doesn't support properties, indexers, enums, attributes and multi-dimensional arrays.
Also, C# way of handling events is just so much simpler and powerful ! Listeners are a pain in the ass IMHO.
About defining a UI in XML, it will be part of Longhorn release whatever when that be. Microsoft developped their own XML definition and named it XAML. Read more on Devx here.
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
These seem to be major issues about
- Microsoft doesn't use it for its own products. If
.NET is so good, why? If someone said, "I would never eat this, but here is some for you", would you take what was offered? - Programs written in
.NET are more easily decompiled. If you discover and
implement an especially good algorithm, others may be able to see what you did. Maybe
that is the reason for number 1, above. - All the tools are proprietary. The programmer and his employer become like dogs on a leash. Their fortunes are tied to the management decisions of the proprietary vendor. Computer company managements often make sink-the-company decisions; consider the
.com self-destruction, for example. When your company uses proprietary tools, your company is dependent on the lifestyle of the proprietary vendor's management, the vendor's ability to hire and keep good people, the vendor's financial decisions, and the vendor's estimation of whether they want to invest more in the tools you are using. - My understanding is that the license agreement for
.NET prevents a company from using .NET to compete with Microsoft in some areas. But how does a company know if software it develops will eventually compete with Microsoft?
Here are three of last week's articles about Microsoft:- Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
- (PDF file): The
Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) urges the Department
of Homeland Security to stop using insecure (Microsoft) products.
-
Stupid
Microsoft Tricks -- Why the Richest Company on Earth Feels it Needs to
Cheat
So here's the question: Do you want your company to be tied to the fortunes of Microsoft? If you trust Microsoft to do the right thing for you and your company, then use Microsoft's proprietary tools.The mainstream media is starting to realize that Microsoft products are especially insecure.
The computer industry attempts to educate those in government about the insecurity of Microsoft software.
A famous industry columnist exposes an example of Microsoft's apparent dishonesty. When ordered by a court to produce all its email records concerning a company that alleges theft by Microsoft, there was a 35-week gap.
But remember, Microsoft's products regularly die. Not only do they die, but they die on schedule. It's assisted suicide: Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Businesses. Bill Gates is the Dr. Jack Kevorkian of the software world. Mr. Gates has, for example, decreed the death of Windows 98, which is used by more than 100,000,000 people throughout the world. It's a little like Dr. Kevorkian expecting to do his work with Jennifer Lopez. Hey Dr. Gates, a lot of people think the patient is still very much alive!
Open source means never having to bark.
you don't?
you should.
you will.
you do.
they're ridiculously well decompiling(any turd, including me, can do it using the tools available), and even obfuscation(with obfuscation tools) doesn't make it very unreadable. though, when building server/client stuff.. maybe it's just good, at least you won't end up kidding yourself that you can trust the information that comes from the client. obfuscation makes the class files smaller though, sometimes handy for j2me(j2me apps/games in general oth stay so small usually that the obfuscation is a joke as far as obfuscation goes).
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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Exactly what do you find to be inferior?
.Net. It leads directly to runtime errors and loss of program reliability. In my opinion this design mistake outweighs by far all of the positives .Net has over Java.
.Net. The framework does not seem to support good architectures as well as Java does. Doing MVC in .Net just doesn't seem to be as natural as it is in Java. .Net also has a long way to go in terms of scalability, portability and 3rd party support.
In terms of the programming model I find that the unchecked exception model is a serious deficiency in
I am also finding that it is hard to implement many of the commonly used design patterns in
What's even funnier is that, after being influenced by my post, they modded it as flamebait. So you went up, and I went down. That's the result of bored moderators visiting stories in which they have no interest because they can't comment and mod at the same time.