Microsoft Developers Respond To .NET Criticism

bonch writes "Richard Grimes of Dr. Dobbs Journal wrote an article entitled Mr. Grimes' Farewell, in which he discusses what he feels are inherent flaws in .NET, and how he is abandoning his .NET column. Grimes argues that .NET is merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls (Avalon uses message functions that date back to 16-bit Windows), that Microsoft has abandoned confidence in both .NET and sales of Longhorn, and that the framework itself is too large and poorly implemented, most of it ported from past APIs like WFC and VB. Dan Fernandez, Microsoft's Visual C# Project Manager, has responded in his blog. Richard Grimes appears in the comments to defend his criticism, referencing first-hand disassembly of .NET APIs using ildasm. Scott Swigart has also responded to the criticism of Visual Basic .NET. Apparently, Mr. Grimes struck some nerves."

Comments

Put it this way... how would you feel?

[syntap]

How would you feel if someone criticized stuff YOU made in a public forum? This blogging stuff has gone TOO FAR and doesn't respect peoples' feelings.

Re:Put it this way... how would you feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post sucks.

Re:Put it this way... how would you feel?

[Dony]

WHOOSH!
What was that! Something just flew over my head!

Re:Put it this way... how would you feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Girlfriends and creating development environments are mutually exclusive.

It'll be better

[zecg]

I hear that now they have this spyware that downloads and installs .Net framework on users' PCs. Now we need a worm that does the same and the thing will soon be widely deployed!

So what else is left to sell?

[Nuclear Elephant]

Microsoft has abandoned confidence in both .NET and sales of Longhorn

Great! Does this mean they'll be shipping their own Linux+OpenOffice Distro?

Re:So what else is left to sell?

[BRonsk]

Great! Does this mean they'll be shipping their own Linux+OpenOffice Distro?
He didn't say anything about MS loosing confidence in Office!! Maybe they'll port Office to Linux using Mono?

Re:So what else is left to sell?

[geminidomino]

Given my experience with their stuff, I wouldn't trust anything named "Turd Sandwich" from Microsoft.

Design Flow

[should_be_linear]

First platform independent framework/runtime, implemented for only one OS.

Well he's right about one thing

[SeanJones]

Calling it C# certainly has made web-searching difficult. Google only turned up 7 million three hundred thousand entries.

Re:no suprises.

[Dacmot]

Python + wxPython = killer cross platform Rapid development language.... as soon as you get past the quirks.

Just like Perl/Tk

What about .MAC?

[spacedx]

I am a .Mac developer and I can assure you that iDisk is more than a thin wrapper for WebDAV calls! Homepage is the best web development platform I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Re:What about .MAC?

[spacedx]

(Score:5, Interesting)

Wow. Just wow.

actually...

[sethadam1]

but as the old saying goes, however hard you try, you can't polish a turd

Actually, the saying goes:

"You can polish a turd all you want, but it's still a turd."

Re:actually...

[khallow]

And in proper slashdot tradition, I demonstrate both sayings are wrong.

Take A Moment To Thank The Mono Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Ain't we all lucky to have a group of rabid MS fanboys running free inside the open source community?

Re:Start again?

[monkey_jam]

Microsoft sits on a treasure chest, namely 10 years of bugfixed, known-to-be-working code

Yeah, now if only they'd release it....

Re:Start again?

[skraps]

You should check out my new language, "Braindead". Every program is exactly one character long! Of course, some people complain that they have trouble finding which of the +Inf characters to use, but that's a different problem.

OT: Scott Swigart

[dackroyd]

Apparently, you also forget the pain of pre-.NET development. I haven't forgotten the insane amount of work it was to build a Web site with tables that let you sort and page data. I haven't forgotten how much work it was to write client-side and server side code to validate form fields.

Wtf? Apparently he has forgoten to use PHP for web development.

Re:Tried .NET a year ago

[skraps]

Yes, COM and Win32 ugliness do show through in .NET. However, they couldn't have done it any other way. Remember when .NET came out any every single windows programmer was bitching and moaning about having to re-learn and re-implement everything? Imagine how many times worse that would have been without backwards compatibility. To make things "just work" in a backwards compatible way, some of the ugliness had to show through. All abstractions leak.

It is unfortunate, but there is no other way it would have got off the ground. Presumably COM and Win32 stuff can be phased out in the future. The warts will always be there, but these things are used in the real world of business computing, not some totally pure abstraction wet dream world.

Ick

[the_2nd_coming]

I feel dirty reading so many MS Developer comments... bleh

Hello, Microsoft tech support?

[leonbrooks]

I buried one of your turd sandwiches in my garden and all of the plants died. So did the pests living on them. And my neighbours' plants. Can I install a Turd Sandwich Service Pack or something?

Re:Hello, Microsoft tech support?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS Troubleshooting Help for "Turd Sandwich"
1. Is your garden on the planet earth, and exposed to sunlight, oxygen, and water? []y []n
2. Are you using MS Turd Sandwich in the Spring, Summer or Fall? (MS Turd Sandwich is incompatible with Winter in some climates) []y []n
3. Please grade and re-seed your lawn and garden, replant your trees and shrubs, and rebuild any property on the affected location. Did this solve your problem? []y []n
4. You have reached the end of the troubleshooter for MS Turd Sandwich. Please contact tech support for the same information, or upgrade to MS Turd Sandwich 2.0, which contains twice as much Turd as the previous release.

That's proprietary software for you....

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with Open Source Software, when the kid developing it graduates and moves out of his mom's basement and abandons his open source project; other kids will take the lead (or, of course, you could just hire the first kid).

When Microsoft or other proprietary vendors abandon their projects - well, your business is SOL.

Re:Happens every now and then

[yerM)M]

Have you actually ever tried to compile with pascal? It's too damn fast, I'd never get a chance to read slashdot again. Long live templated C++!

Re:no suprises.

[justins]

Python + wxPython = killer cross platform Rapid development language.... as soon as you get past the quirks.

When the best RAD environment available is an abortion like Boa Constructor, you are suffering from more than "quirks."

Re:But they won't rewrite Windows

[Dcnjoe60]

I'm curious as to why you think win32 apps will still run on Longhorn? There were/are many win32 apps that failed to run on XP. Microsoft blamed the programmers. But if the compatability layer is actually compatable, then shouldn't they have worked?

Maybe Microsoft can grab a copy of Wine and use it for their compatability layer.

Re:Ok, I'll bite

[Anonymous Coward]

C# is that sketchy lawyer chick that just moved into the brownstone across the street that Mr. Smith used to live in (Mr. Smith was the nicest old guy you ever knew). On the contrary, Ms. C#, even tho she sometimes gives cookies to the neighbors and plays a nice game, has the look in the corner of her eye that just says someting is wrong or fake. Like there's something there you just can't trust.

The question is, does Ms C# export? And even more important, is she thread-safe? The last thing you'd want is for her to spawn a bunch of new processes when you had already sent her to garbage collection.

(Insert your own innuendo-meanings here)