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

Irony

[bigtallmofo]

How ironic would it be if Microsoft eventually abandoned .Net and Mono was the only remaining development environment that supported C#?

Re:Irony

[truthsearch]

Java is not open. C# and the CLR are. They are ECMA standards.

I'm getting tired of correcting people about this, but I can't help myself. C# and the CLR ARE NOT OPEN. An organization has embraced them in their list of standards. That does not mean they can be changed by anyone and still be a standard. They are not documented any better or worse then Java and their implementations do not have to be open.

The only difference between these things being standards is that Microsoft can't change the interfaces and say they comply with the standard. Meanwhile Java can be changed at any time by Sun.

And if you still want to call the CLR open then don't forget many parts are patented. So having it as an "open" standard is irrelevant when you can easily be sued by its creator for using it.

Re:Irony

[dubl-u]

C# looks much nicer, and unlike Java it's a ECMA standard. Why would I want to use Java?

I'm not saying you shouldn't use C#, but here are some of the reasons I continue to use Java:

• broader tools support (esp. IntelliJ IDEA, which I love)
• JDKs available from Sun, IBM, Blackdown.org
• much larger pool of developers
• many good open-source Java libraries
• much larger pool of employers

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:Thin wrapper?

[jolyonr]

Point. Woosh - that's the sound of you missing it completely.

The problem being described is that by being "merely thin wrappers to Win32 calls" it is simply papering over the enormous cracks and legacy rubbish that is the current Win32 architecture when there was an opportunity here to break free of that all and start with a new, clean, functional and efficient environment for the 21st century.

I don't deny that Microsoft have done a good job in the packaging, but as the old saying goes, however hard you try, you can't polish a turd.

Jolyon

Design Flow

[should_be_linear]

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

Re:Design Flow

[conteXXt]

Props are due.

Hardly anyone ever mentions that little tidbit anymore as it was assumed (correctly) from the beginning that .NET was only supposed to fool the Windows Java developers to give up on Java.

Everyone else saw through the thin veil.

Re:Design Flow

[rednaxel]

As I use to say:

• Java: one language, any platform
• .NET: any language, one platform

Microsoft pays the bills!

[erroneus]

There are thousands if not millions of people who have built thier understanding of computer systems around Microsoft's operating systems, software products and programming environments. Let that idea settle in deeply for those who see a much larger picture and take it for granted.

This is not only their identity as programmers, but their foundation for career building and therefore their house and car payments, their breakfast and dinner and their hopes for retirement. It's a huge deal to criticise Microsoft for these people. Is it any wonder why it becomes a holy war for so many people? It's no mystery to me at all -- I even have a brother who has fallen into that trap and in order to keep peace in the family, I pretty much keep my "opinions" to myself much of the time.

So while I am glad to see greater use and corporate acceptance of Linux or other alternative operating systems, I kind worry a little for those who aren't allowing themselves to see things beginning to crumble for Microsoft and that if they aren't careful will fall along with them.

Tried .NET a year ago

[MSBob]

I agree that it is a thin wrapper around (bad) Win32 APIs.

The one thing Microsoft has been consistently bad at is developing nice clean APIs. They often provided very good tools to help you cope with the sheer ugliness of their APIs but MS never managed to create an API that felt natural to use.

I had high hopes with .NET I thought MS was going to turn a new leaf in the API department and finally provide a programming environment that's usable without a gazillion wizards. No such luck. All of the OLE/COM crap sticks out of .NET like a sore thumb. The whole thing feels like a stovepipe patch on top of an old and crufty system and it just doesn't hang together as well as the Java runtime for example.

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:Thin wrapper?

[MooCows]

1. I write a .Net application.
2. Microsoft rewrites Windows, ejects the old API but keeps .Net compatibility. (it's a thin wrapper after all)
I don't have to rewrite my application (not even recompile it), while MS can fix their low-level API.
3. PROFIT!!!

I do agree there are a bunch of flaws in the .Net library.. but the whole system is still a solid improvement over MFC et al. IMHO

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....

If I say something idiotic and inflammatory...

[PepeGSay]

everyone will read it and post it on Slashdot. This guy is using kernels of truth to act as if those kernels of truth are indisputable evidence of his incorrect conclusions. e.g. "The sky is blue. Blue is the color of water. Therefor if I fly I will drown."

Re:Already debunked.

[CreatorOfSmallTruths]

Being anti-Microsoft doesn't automatically make something true.

Yes.. But having dissassembly output does...

Ick

[the_2nd_coming]

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

Re:Already debunked.

[thePjunisher]

Dumbass. Next time, link to a article that supports you claim, not one that contradicts it...

WinFX marks the start of a similar transition, with .NET turning from a wrapper into the native API. .NET need not be a set of wrappers any more than Win32 needs to be a set of wrappers for 16-bit versions of Windows.

Happens every now and then

[leandrod]

I am old enough to remember the original VB columnist at some high-profile magazine (was it Dr Dobb's itself?) throwing the towel on the column because he couldn't stand the bloating of the language by MS... and the C++ Advisor-or-something-the-like columnist (was it Unix Magazine or what?) quitting the column because C++, being designed by committee, required a language lawyer and was only getting worse.

No news here. If you don't care for elegance, you go awok with evolution. ISO SQL, Perl, there are many many examples.

Now if only people would rethink and take the pain of learning a real, elegant language... a functional (Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, ML) or pure OO (Smalltalk, Squeak) or truly relational (Tutorial D, D4) one.

Instead of just trying to keep extending known languages into unknown fields. C is just structure, platform-independent Assembly; how come people want to create custom applications in it or its Java, C++, C#, ObjectiveC? This comes only as an indictment of the alternatives, or worse still of programmers and their managers.

And BASIC, it was only a stepping stone in learning COBOL. How come it is used to deploy anything more than a prototype? Don't get me started with excuses.

It is high time managers and programmers get real and start using languages designed to do what they want. COBOL, Pascal, Smalltalk, Lisp... each in their niche, they are better than C or BASIC and their overextended derivatives.

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.

Re:Python? Ruby? Squeak?

[XMyth]

Why do 50+ window managers exist? Why do KDE *AND* Gnome exist when XFCE is so much faster?

Why do YOU exist when I already exist?

70 million .Net Users

[n9uxu8]

From DF Blog:

Soma: We have seen over 70 million downloads of the .NET framework from Windows Update and the Microsoft Download center to date. For a simple guy like me, that translates to about 5.5 million downloads a month. Another interesting datapoint is that in 2004, we expect to have about 54 million new PCs shipping with the .NET framework installed/preloaded. We also have over 2.5M developers targeting managed code.

It's a small point, but how many users have .Net installed because they did a windows update and it was one of the available options? My mom has .Net installed, but I guarantee she is not using it for anything other than keeping her hard drive full.

Dave