AJAX, Echo, .NET - What Impact Have They Had?

BjB asks: "We've talked about platform neutral frameworks for years, but with the recent story about AJAX threatening the desktop, it made me think about the hype around two frameworks that were supposed to bring applications to the browser: Microsoft .NET and the Java competitor Echo framework. Both technologies boast that you can write a desktop application that can also easily be exported as an identical web-based application. I know a lot of developers hailed the .NET framework as a major innovation and jumped on board. The Echo framework was the counter-attack that leveled the field. Now, over two years later, I don't think I've ever seen anything that leverages either one? Was this a short lived battle with nobody reaping the rewards, or has it actually made some in-roads?"

Comments

when in doubt, google it

[I8TheWorm]

Or monster it. Monster.com hit count on .Net is "more than 1000," Echo yields 328. I'd say that means both are being used.

Most .Net gigs I see are for corporate intranet sites, though quite a few are for web based applications.

Re:Because they're still platform dependant.

[GeckoX]

No, I realize that. I'm generalizing on how asp, and recently, asp.net has been mostly used to produce rich intranet applications with ease.

Asp.net, and especially 2.0 have made huge advances in removing the ActiveX dependancies to allow for easier development of rich applications for the public internet.

Asp.net 2.0 is the first from MS to really provide the tools and controls to design richly featured websites from within their IDE (VS2005) using the provided toolset.

I've been doing the same for years, starting with traditional asp. However, it required doing all the complicated stuff by hand and from scratch. As such, it wasn't/isn't done a lot. It's a joke using VS2005. We will begin seeing more and more of these applications every day now.

.net gripes

[ackdesha]

After a handfull of .Net projects...
ASP.NET may be great for the smallest of projects or usable for large corporate enterprise apps, but there really isn't much middle ground to scale your designs. So I think you'll end up with a lot of poorly designed apps on this platform IMHO, because you have to be an expert OO wiz or wrestle with the VS designer (a total dead-ender). This isn't helped by the horrible docs (LosFormatter anyone). The docs give only the most trivial examples and they obviously weren't written by anyone who ever had to actually use the platform. Also, where do dynamically typed languages fit in the picture. Sure I can use C#, C++, VB.NET, but where's my perl, python and ruby dot net (and I don't mean editor support)?

Re:.net gripes

[blincoln]

Where's pascal.net and cobol.net?

He's holding out for JCL.NET and Motorola68000-ASM.NET. .NET is pretty neat. It has its shortcomings, but it's awesome that I can add things like MD5 hash and PNG export functions with five lines of code and one line of code respectively.

ASP.NET isn't bad either, especially compared to the pile of crap that was ASP before .NET.

Re:.net gripes

[anomalous cohort]

you'll end up with a lot of poorly designed apps on this platform IMHO, because you have to be an expert OO wiz or wrestle with the VS designer (a total dead-ender)

I think that this comes to the crux of the matter, though not in the way that the original poster intended. As an application technology platform, I find .NET to be pretty sound. The problems come in the gap between expectation and reality that results from how .NET is marketed.

.NET is a MSFT property. MSFT is a tool vendor and, like all tool vendors, promotes the message that a better tool is the answer to all life's problems and that their tool is that better tool.

Many companies that embrace MSFT tools like the message. Why bother learning all that complicated computer science stuff when with a little drag-n-drop, some wizards, and some designers and you're done?

If wizards and designers could do the job, then they would have a long time ago and computer science would be relegated to the same intellectual dust bin as alchemy or astrology. Not that there isn't a place for wizards and designers, it's just that you still have to know and understand what's going on under the covers. When used as a code generator, wizards and designers are fine. When used as a surrogate architect or as a crutch by developers who lack the understanding of the underlying technology, the outcome will not nearly be as wonderful as what is promised by the tool vendor's marketing department.

In short, wizards and designers will do no better than those who use them.

Re:in house

[Momoru]

I see quite a few .NET web sites (look for anything with .aspx). Although it is definitely bloated, the speed at which one can develop a web app on .NET is awesome. Things that used to take hours can literally take minutes. Thats the positives...

The real hope of .NET, being able to deploy to other platforms is somewhat of a lost cause, although Mono is doing pretty well. The promise of being able to write in any programming language is also technically possible, but really not as straightforward or easy as just pounding something out in VB.NET or C#.

That said, .NET really is a good thing, and it blows old ASP, cold fusion and PHP out of the water in terms of server side pages. The next version looks even more promising, as long as it doesn't try to generate more of its own shitty javascript.