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Devs Worried Microsoft Will Dump .NET
joelholdsworth passes along a story summing up concerns from developers that "Microsoft seems to be set on adopting HTML5 and JavaScript as its main application development tools for Windows 8," and asking, "is this the end of .NET?" The article continues:
"To bet the farm on HTML5 and JavaScript being the next big thing is a good bet, but it's not a bet that Microsoft can easily take and make good. Even if the world does turn to JavaScript and platform-independent apps, this still means that Microsoft loses.
The problem is that Microsoft needs a technology that gives it an edge, and HTML5/JavaScript is everybody's edge. Microsoft developers feel left in the dark and very angry at the way they are being treated. You only have to browse the Microsoft forums to discover how strong the feeling is: forum post 1, forum post 2 and an open letter."
Reader Sla$hPot points out a similar story at OS News.
This is dupe from last week. Just for Joel to get some visitors to his ad ridden .info site...
No.
If you watch the presentation for what it really is, what they're saying is if you want the 'New Hotness' flashy canvas, yes your apps will have to be HTML/JS. No, they're not going to throw away everything out there, you'll be able to use 'old and busted'.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
developers worry that closed platform multinational vendor may deprecate without concern
bloated proprietary framework in favour of "Next Big Thing(c)" in order to shore up appearance
of internet dominance. further research suggests multinational vendor may dabble in/support "next big thing"
until it loses its questionable interest, profits slip, lawsuits ensue, or wacky CEO sings songs.
all this followed by analysis/fearmongering/rampant speculation that closed platform multinational vendor may have
only been relevant a decade ago and/or is secretly a homosexual sharia law terrorist kenyan.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The developers worry about Silverlight and WPF, not .Net in general. .Net will still have its place for desktop apps and it will still be used as a server-side web platform. Silverlight and WPF have nothing (well, almost nothing, to the point of being inconsequential) to do with that.
But this is Slashdot, and that's Soulskill...
JavaScript is a great language, but using it for full-blown enterprise app development would be a major setback. Strongly typed languages are great for the enterprise, because you know (and Intellisense knows too) at compile time what to expect from objects.
Furthermore, I'd speculate that the performance of the .NET Virtual Machine is miles ahead of any JavaScript VM. I cannot recall hearing about any JavaScript VMs that support multiple threads either.
Shit like this makes me not even want to come to this site.
And just imagine, all this effort just to reinvent what C did 40 years ago.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I surely can't be the only one praying that they do drop .NET?
Yes, you are. .NET is one of Microsoft's better ideas.
Or perhaps you're a VB6 man...?
Advice: on VPS providers
.NET is mainly used for server-side processing.
Wait, what? I make client applications... Windows apps. I don't make websites. I don't make client applications that require constant connection with a server. So your statement completely forgets about me and thousands of developers who need to make real applications that work in the real world, not some dream land in the cloud.
I'm beginning to wonder if Microsoft hasn't forgotten about us too.
Oh... and this: HTML5 may excel with GUI, but it's not better than WPF. WPF is definitely better in terms of combining the power, flexibility, and ease-of-development of UIs. (Before the flaming begins... I never said WPF is better for everyone, it's just better for me and my Windows clients.)
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"The problem is that Microsoft needs a technology that gives it an edge, and HTML5/JavaScript is everybody's edge."
Pardon the French, but are you fucking kidding me? HTML5/JS isn't anybody's edge. HTML/JS is in no way appropriate for writing an actual application. It may work, barely, in some circumstances, but it's the worst tool for almost any job except where it's required (in the browser).
Fortunately, as stated elsewhere, the concern is with the abandonment of Silverlight (which isn't really that great a loss, except for the people MS tricked into investing time and money in), not .NET as a whole.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Could I ask for your perspective on why this is the case?
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'll give you mine:
It's basically Java done one better. Basically it's the version of Java you'd come up with if you'd spent 5 years in the trenches as a Java developer and had a good set of ideas as how you could do a better job if you had it to write over again from scratch, keeping everything that's good about Java (except for the cross-platform action, which in my experience for any practical application was more of an in-theory benefit than actual benefit) and fixing a lot of things that weren't quite right.
(Granted, Java is since then improving, as well.)
I'm sure a lot of people don't think much of Java, either. It's not the right tool for every task, and neither is .NET -- but for several niches (e.g. writing custom applications for a business's internal use) it's a pretty awesome one.
Is there nothing so shrill, so piercing? When they finally realize that they directed enthusiasm - even affection - and invested personal identity in a corporation, they are still so enthralled that they feel betrayed instead of enlightened.
Look. Microsoft, Apple, Google? You are just a bit of tissue and they will wad you up, when finished wiping. Apple wipes their nose, while Microsoft wipes somewhere lower in the anatomical procession... Small comfort to reflect upon, as you trace an arc through the air, upon disposal.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In this particular case, the reason why people are up in arms is because .NET stack is actually significantly better than HTML5/JS stack at pretty much everything except for portability. As a language, C# (as of v4) roundly spanks JavaScript - it has every single feature of the latter except for prototypes (and even that you can emulate), and deals away with most of the flawed design decisions that have to be maintained in JS for the sake of back-compat (like semicolon auto-removal, or dynamic scoping of "this). As a framework, it's so far ahead it's not even something you can compare.
Of course, no-one said anything about .NET being dropped so far. People are making conjectures based on limited data, someone makes a pessimistic conclusion, and that enters a positive feedback loop where folks sit in the circle on the forums, and are exchanging opinions about how awful things are, with tone set bleaker and bleaker with every new iteration.
.NET isn't quite the same thing as Silverlight. Dropping .NET would be a much bigger deal, and I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
No, his statement completely forgets about you and thousands of developers who use .NET because they don't know C/C++.
Right. Because C/C++ is all there is. The only tool for every job. Plus, it's what Real Programmers(TM) use.
Grow up.
This would be funny if millions of people weren't STILL using VB6. :P Hell, I've worked at two Fortune 500 companies in the last year that had business critical applications still in VB6.
Now, that millions of people are still using VB6 is funny, but that's not where you were going with that.
Meh. Strong typing is waaay overrated.
I can't tell you how many broken keyboards it has cost me.