URGENTZ: So what's the current state of affairs with "The Microsoft Way" of web development?

Marc Clifton

I'm looking to compare my Ruby on Rails experience with Microsoft's web technology stack, but I'm not exactly sure where I should start. ASP.NET? Lightswitch? WebMatrix? Razor? Silverlight? Why are there so many options? It seems like an incredibly confusing suite of tools, components, and syntaxi (is that a word?) What about 3rd party options that build in these, like Nancy? And what about MVC vs. MVVM vs. whatever? What do you all use for a technology stack (within the C#/.NET paradigm) ? HLP PLZ! (sorry, couldn't resist. My cynicism as I google around myself for some of these answers is rising, and I'm beginning to feel like a noob.) [edit2] And yes, after my rant on the previous post, it's amazing I'm even bothering to ask this question. Argh.[edit2] Marc

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AspDotNetDev

ASP.NET MVC (views, partial views, controllers, action methods, routes, etc.) using Razor syntax (which is really just the ability to embed C# in the view using a particular syntax) and the C# language. The client-side can be chosen without regard for the server side... we happen to prefer jQuery for a lot of our JavaScript stuff. As far as data access, we use LINQ to Entities (though, the idea is that we'll abstract that using Ninject dependency injection, so the other code won't really know where the data is coming from/going to). The setup I really work with is more complicated than that, but that's where we're going.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

Kent Sharkey

I'll just second AspDotNetDev's stack: ASP.NET MVC+Razor -> Entity Framework (using code-first models), with some sort of dependency injection (Ninject, Unity) or repository. Then jQuery in the browser. And yes. Parts of The Company have definitely lost the message. Mostly (IMO) because the big dog rolls over and puts out something, and other groups feel obliged to drop what they're doing to use it. The Web guys have been mostly consistent lately, although I don't really like how much they're pushing Azure now that ScottGu's in charge of it. And Web Pages? Really? Yeesh. If I wanted to code in PHP, I'd code in PHP. But that's a rant for another day.

-------------- TTFN - Kent

Ranjan D

The First thing , it really surprises me that you are in total confusion. It's fine most of them are :) The future will be ASP.NET MVC, The view may be Razor by default/ASPX or anything. MS lately realized the disadvantage of using WebForm. I don't know how many are using Lightswitch as enterprise applicaction. Best not to learn :) WebMatrix - It doesn't matter, it's again a lightweight web development tool. WebForm as I know it's good for in-house projects. Who really wants a fat guy (ViewState) etc. I love the ASP.NET MVC , We can create views for Mobile / Desktop. It's really awesome. Thanks,

Ranjan.D

LloydA111

Marc Clifton wrote:

Silverlight

I've never used it but they discontinued it a few months ago.

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Ranjan D

It's still used in Windows Phone Development as Light weight version. But it's Silverlight for Phone development :)

Ranjan.D

J Dunlap

As has been said multiple times above, ASP.NET MVC 4 with Razor syntax, and jQuery on the front end. ASP.NET MVC makes it easy for you to return HTML, JSON, XML, or whatever you like. When you add Razor to the mix you have a cleaner, less verbose syntax, and the ability to package controllers, models, views, partial views, and helper templates together into compiled libraries. But I wanted to add that ASP.NET 4 runs on .NET 4.5, which has enhanced async capabilities with await and the now built-in Task library. This allows you to write non-blocking web applications ala node.js but without all the messy closures and with an actual honest-to-goodness concurrency library to make it work (I can't believe they don't have anything even remotely decent in the node.js official libs), and in a higher-performing language. That right there is a winner. As for a database engine, the official way to go is Entity Framework 5, which is much improved in performance and coding support over EF4. But there are many different ORMs to choose from if Entity Framework is not your thing, which in good part due to ADO.NET, work with the major database platforms. Or you can go with raw SQL, or use a No-SQL database, or whatever suits you.

leppie

ASP.NET MVC Web API + Knockout.js + Single page apps

IronScheme
((λ (x) `(,x ',x)) '(λ (x) `(,x ',x)))

Mark_Wallace

Pick what you're happy with, and use it to make what you need to make. If enough people agree with your preference, it will become the norm. If you use something you don't like, based on other people's opinions of what's best, then the one you don't like will become the norm. So it was, so it will always be.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

StM0n

Marc Clifton wrote:

syntaxi (is that a word?)

syntaxes... never play an ace where a two will do ;)

Marc Clifton wrote:

sorry, couldn't resist.

you're welcome... I'm feeling your pain.

(yes|no|maybe)*

Mel Padden

That's definitely the most current and effective state of the art. Also Silverlight for complex, inhouse LOB apps. it's still the best and most big organisations still love it.

I too dabbled in pacifism once.

dojohansen

Azure is their only hope, isn't it?!? They are losing rapidly on anything with a UI, but many of their servers are doing well. If the world decides servers ought to live in the cloud, they ought to be well positioned to offer the best way of running their servers in the sky, and since their servers are used quite a lot... this is a big opportunity. And the whole platform-as-a-service thing is smart because it offers the same kinds of lock-in that other platform solutions do...

dojohansen

I don't think the future will be asp.anything to be honest, but what do I know. :)

Marc Clifton

Thanks Justin, and thank you to everyone else that posted a reply! That's very helpful to know where to start. Marc

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Kent Sharkey

dojohansen wrote:

And the whole platform-as-a-service thing is smart because it offers the same kinds of lock-in that other platform solutions do...

Yeah, that's my problem with Azure. Good for them, less good for me. I'd be better disposed to it if I had my million dollar idea and was rolling out a service now, but for the niddly stuff I've been coding lately, it's just an expensive (and too locked in) model for my tastes.

-------------- TTFN - Kent

Vark111

Came here to post this. Server-side rendering (ala webforms/MVC views) is certainly still available, but more and more of the "cool kids" are moving away from it (take that how you may) in favor of REST services that can be consumed by a multitude of client-side technologies, one of which will be static HTML pages using JQuery/Knockout/Angular and some form of templating (leppie's aforementioned Single Page Apps). Me? I don't go quite that hard-core on the API/SPA. I still use MVC views to do some ancillary rendering on the server side. And my apps aren't generally Single Page Apps. More like (half dozen) Page Apps. If you do want to get into SPA's though, be prepared to learn a lot about Javascript. And I'm not just talking about simple JQuery event binding. AMD, revealing module pattern, RequireJS, etc... There are a ton of things out there in JS land that will become mandatory because in a SPA, a significant portion of your app is written in JS and it needs to be organized or you'll very quickly end up with a big ball of mud.

leppie

I never said I liked it :) MVC is still fine for me.

IronScheme
((λ (x) `(,x ',x)) '(λ (x) `(,x ',x)))

dazfuller

ASP.NET MVC4 Razr But I wish I could use something else that isn't MS :(

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines

Bob Carboni

AngularJS with Breeze on the client works very nicely with ASP.Net MVC Razor views and Web API on the server. I just completed a small project with multiple Single Page Applications in a portal framework. The main navigation is using ASP.Net MVC, and the SPA views are routed by Angular, but the SPA views can use Razor with controllers, so you get the best of both worlds. I can definitely see this working for many future projects. I found AngularJS to be much easier to work with on the client than Knockout which requires a host of other libraries to support as much functionality. Go figure that something from Google and something from MS would work together so well.

ClockMeister

Since I write desktop & back end code with VB.Net and C# it makes sense to stay in the platform and write any web stuff with ASP.Net