URGENTZ: So what's the current state of affairs with "The Microsoft Way" of web development?
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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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
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ASP.NET MVC Web API + Knockout.js + Single page apps
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.
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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
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...
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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
I don't think the future will be asp.anything to be honest, but what do I know. :)
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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.
Thanks Justin, and thank you to everyone else that posted a reply! That's very helpful to know where to start. Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
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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 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
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ASP.NET MVC Web API + Knockout.js + Single page apps
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.
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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.
I never said I liked it :) MVC is still fine for me.
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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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My BlogAngularJS 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.
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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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
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.
Bob Carboni wrote:
AngularJS with Breeze on the client works very nicely with ASP.Net MVC Razor views and Web API on the server.
Just took a look at the AngularJS website. Besides the technology looking very easy to use, the website is one of the best "see how it works" designs I've seen. That in itself is a huge selling point. Thanks for pointing that one out. Marc
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My BlogI feel your pain. It is hard to know what to do. I think Microsoft HAD a winner and threw it away. Silverlight. I think it still has the best feature set EXCEPT that Apple won't let it work on their phones. A shame really. I'm continuing to develop in Silverlight because I don't really need to be multiplatform for most of our work. And I use Delphi Prism as my language and it works GREAT with Silverlight.
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I feel your pain. It is hard to know what to do. I think Microsoft HAD a winner and threw it away. Silverlight. I think it still has the best feature set EXCEPT that Apple won't let it work on their phones. A shame really. I'm continuing to develop in Silverlight because I don't really need to be multiplatform for most of our work. And I use Delphi Prism as my language and it works GREAT with Silverlight.
I just think it's gotten to the point where the tools vendors are selling new versions just to sell new versions! The tool-set already provided (in for example VS2008) is MORE than adequate for all but the most faddish needs. Maybe I'm overly simplistic, but how many hammers do we need to drive a nail? (I mean from the same vendor that is). I'd rather just use familiar tools for awhile to create things instead of swapping tools all the time. If there's genuine advance, that's fine but from what I'm seeing web development is pretty much the way it was 5 years ago.
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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
Kent Sharkey wrote:
it's just an expensive (and too locked in) model for my tastes
I recently visited the VSLive! conference in Vegas, and Azure was pushed excessively indeed. Although I must say I was very intrigued by it's features and the ease of deploying applications to the web will become. And I do find the pricing model very attractive, since you're only paying for what you use. Also: you can host entire VM's through azure, so you're not completely 'locked in'. Look into it, it's really worth it I think. Generally speaking I think that everything is moving to the web. One way or another, I think applications hosted in a cloud environment will have the future, regardless of technique. As for the question asked: I'm currently developing an 'old-school' ASP.Net Webforms application, while NOT using jQuery (yes some people actually still write classic JavaScript and use AJAX lol) in an MVP programming model, through an ADO.Net datalayer. We're currently just finishing what was on the shelves for years, and next year we're all moving our stuff to Azure, using the latest technology (i.e. MVC and Entity Framework).
"My opinion is not represented by my hometown."
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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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My BlogWould you like us to give you the codez?... ;P
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My Blog -
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
Latest Article: C# and Ruby Classes: A Deep Dive
My BlogWe ended up going with a c# MVC4 + Angular.js stack. This is good for web applications but not as good for web pages. Here is a great tutorial to get started:http://jphoward.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/end-to-end-web-app-in-under-an-hour/[^] Also, with any .net development i recommend purchasing Resharper: http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/[^]
Eric
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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!
Does that mean its OK to build straight up Windows .exe apps? I have a co-worker who defaults to it for in-house apps and I can't convince him otherwise. nark-nark-nark. :-D