Do You Think ASP.NET has a Future?
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Hello, I do not believe this counts as a programming question; my apologies if it does. I am just starting out as a web developer/programmer. I am trying to focus and learn those technologies that are not only relevant today but will likely remain so. Right now, .NET developers seem to be in big demand. I am reasonably comfortable with PHP. I have started to learn ASP.NET, and so far I love it. However, I am concerned about how useful these skills and knowledge will prove in the future. Do you think ASP.NET has a bright future? Why or why not? Thanks, Kelly
Though I have worked with Microsoft .NET since 2001, the more recent additions to the ASP.NET development paradigm such as MVC and a host of JavaScript, CSS libraries and frameworks appear to be bludgeoning the original concept to death. I still work strictly in ASP.WEB WebForms because I find the paradigm straight-forward with good performance even for complex, database projects. However, I spend most of my time with WPF as it is a much more stable environment than web development. I have worked with MVC on a very complex and large project a few years ago and found the excessive detail to be hindrance to productivity. However, the project from a technical standpoint was quite successful. The original ASP.NET WebForms, in my view, is the best approach to web development that I have seen and still remains a very strong, mature solution to practically all web application requirements. That being said, ASP.NET WebForms is definitely not "cool" and has little to offer in terms of the radical and low-level approaches that the newer web development paradigms are currently offering. If you have been working with PHP than you are already used to working in an environment that is quite similar to "Classic ASP". As a result, you shouldn't have that much difficulty in coming up to speed with with ASP.NET MVC. As it regards the future of ASP.NET, for now MVC is the preponderant paradigm being used by most .NET developers. However, software paradigms go in cycles every 5 to 10 years. We are now in the 6th year of ASP.NET MVC and there are already symptoms of the pendulum swinging back to ASP.NET WebForms as increasingly more and more features are being added to the MVC side of things including some that appear to be somewhat similar to ASP.NET's server controls. For now stick with the MVC route but keep an eye on WebForms. After 42 years in the corporate environments I have seen it all and MVC is simply too complex to produce good work in complex environments since it only adds to the complexities already involved. As a result, I suspect that many developers will eventually tire of having to learn so many different technologies that support MVC as new tools appear to be surfacing on a near daily basis making a confused landscape even more confusing...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I've been making a killing doing Windows programming for 30 years - WAY before there was an internet. Mobile is still a cute fad. Think about that for a second.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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With a little focus, you should be able to spend so much time learning the multitude of new technologies that you never become employable :)
My long term goal is to live forever. So far, so good...
Exactly. Jack of all trades but master of none.
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I'm always hearing younger, up & coming developers tell people that "Windows programmign is dead" and I always say Nonsense! There are and always will be untold millions of desktop apps that have no reason to be web or mobile - and that keeps me gainfully employed.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Kelly Marchewa wrote:
Do you think ASP.NET has a bright future? Why or why not?
I think it's mostly an irrelevant question. The back-end does what the back-end does, handle requests, interface to the DB, serve pages, etc. I probably spend less than 10% of my time working on the back-end, regardless of what technology I use. The remaining 90% is spent fucking around with HTML and CSS, the oddities of bootstrap, the incomprehensibility of backbone (or whatever your favorite Javascript MVC poison is), and the bullshit of trying to get a web page to render on a dozen different browsers and their versions, tablets, phones, and so forth. Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project!
I had to chuckle when I read Marc's comments. He hit it on the nose. As a web developer you spend most of your time "f**cking around" with the web UI piece. Hours just roll by when working with UI. The back-end is pretty straight-forward. I do love ASP.NET MVC. It's the way to go and I believe it'll be around for many years. I've tried the "other" framework architectures and languages out there, but ASP.NET MVC is the best.
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I don't believe that makes it an irrelevant question at all. I think ASP.NET has a great future as a 'backend', i.e. handling requests: session, cookies, authorization, caching etc. Web Forms and MVC are (well, Web Forms maybe[1]) are quite a small part of ASP.NET. [1] That elephanting ugly viewstate model makes everything so easy, we just reconstitute our controls and render them.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. - Liber AL vel Legis 1:40, Aleister Crowley
Brady Kelly wrote:
I think ASP.NET has a great future as a 'backend'
Certainly, but there's many options out there, many not .NET solutions, and even I prefer my own server implementation rather than using ASP.NET or Razor/MVC. Pure ASP.NET though, I find horribly klunky actually. Well, at least the projects I've worked on that used it. Maybe the folks who originally wrote the back-end didn't know what they were doing. Strike that, they definitely didn't know what they were doing (I've seen some SQL statements in the friggin' HTML!) Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project!
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Marc Clifton wrote:
I think it's mostly an irrelevant question.
I beg to differ. I do almost no front-end work besides javascript (JQuery, Angular, et al). We have a team that develops HTML and CSS work and UI designs. I just make the interface work. And choosing a good backend to work with matters, a lot. Complex business logic do not happen on the front-end, it happens on the business layer. Having a good framework that integrates well with a business layer you're comfortable with (like .net) can make all the difference in productivity. Web API, ASP.Net MVC works ton towards productivity. It's a great choice to me.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
Fabio Franco wrote:
We have a team that develops HTML and CSS work and UI designs.
You are SO lucky. The vast majority of projects I've worked on, us devs have had to that work. Riddikulos![^] Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project!
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I had to chuckle when I read Marc's comments. He hit it on the nose. As a web developer you spend most of your time "f**cking around" with the web UI piece. Hours just roll by when working with UI. The back-end is pretty straight-forward. I do love ASP.NET MVC. It's the way to go and I believe it'll be around for many years. I've tried the "other" framework architectures and languages out there, but ASP.NET MVC is the best.
This is going to sound positively Jurassic, but I still prefer ASPNET WebForms over MVC. Sure MVC works great with all these flashy frontend Javascript frameworks but losing all those canned WebControls that come built into WebForms makes everything so much more tedious and cumbersome. I understand everyone wants Ajax and asynchronous partial POSTs and all that but there's something empowering about being able to roll up a web solution just as quickly as a desktop solution when using WebForms that is very hard for some of us ASPNET old timers to let go of.
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Hello, I do not believe this counts as a programming question; my apologies if it does. I am just starting out as a web developer/programmer. I am trying to focus and learn those technologies that are not only relevant today but will likely remain so. Right now, .NET developers seem to be in big demand. I am reasonably comfortable with PHP. I have started to learn ASP.NET, and so far I love it. However, I am concerned about how useful these skills and knowledge will prove in the future. Do you think ASP.NET has a bright future? Why or why not? Thanks, Kelly
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I had to chuckle when I read Marc's comments. He hit it on the nose. As a web developer you spend most of your time "f**cking around" with the web UI piece. Hours just roll by when working with UI. The back-end is pretty straight-forward. I do love ASP.NET MVC. It's the way to go and I believe it'll be around for many years. I've tried the "other" framework architectures and languages out there, but ASP.NET MVC is the best.
Exactly. First make it work, then make it pretty... I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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Fabio Franco wrote:
We have a team that develops HTML and CSS work and UI designs.
You are SO lucky. The vast majority of projects I've worked on, us devs have had to that work. Riddikulos![^] Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project!
Marc Clifton wrote:
You are SO lucky.
I guess I am, if not me web apps would all look like winforms apps. :laugh:
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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I'm always hearing younger, up & coming developers tell people that "Windows programmign is dead" and I always say Nonsense! There are and always will be untold millions of desktop apps that have no reason to be web or mobile - and that keeps me gainfully employed.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Microsoft AX - an ERP application that brings in Millions for Microsoft is a winforms/wpf(I am not sure which technology it is but it is definitely client based) application. The reason Microsoft appear to have chosen this is that browser based apps are entirely at the mercy of the browsers - release an update to a browser and your whole Business goes down. While the desktop .NET framework breaks much less frequently. [edit] seems like I am "behind the curve"[^]
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens