infragistics rant
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John Cardinal wrote:
To be entirely frank with you, a day and a half is no time at all to get frustrated or even hope to learn this component. I spent over two months testing and trying out the Infragistics Webform components before I decided that they weren't suitable and built up a nice healthy does of anger that caused me to post here I don't have much sympathy for you sorry.
Good point. However, I still haven't requested the purchase yet, and I was hoping for something along the lines of, "Oh, it's not that bad after the learning curve, and forget the button" or (on the other hand) "You're going to regret ever having touched it, prepare for gray hair". Furthermore, it's a (relatively) long process at my new company to request such stuff, and I don't want to embarass myself in 2 months and give the VP a request saying, "Yeah, I know I had us buy this stuff 2 months ago, but since it sucks, can we buy something else?" Maybe I'm looking through rose-colored lenses, but the 2 other grid controls I'd learned in the past seemed much easier to work with, and I'd probably kick myself if I made myself stay up nights getting stuff done that I used to do in minutes with a different component.
Is it really in your hands to decide? Usually if a company goes with something already they want to standardize on it. If you do have a choice and have used another component before that you know will do the job you should opt for it. I've learned long ago that the most precious commodity available to a programmer is time and anything that reduces time is worth it in the long run. On the flip side if you have no choice I can't really say anything truly is bad about the Infragistics grid component and it has a lot to offer, but there is a learning curve you will have to go through. The only really certain way to do this kind of thing is to make an as detailed mockup as possible of what you will ultimately need to do using as many components as you feel are worth trying, take lots of notes and track time spent actually coding, not learning, and make your decision then. Also as others have pointed out here in the past and I've come to really appreciate never tie your code directly to any UI component as much as possible. Build a static Util code library that acts as a level between the UI layer and the data or business object layer so that you can more easily switch to using different components down the road. It never seems to make sense to do this at first but once you need it you will be very happy you did and it also ensures that you don't write as much redundant code in your UI level. For example I have in one project two general kinds of grids, editable ones, read only ones and so I have format methods in a static library that I just pass the grid to to have them formatted identically and similar methods to read attributes off my business object collections and generate the columns and format them correctly for currency, date time etc, do localization, build drop down lists and populate them etc. When you start to think that way it really saves time in doing a bigger project because adding new types of objects or forms is trivial by comparison and it ensures that you have a consistent interface and makes fixing presentation layer bugs infinitely easier.
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Seeing as you all do discuss component vendors here, here's my rant: I started a new job a bit over a month ago, and I'm on a WinForms project. I'm now at the point (after this big demo) where I need to upgrade some DataGridView controls to something more advanced. I've used 2 brands of commercial grid controls in the past (neither Infragistics) without too much trouble. The company I work at has already purchased the Infragistics suite for one developer, and will probably purchase more if we need it. So I download the evaluation version of the Infragistics grid and see what it takes to get in the updates I need. It's taken me a day and a half to get some stupid simple stuff done, and the "Start" button on the design view is the most useless help feature I've yet seen. How in the world is this component vendor as popular as it is? Can anyone who likes their WinForms grid please tell me what's so good about it?
I used to work for Infragistics. In fact, I did some work on their WinForms grid. I can see how you would find the object model overwhelming in the beginning, but once you get past the initial learning curve it isn't that bad. You need to understand the idea of appearances, the way that specific appearance settings override more general appearance settings (i.e. the CellAppearance will override the RowAppearance), how the Layout and Override objects are setup, etc. Once you get past that, it makes a lot of sense and is easy to customize. One of the best things about their WinForms suite is that all of the controls are built on top of the same framework, their Presentation Layer Framework. Once you learn how to use one control in the suite, learning the others is much easier since so much of the knowledge is transferable.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
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Now you are entitled to your opinion on their products (bloated and awfully designed come into my mind too), but:
Ryan Roberts wrote:
overpriced
£500/yr for the whole suite is pretty damned cheap given the number of largely usable controls you get. I will dare to say it would take you considerably more than the 6 developer hours they cost to recreate them or anything close to them. Hell, I just paid my garage more than that for 8 hours labour. Now that is overpriced... :sigh:
Ðavid Wulff Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (video)
10 PRINT 'HELLO MAINTAINER: GOTO HELL -
I used to work for Infragistics. In fact, I did some work on their WinForms grid. I can see how you would find the object model overwhelming in the beginning, but once you get past the initial learning curve it isn't that bad. You need to understand the idea of appearances, the way that specific appearance settings override more general appearance settings (i.e. the CellAppearance will override the RowAppearance), how the Layout and Override objects are setup, etc. Once you get past that, it makes a lot of sense and is easy to customize. One of the best things about their WinForms suite is that all of the controls are built on top of the same framework, their Presentation Layer Framework. Once you learn how to use one control in the suite, learning the others is much easier since so much of the knowledge is transferable.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
Josh Smith wrote:
I can see how you would find the object model overwhelming
I found the object model inconsistent, absurdly over complicated, and nonsensical. Harsh words, I know, but let me temper them by saying that I also found this to be the case with DevExpress. Properties are in bizarre collections that are nested layers deep, naming convention is non-intuitive, and documentation, forget it. And then, in another control, things are different, regardless of the underlying PLF. But, like you said, part of my rant is that I never did round the top of the learning curve. I just gave up, which isn't like me, but at some point there was the decision, that I can write what I need faster than figure out how to get the control to do what I need, with no guarantees at the end either. The thing that I always wonder about these massive libraries is, how much design really went into it? For example, looking at the DevExpress source code, yuck. Is this really the code that the devs use? There's no comments! There's no unit tests! How much of this stuff is well designed, well thought out, well tested, and how much is a patchwork of code resulting from a revolving door programmers (they get hired, work for 6 months, get burned out and find other jobs)? Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
Is it really in your hands to decide? Usually if a company goes with something already they want to standardize on it. If you do have a choice and have used another component before that you know will do the job you should opt for it. I've learned long ago that the most precious commodity available to a programmer is time and anything that reduces time is worth it in the long run. On the flip side if you have no choice I can't really say anything truly is bad about the Infragistics grid component and it has a lot to offer, but there is a learning curve you will have to go through. The only really certain way to do this kind of thing is to make an as detailed mockup as possible of what you will ultimately need to do using as many components as you feel are worth trying, take lots of notes and track time spent actually coding, not learning, and make your decision then. Also as others have pointed out here in the past and I've come to really appreciate never tie your code directly to any UI component as much as possible. Build a static Util code library that acts as a level between the UI layer and the data or business object layer so that you can more easily switch to using different components down the road. It never seems to make sense to do this at first but once you need it you will be very happy you did and it also ensures that you don't write as much redundant code in your UI level. For example I have in one project two general kinds of grids, editable ones, read only ones and so I have format methods in a static library that I just pass the grid to to have them formatted identically and similar methods to read attributes off my business object collections and generate the columns and format them correctly for currency, date time etc, do localization, build drop down lists and populate them etc. When you start to think that way it really saves time in doing a bigger project because adding new types of objects or forms is trivial by comparison and it ensures that you have a consistent interface and makes fixing presentation layer bugs infinitely easier.
John Cardinal wrote:
Is it really in your hands to decide? Usually if a company goes with something already they want to standardize on it.
Is it really in my hands to decide? I don't know the answer to that question (haven't tested my limits yet). But I do know that it will be much harder for me to try to get them to buy from a new vendor than it would for me to just ask them for more copies of what they already have. I don't care so much what my final choice of action is, so long as it minimizes the pain (This project is expected to last 2 years, BTW). It's a risk no matter what I do, so throwing off rants for forum people in a random hope that one of them can help makes me feel better, regardless.
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Heh... David Wulff... you are alive. LOL! Your ISM friend across the pond in Canada has been trying to get a hold of you for months. He would love an e-mail.
I was alive the last time I checked. Granted my pulse is a bit slow, but it hasn't stopped just yet. :~ Chadlling; I've had no reponses to any messages I've sent to the two contact addresses I have. Would you please ask him to send one to me, dwulff-at-bttlxe-dot-com, or give me a call on +44 870 8610 270 from 8am tomorrow. Cheers.
Ðavid Wulff Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (video)
10 PRINT 'HELLO MAINTAINER: GOTO HELL -
Now you are entitled to your opinion on their products (bloated and awfully designed come into my mind too), but:
Ryan Roberts wrote:
overpriced
£500/yr for the whole suite is pretty damned cheap given the number of largely usable controls you get. I will dare to say it would take you considerably more than the 6 developer hours they cost to recreate them or anything close to them. Hell, I just paid my garage more than that for 8 hours labour. Now that is overpriced... :sigh:
Ðavid Wulff Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (video)
10 PRINT 'HELLO MAINTAINER: GOTO HELL -
I used to work for Infragistics. In fact, I did some work on their WinForms grid. I can see how you would find the object model overwhelming in the beginning, but once you get past the initial learning curve it isn't that bad. You need to understand the idea of appearances, the way that specific appearance settings override more general appearance settings (i.e. the CellAppearance will override the RowAppearance), how the Layout and Override objects are setup, etc. Once you get past that, it makes a lot of sense and is easy to customize. One of the best things about their WinForms suite is that all of the controls are built on top of the same framework, their Presentation Layer Framework. Once you learn how to use one control in the suite, learning the others is much easier since so much of the knowledge is transferable.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
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If I did my currency conversion correctly, you have a really awesome pay scale and got reeeeally hosed with your car repairs. 1 GBP = 1.87 USD?
Ah, I think you and Nish have misunderstood me. £80 an hour is the billed rate, certainly not what I take home. :doh:
jesarg wrote:
reeeeally hosed with your car repairs
I drive about 30k miles a year so the running cost for my car is pretty awful. Between the usual two services and an MOT I've had three complete sets of tyres, two new wheels, four brake discs, eight brake pads, four new suspension coils, twenty four spark plugs, and a new set of pistons, valves, a new cylinder head and water/oil pumps after the 'new' cambelt broke. Total, about £3800 - exactly what I paid for the car two years ago. And my friends wonder why I don't want to buy a new car from a garage...
jesarg wrote:
1 GBP = 1.87 USD
That's right. While I'm moaning about the cost of motoring over here I'll throw in my converted annual petrol/gasoline cost of USD $4,500. And I've heard of people complaining when their petrol costs rise over $2 a gallon! :omg:
Ðavid Wulff Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen (video)
10 PRINT 'HELLO MAINTAINER: GOTO HELL -
I used to work for Infragistics. In fact, I did some work on their WinForms grid. I can see how you would find the object model overwhelming in the beginning, but once you get past the initial learning curve it isn't that bad. You need to understand the idea of appearances, the way that specific appearance settings override more general appearance settings (i.e. the CellAppearance will override the RowAppearance), how the Layout and Override objects are setup, etc. Once you get past that, it makes a lot of sense and is easy to customize. One of the best things about their WinForms suite is that all of the controls are built on top of the same framework, their Presentation Layer Framework. Once you learn how to use one control in the suite, learning the others is much easier since so much of the knowledge is transferable.
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
You're entirely correct in what you say. I've used it for years now..heavily. On the other hand the web controls are a whole different story entirely. I envision that the web control people were hired and given 8x10 glossy photos of the win controls in action and told to replicate it but given no other information whatsoever. Tony at Infragistics refuted this when I mentioned it (in less colourful terms), but I'm left with the feeling that they should stick to winform controls (which I really like) and drop the webform ones or rewrite them entirely. From what I now know about web controls and from working with the Telerik ones I suspect that Infragistics were just a little ahead of their time with their original release of the webform controls and now they're locked into doing things in an old way and they aren't devoting many resources to the asp.net control department by the look of the state it's in and in particular the state of hotfixes that contain silly little bugs that anyone should have caught like undefined variables in the Javascript etc.
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Josh Smith wrote:
I can see how you would find the object model overwhelming
I found the object model inconsistent, absurdly over complicated, and nonsensical. Harsh words, I know, but let me temper them by saying that I also found this to be the case with DevExpress. Properties are in bizarre collections that are nested layers deep, naming convention is non-intuitive, and documentation, forget it. And then, in another control, things are different, regardless of the underlying PLF. But, like you said, part of my rant is that I never did round the top of the learning curve. I just gave up, which isn't like me, but at some point there was the decision, that I can write what I need faster than figure out how to get the control to do what I need, with no guarantees at the end either. The thing that I always wonder about these massive libraries is, how much design really went into it? For example, looking at the DevExpress source code, yuck. Is this really the code that the devs use? There's no comments! There's no unit tests! How much of this stuff is well designed, well thought out, well tested, and how much is a patchwork of code resulting from a revolving door programmers (they get hired, work for 6 months, get burned out and find other jobs)? Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithMarc Clifton wrote:
I found the object model inconsistent, absurdly over complicated, and nonsensical.
Perhaps I don't see it that way because I worked with their code for so long. I'll admit, it took me a while to appreciate the structure of their framework/controls. But once I got it, it makes perfect sense.
Marc Clifton wrote:
Properties are in bizarre collections that are nested layers deep, naming convention is non-intuitive, and documentation, forget it.
I won't contest what you say about the docs (even though they improved vastly while I was working there). Regarding the location of properties, they typically make sense, provided that you are pretty familiar with the general design.
Marc Clifton wrote:
The thing that I always wonder about these massive libraries is, how much design really went into it?
A lot of design, actually. We used to have several multi-hour meetings just to decide how to expose some new feature/set of properties. A lot of thought was put into keeping names consistent with existing names (method names, property names, event names, etc).
Marc Clifton wrote:
For example, looking at the DevExpress source code, yuck. Is this really the code that the devs use? There's no comments! There's no unit tests!
I would assume that their comments were removed by a tool, only for the source code that devexpress gave to customers. The infragistics code was full of comments. Tons of comments. That was one of the best parts of their code, in my opinion. I know that I must sound like an Infragistics salesman, but I really have a high opinion of their WinForms controls (I don't know enough about their web controls to have an opinion of them).
:josh: My WPF Blog[^]
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Seeing as you all do discuss component vendors here, here's my rant: I started a new job a bit over a month ago, and I'm on a WinForms project. I'm now at the point (after this big demo) where I need to upgrade some DataGridView controls to something more advanced. I've used 2 brands of commercial grid controls in the past (neither Infragistics) without too much trouble. The company I work at has already purchased the Infragistics suite for one developer, and will probably purchase more if we need it. So I download the evaluation version of the Infragistics grid and see what it takes to get in the updates I need. It's taken me a day and a half to get some stupid simple stuff done, and the "Start" button on the design view is the most useless help feature I've yet seen. How in the world is this component vendor as popular as it is? Can anyone who likes their WinForms grid please tell me what's so good about it?