Comments on: The sad state of ASP.Net programming http://garyburge.com/2007/11/30/the-sad-state-of-aspnet-programming/ Gary Burge is an experienced web developer and techno-activist Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:07:20 +0000 hourly 1 By: shawn.oster http://garyburge.com/2007/11/30/the-sad-state-of-aspnet-programming/comment-page-1/#comment-196 shawn.oster Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:05:59 +0000 http://garyburge.com/blog/2007/11/30/the-sad-state-of-aspnet-programming/#comment-196 I've noticed the farther down the rabbit hole you get with any framework the more black magic there is to deal with. I develop in Delphi, ASP.NET, PHP and Rails and each one has areas that make me pull my hair out. With PHP it's PEAR, I hate coming across code samples that just assume you have PEAR installed or, oh, sorry, this only works in PHP 5.0 or, oh, you *did* compile PHP with such-and-such switch right? Rails has so many wonderful "helper" methods that you often can't find where anything is coming from, don't know if the snippet you've just grabbed is using someone's home-grown helper extension or is one of the unofficial extensions that everyone seems to install but no one talks about. ASP.NET has the issues you mentioned, plus the whole infrastructure of webforms which destroy the ability to use server controls with any client-side library that uses ids like jQuery. Basically each platform has it's pros and cons and a lot of how much you enjoy working in any of them is how well you know the entire ecosystem. When I first did PHP programming I thought it was the biggest mess of poo out there, with so many conflicting ways it could be configured, so many random folders it's config could be pulled from, the huge number of sites with horrible samples that lacked any type of proper url encoding or sql-inject prevention. Now I think it's great for small sites, though I still prefer ASP.NET for larger sites because of the easy bolt-ons like logins/roles, theming and internationalization support. With the new MVC bits they just dropped it's actually a lot of fun again. I’ve noticed the farther down the rabbit hole you get with any framework the more black magic there is to deal with. I develop in Delphi, ASP.NET, PHP and Rails and each one has areas that make me pull my hair out.

With PHP it’s PEAR, I hate coming across code samples that just assume you have PEAR installed or, oh, sorry, this only works in PHP 5.0 or, oh, you *did* compile PHP with such-and-such switch right?

Rails has so many wonderful “helper” methods that you often can’t find where anything is coming from, don’t know if the snippet you’ve just grabbed is using someone’s home-grown helper extension or is one of the unofficial extensions that everyone seems to install but no one talks about.

ASP.NET has the issues you mentioned, plus the whole infrastructure of webforms which destroy the ability to use server controls with any client-side library that uses ids like jQuery.

Basically each platform has it’s pros and cons and a lot of how much you enjoy working in any of them is how well you know the entire ecosystem. When I first did PHP programming I thought it was the biggest mess of poo out there, with so many conflicting ways it could be configured, so many random folders it’s config could be pulled from, the huge number of sites with horrible samples that lacked any type of proper url encoding or sql-inject prevention. Now I think it’s great for small sites, though I still prefer ASP.NET for larger sites because of the easy bolt-ons like logins/roles, theming and internationalization support. With the new MVC bits they just dropped it’s actually a lot of fun again.

]]> By: Daveg http://garyburge.com/2007/11/30/the-sad-state-of-aspnet-programming/comment-page-1/#comment-187 Daveg Sat, 01 Dec 2007 13:40:30 +0000 http://garyburge.com/blog/2007/11/30/the-sad-state-of-aspnet-programming/#comment-187 People laugh at me, but this is why I still develop in Visual J++. Sure, it's unsupported, but what has MSoft support ever really done for me? I write straight SQL, I populate every dialog field/list/whatever by hand. No magic, no confusion. It helps a lot, of course, that I'm the only developer on the system, and it also helps that I set my own deadlines for the most part. I still get things in the hands of the users surprisingly quickly, though. People laugh at me, but this is why I still develop in Visual J++. Sure, it’s unsupported, but what has MSoft support ever really done for me? I write straight SQL, I populate every dialog field/list/whatever by hand. No magic, no confusion. It helps a lot, of course, that I’m the only developer on the system, and it also helps that I set my own deadlines for the most part. I still get things in the hands of the users surprisingly quickly, though.

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