Re: .NET is much worse than VCL

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"Jaakko Salmenius" <jaakko.salmenius (at) nospam gmail.com> wrote in message
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I have been used .NET for few years. Before that I used Delphi (VCL) for
many years. My conclusing is that .NET is much worse than VCL. Here are the
reasons:

1) VCL comes with full source code. .NET has none. Even if the
documetation is good nothing beat source code that you can use to check
how framework really works

If you need source code to figure out how things work, you can reverse
engineer it using tools like Reflector. .NET code is byte code. This means,
unless obfuscated (etc.), it is an open book.

2) No possibility to include 3rd party libraries inside the EXE. Delphi
can put eveything inside one EXE. No need to deploy and maintain several
DLLs.

Monlithic applications are things that most people have shied away from.
With the interactivity of bits, you are more prone to errors if you embed
everything. In addition, you cannot update one piece of the software when
everything is in the EXE without updating the entire EXE. While you might be
more familiar with this methodology, I am not sure it is something most
people would want, as it reduces maintainability and extensibility. If you
absolutely need to deploy several DLLs as one big monolithic chunk, you can
do it with the al.exe tool.

3) .NET needs huge and exactly right runtime enviroment. VCL produces
plain and simple WIN32 EXEs

So, you like the runtime embedded in the OS instead of on top? The COM
Framework is much larger than .NET, but it is hidden from you. As time goes
by (say with an operating system named something like Vista) the Framework
will be included in the OS, so it will be hidden from you, as well. But,
both runtimes are still large and still there.

4) Localization support for .NET is a joke. .resx format is very bad. It
does not contains complete imformation about the form (e.g hierarcy). VCL
DFM contains eveything your need. In .NEt you have to actually disassebly
.EXE or analyze source code to dig out all the information needed for
proper localization. Also this Localizable property is bad. You have to
turn it on every for single form. In VCL eveything is localizable by
default. Also satellite assembly must be in a separate sub directory.

resource files are one way to localize, and you can compile them into
libraries, if you want to reuse them. You can also easily extend with custom
resource providers.

5) 3rd party controls are hard to install manually and really huge
compared to VCL's counterparts.

This might be true for some, but I have never had an issue with any third
party control I have used.

There is some many things .NET that is fundamentally flaw. I am unhappy to
the fact this this is the enviroment we have to cope for the next 10-15
years.

I think you just have not made the paradigm shift in thinking yet. Most of
what you state here are, from my experience with a variety of languages,
detriments for VCL rather than strong points. In many ways, it is like
listening to the ASP programmers when .NET first came out. Most of them have
now assimilated and find .NET a much better environment.

Please note, I am not saying all of the features you desire are wrong, as
they are not. I just do not see them as features that should be used for
every application. IN fact, I see they are specialty cases, when it comes to
a disconnected world.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA
http://gregorybeamer.spaces.live.com
Co-author: Microsoft Expression Web Bible (upcoming)

************************************************
Think outside the box!
************************************************


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