Re: Penetration of ASP.NET - Developers continue to use VB6 & ASP

From: Kevin Spencer (kspencer_at_takempis.com)
Date: 06/17/04 

Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 09:28:21 -0400

Opinions are like a**holes. Not only does everybody have one, but almost all
of them stink.
An opinion is a poor substitute for a fact.
In the absence of facts, avoid holding onto opinions. It might prevent you
from finding the facts later. 

-- 
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
.Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.
"dotnetforfood" <dotnetforfood@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:64e12d46.0406161543.5cd762d@posting.google.com...
> Joel Spolsky's new article "How Microsoft Lost the API War" at
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
> describes how .NET has failed, how classic VB6 and ASP continue to be
> preferred by developers, and how Microsoft has lost control of the
> preferred API.
>
> You really should read the article. Here are some excerpts:
>
> <Joel Spolsky>
> "And yet, people aren't really using .NET much.
> Oh sure, some of them are..."
>
> "instead of .NET unifying and simplifying, we have a big 6-way mess,
> with everybody trying to figure out which development strategy to use
> and whether they can afford to port their existing applications to
> .NET.
>
> "No matter how consistent Microsoft is in their marketing message
> ('just use .NET-trust us!'), most of their customers are still using
> C, C++, Visual Basic 6.0, and classic ASP, not to mention all the
> other development tools from other companies. And the ones that are
> using .NET are using ASP.NET to develop web applications, which run on
> a Windows server but don't require Windows clients, which is a key
> point I'll talk about more when I talk about the web."
>
> "if you're developing a Windows GUI app today using Microsoft's
> 'official' latest-and-greatest Windows programming environment,
> WinForms, you're going to have to start over again in two years to
> support Longhorn and Avalon. Which explains why WinForms is completely
> stillborn. Hope you haven't invested too much in it. Jon Udell found a
> slide from Microsoft labelled 'How Do I Pick Between Windows Forms and
> Avalon?' and asks, 'Why do I have to pick between Windows Forms and
> Avalon?' A good question, and one to which he finds no great answer."
>
> "So you've got the Windows API, you've got VB, and now you've got
> .NET, in several language flavors, and don't get too attached to any
> of that, because we're making Avalon, you see, which will only run on
> the newest Microsoft operating system, which nobody will have for a
> loooong time. And personally I still haven't had time to learn .NET
> very deeply, and we haven't ported Fog Creek's two applications from
> classic ASP and Visual Basic 6.0 to .NET because there's no return on
> investment for us. None. It's just Fire and Motion as far as I'm
> concerned..."
>
> "the Web user interface is about 80% there, and even without new web
> browsers we can probably get 95% there. This is Good Enough for most
> people and it's certainly good enough for developers, who have voted
> to develop almost every significant new application as a web
> application.
>
> Which means, suddenly, Microsoft's API doesn't matter so much. Web
> applications don't require Windows.
>
> It's not that Microsoft didn't notice this was happening. Of course
> they did, and when the implications became clear, they slammed on the
> brakes. Promising new technologies like HTAs and DHTML were stopped in
> their tracks. The Internet Explorer team seems to have disappeared;
> they have been completely missing in action for several years. There's
> no way Microsoft is going to allow DHTML to get any better than it
> already is: it's just too dangerous to their core business, the rich
> client. The big meme at Microsoft these days is: 'Microsoft is betting
> the company on the rich client.'"
>
> "Much as I hate to say it, a huge chunk of developers have long since
> moved to the web and refuse to move back. Most .NET developers are
> ASP.NET developers, developing for Microsoft's web server...None of
> this bodes well for Microsoft and the profits it enjoyed thanks to its
> API power. The new API is HTML, and the new winners in the application
> development marketplace will be the people who can make HTML sing.
> </Joel Spolsky>
>
> The only sentence in the article that I disagree with is:
> JS> "ASP.NET is brilliant; I've been working with web
> JS> development for ten years and it's really just a
> JS> generation ahead of everything out there."
>
> Whereas in my eyes ASP.NET is not a "generation ahead", but merely a
> Microsoft rewrite of some well-known Perl modules available years ago
> that:
> - use templates to generate dynamic web pages and
> - encrypt form data.
>
> dotnetforfood
>
> classic ASP rulez!!!

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