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ASP.NET - First Impressions

Posted On September 5, 2007 8:10 AM By Phil in ASP.NET

After many years of avoiding the language/technology, I am finally getting into an ASP .NET project. I have hidden mostly from it due to a very bad experience with the language being forced into an environment where it really didn't fit at a previous employer. So, for the past week, I have been spending time getting up to speed the best I with it, and yesterday, I finally got to start doing a little bit of real world programming with it.

Honestly, my first impression of the language was that it was Flex server side. I know, that seems crazy, but the C# files for the code behind, the <asp:> tags, substitute AS3 and <mxml:> and you have a client side language. I know there are other, pretty significant differences, but I think looking at Flex is helping me understand ASP.NET more easily and the structure of an application easier too.

Not to be outdone, I am beginning to love Visual Studio. I love the code-hinting that finds any variable I may have declared within the function or class. I also like the almost instantaneous feedback I get as I code (from using Word so much, I know a red squiggly line is bad). I do think this is the most powerful IDE I have used.

Now, mind you, I get into the heavy lifting, connecting to databases, executing business logic today and tomorrow, so I guess by Friday, I'll have a better feel for the language. Coming from the ColdFusion/Adobe world, my first impression isn't one of disdain or apathy for the language as was the case many years ago. I am looking forward into getting deeper into the project and the resulting ASP .NET capabilities I'll get to use.

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For all their faults, the MS development tools are second to none. Visual Studio kicks a%!&. I misunderstood ASP.NET for quite some time, trying to shoehorn ASP (original style)/PHP concepts into the ASPNET framework. After spending lots of time writing desktop stuff in c#, I've come back to it, and can't help but be impressed by the ease with which you can bind data to webpages. Keep it up. Its worth it.

# By spender | 9/5/07 10:46 AM

I think C# is a great language. Static typing makes it (like Java) more verbose, although they're working on supporting more dynamic paradigms. The IDE benefits are really down to the static typing - you have to compare it to something like IntelliJ and honestly I think IntelliJ is the better IDE.

The biggest issue I have is that for the longest time, most .NET developers didn't create well architected apps as the IDE tends to encourage a page controller model which isn't as flexible as some kind of front controller, and things like DI engines are still only starting to take off in the .NET world.

Only reason I don't use c# is because I need something that was fundamentally designed to be cross platform (for me, mono doesn't count). If I was deploying to only windows servers and needed a statically typed language for whatever reason, I think c# is better (on the whole) than Java - Microsoft has done a really great job . . .

# By Peter Bell | 9/5/07 1:38 PM

@Peter: I agree on the IDE helping to not create well architected applications. After using it for a week now, I can see why whenever I had suggestions or questions about why a .NET web service acted the way it did, I always got: "Well, that's what Visual Studio generates" type of answers.

# By Phil | 9/5/07 3:12 PM

I'd have to agree with Peter. I don't mind C#, I just don't like the page controller design pattern built in to the .NET framework. When I first started getting into ASP.NET I looked around for a front controller implementation but couldn't find one. I recently found an MSDN article titled "Implementing Front Controller in ASP.NET Using HTTPHandler" but, as the article states:

"Because Page Controller is built into ASP.NET, the additional effort required to implement Front Controller rather than Page Controller is very large. In fact, you must build the whole framework for Front Controller."

There are other things I don't really like about the ASP.NET framework such as Web Forms and the ViewState, but again, this has to do with the framework and not the language. I also think this points to the big difference between ASP.NET and ColdFusion: ColdFusion (CFML) is a language with several different frameworks, ASP.NET is a framework with several different languages.

# By Nathan Mische | 9/5/07 3:17 PM

Yup. I find the VS is really designed to help somewhat inexperienced developers to create working apps quickly rather than to allow great developers to create well architected apps seamlessly.

To be fair though there are a whole set of team services features that allow architects to create custom advice and templates and things, but it just seemed a huge process to set that all up unless you have a pretty large team/budget.

# By Peter Bell | 9/5/07 3:21 PM

@Nathan, That is a VERY cool takeaway line:

"ColdFusion (CFML) is a language with several different frameworks, ASP.NET is a framework with several different languages."

Love it!

# By Peter Bell | 9/5/07 3:23 PM

@Nathan: That should be the tag line on every CF developer's email address.

# By Phil | 9/5/07 3:29 PM

Phil,

Feel free to bug / bounce queries off me as I've had to get really deep with ASP.NET fast and I to came from a Coldfusion/Flex background. The real ass kicking will come when you start to use LINQ or architect the code for DAO/DG/TO/VO etc concepts as a lot of the plumbing inside ASP.NET is done for you. One thing I had realised, is that when I worked in Coldfusion I wrote a lot of my own plumbing where ASP.NET gives some of that out of the box.. and you fight it, only you end up losing heh.. let ASP.NET do as much as it can automatically and then only then break it apart and fix it so to speak..

-
Scott Barnes
RIA Evangelist
Microsoft.

# By Scott Barnes | 9/7/07 10:12 PM

@Scott, thanks for the offer and I know I will definitely take you up on it. I think the DB and model is the next area I have to look at. The apps I'm working on do most of the persistence within the context of the page and its respective codefile. To the point some of the other guys made earlier in the post, I want to make sure the apps I build in any language are architected well using good design patterns regardless of what the IDE or even a framework has to offer.

# By Phil | 9/7/07 11:41 PM

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