What do you find difficult in ASP.net?

[Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu]

What things do you find about ASP.net to be difficult? ie Items that are on a
regular basis "in your way" that you would like to see done better?

 

[Ray at]

I do not like the way it makes new programmers think that web-based
programming is no different from building fat-client applications.

Ray at work

 

[Marina]

Well, for me, it is the time asp.net takes to restart. Every time code is
recompiled or web.config changed, it takes what seems like forever to
restart, though it is only 30 seconds or so, this adds up to tons of wasted
time and frustration.

If you mean specifically some component, then I guess I don't really have
any ideas for that.

 

[Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu]

I do not like the way it makes new programmers think that web-based
programming is no different from building fat-client applications.

Ah. Well I really didnt start this thread to mention 3P products - and I do
appreciate your feedback as well as others. But your comment strikes me so
exactly that I want to recommend this link to you:

http://www.atozed.com/intraweb/

I notice you are an MVP. Are you an ASP.net MVP?

Your comment about "the way it makes new programmers think". Is that a
criticism of how ASP.net works quite differently than WinForms, or of how it
is presented to users in "marketing" and documentation?

 

[Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu]

Well, for me, it is the time asp.net takes to restart. Every time code is
recompiled or web.config changed, it takes what seems like forever to
restart, though it is only 30 seconds or so, this adds up to tons of wasted
time and frustration.

Do you mean when you redeploy to the server? Or during development?

If you mean specifically some component, then I guess I don't really have
any ideas for that.

I meant anything in general, so your comment is spot on.

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Just an FYI, most of anything I've had "issues" with have been, supposedly,
fixed/dealt with in version the next release of VS and ASP.NET

 

[Marina]

I meant during development. I find myself fixing things, adding something
and needing to test it. Every time I need to recompile, hence every time
asp.net restarts. And I have to sit there as it restarts (and slows down my
machine), until it finally does and I can run my test. But as this happens
constantly during development, large amounts of time are spent on waiting
for asp.net to restart.

 

[Olaf Monien]

Ah. Well I really didnt start this thread to mention 3P products -
and I do appreciate your feedback as well as others. But your comment
strikes me so exactly that I want to recommend this link to you:

http://www.atozed.com/intraweb/

Actually IntraWeb adds some thechniques to asp.net that allow you to
abstract your application much more from the html/JS environment as
with pure asp.net. But this is not a limitation - with "templates" IW
gives you the power to fine-tune the html-layout or to delegate it to
an html artist - while you can concentrate on the business logic.

 

[Ray at]

Ah. Well I really didnt start this thread to mention 3P products - and I do
appreciate your feedback as well as others. But your comment strikes me so
exactly that I want to recommend this link to you:

http://www.atozed.com/intraweb/

Reading link now. Thank you.

I notice you are an MVP. Are you an ASP.net MVP?

Yes, I am, but only because they have ASP and ASP.NET as the same category!
So, I figure that I must now learn ASP.net. [:

Your comment about "the way it makes new programmers think". Is that a
criticism of how ASP.net works quite differently than WinForms, or of how it
is presented to users in "marketing" and documentation?

It'd probably be closer to the latter. I'm not ready to criticize the way
ASP.net works yet. Overall, I think it is a good thing, and after playing
around in VS.net for a little while last night, I do see that the marketing
of "create your applications faster!" is true. I just can't help but think
that much of it is a bit of a scam, in a way. Basically ASP.net is taking
away all the cumbersome work of building your own "controls" for your own
applications, dealing with handling the browser events and detecting what
event took place when a form was submitted, and things like that. It just
seems that if you jump right into ASP.net from no programming background,
you'll wind up never grasping the fundamental concepts of how web-based
programming works and what a book means when it says that http is
"stateless" and events are "client-side" and things like that.

But, all that aside. When I installed VS.net last night and put together
some aspx pages from a book I got, there certainly were lots of things that
I thoroughly enjoyed. It'll be hard for me to drop Textpad in favor of
VS.net though, if I choose to go the "standard" route. No matter what,
though, I must learn it, because this is how things are done now. If I want
to stay in the IT industry, I have to adapt and overcome! I'm working on
that today. :]

Ray at work

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Is your system a low end one? Personally mine fires up quite quick (2-3secs)
when I Compile-Run.

--
Curt Christianson
Owner/Lead Developer, DF-Software
www.Darkfalz.com

I meant during development. I find myself fixing things, adding something
and needing to test it. Every time I need to recompile, hence every time
asp.net restarts. And I have to sit there as it restarts (and slows down my
machine), until it finally does and I can run my test. But as this happens
constantly during development, large amounts of time are spent on waiting
for asp.net to restart.

code

 

[Marina]

No, I actually just recently got a very high end system. 2.4Ghz processor
and 512 RAM memory. I've definitely heard complaints from others around the
office with high end machines about this as well, and no one's time is close
to 2-3 seconds, but more like 10 times that much.

Is your system a low end one? Personally mine fires up quite quick (2-3secs)
when I Compile-Run.

 

[Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu]

Just an FYI, most of anything I've had "issues" with have been, supposedly,
fixed/dealt with in version the next release of VS and ASP.NET

I've seen whats coming in Whidbey. There are definitely some nice
enhancements - but still many things are not there (at least IMO). Using even
the 2.0 feature set though - are there things you still see as lacking or
"too difficult" to do?

 

[Marina]

Another thing that I guess can be an issue, is the separation between server
side and client side code, especially on the asp.net web controls. For
example, if you add an 'onclick' attribute on a button, it will be assumed
that this contains the server side function name to run, as opposed to
javascript code to run on the client. So one has to use Attributes.Add on
the server to add this client side code.

Better integration would be nice, though I am not sure what form that would
take.

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Wow.... Must be a massive solution then? Does it have many projects?


--
Curt Christianson
Owner/Lead Developer, DF-Software
www.Darkfalz.com

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Not really.
If you are looking for a "anybody can do this" development environment then
this is not it, nor should it be in my opinion. ASP.NET is an OO system, and
will therefore always require some learning and a fair amount of it at that.
While you can fumble around and get to the result you seek you really need
to spend some quality time learning the language and the platform to do it
"right". Some may see this as a "difficult" thing, others see it as a
benefit. It's all in the eye of the developer.

--
Curt Christianson
Owner/Lead Developer, DF-Software
www.Darkfalz.com

 

[Marina]

What does the size of the project have to do with how quickly asp.net
restarts? It might have something to do with compile time, but not asp.net
restarting.

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

It's gotta check them all and "load" the DLL's up, so if they are big then
it could take a while is all.

--
Curt Christianson
Owner/Lead Developer, DF-Software
www.Darkfalz.com

 

[Marina]

I think it loads them into memory as they are called, not all at once.

But either way, the time is the same no matter if the application has 100
dll's, or 2 in its bin directory.

And I've done web development on different machines, all high end, and have
always had this problem, so has everyone else I've ever talked to. Sounds
like you have some sort of miracle machine.

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Don't get me wrong... 2-3 seconds does feel like 30, but I've never had it
take that long. I've used some low end and high end and never had it take 30
seconds to open the first page....
Unless you are saying you are manually running iisreset or stop/starting the
service? Then yes...

--
Curt Christianson
Owner/Lead Developer, DF-Software
www.Darkfalz.com

 

[Chad Z. Hower aka Kudzu]

If you are looking for a "anybody can do this" development environment
then this is not it, nor should it be in my opinion. ASP.NET is an OO

I dont think ASP.net should be that either - but it seems to be (and
apparently to others) that its being pitched as such.