We see that just about everyone is moving to .net, but I'm curious
about practicle reasons for doing this.
There are too many to really mention. But here is some of my thoughts.
Take them for what you will.
Development time can be cut tremendously. I admit, when I first
switched it was a royal pain, and the project took longer than if I
could have just developed it with classic ASP. But in the long run
it's a) easier to find developers who know .NET or are willing to
program .NET over classic VB/ASP, and b) .NET applications have a far
shorter development time.
This may seem trivial, but I assure you it's not. One of the main
reasons I enjoy .NET so much over classic ASP, is the ease of testing
and deploying my applications. No registering DLLs. No unloading DLLs
from memory just so you can recompile and retest. This make it easier
to build multi-tier applications.
What would be great is if someone could point to a web site built in
.NET
that does things that wern't possible in ASP/JAVA/Javascript etc.
One of the things you can do in ASP.NET that you can't do in ASP or
Java is develop applications without a lot of extra coding. Say you
want to validation on your web form. A required field here, a
telephone number field there, etc. Instead of writing javascript for
each field, you instead just drop a validation control on the page and
specify "FieldA" is required. Drop on another validation control and
say, "FieldB" should be a valid email address. There are many examples
to this effect.
Then there is the development tool. Visual Studio.NET 2003 is far
better IDE than classic Visual Studio ever was, especially with regards
to building web forms. The code-behind allows seperation of interface
(HTML) and code (VB.NET), is simply good design.
The best part is you can start developing in .NET without a significant
upgrade to your company's technology. Other than training the
developers, and purchasing a new IDE (or using some of the free ones),
just install the .NET framework on your web server and you're ready to
go.
After working with .NET for over 3 years I would never (ever) go back
to classic ASP.
Couple of articles that compare ASP and ASP.NET
http://www.asp101.com/articles/chris/aspvsnet/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/aspnet/aspnet_vsasp.asp
To get your started
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/quickstart/aspplus/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/atthemovies/default.aspx
http://www.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1
http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200101/id_01_31_01a.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/academic/.../library/en-us/dnaa/html/getstart_vcsharp.asp
Alternative .NET IDEs (For serious coding I recommend VS.NET 2003)
http://www.sys-con.com/webservices/articleprint.cfm?id=360 <-- For die
hard techies
http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/default.aspx?tabIndex=4&tabId=46 <-- For
the beginner
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/ <-- Open Source IDE