Author Topic: Is it possible to have a future without a .NET-style takeover? (Read 24,361 times)

CodeTRUCKER · « **on:** January 03, 2011, 09:27 PM »

I have to admit that returning to my VB skills via VB/C#.NET is intriguing, but when you have been burned, or more accurately, when you know someone who has been burned by the lack of commitment from Microsoft, it makes you not want to play with those matches, eh?

Specifically, I followed a developer for several years as he moved form one VB iteration after another until climaxing with VB6 which he and (millions of others which I am not personally acquainted) had their world shaken badly by the proprietary and unexpected act of dropping VB6 and going to .NET. Know any other war stories about this?

I guess what I am really after is a tool that is as good as the pre-dot-Net Visual Studio environment that might insulate me from the whims of the Boyz in the (Redmond) Hood?

... or am I am I living in la-la land?

worstje · « **Reply #1 on:** January 03, 2011, 09:40 PM »

La la la la la la la la.

I am with you, although I hate any iteration of VB past and present. Modern IDEs are often 'redesigned from the ground up' and you notice because they dump half the features and add stuff nobody really cares about.

Renegade · « **Reply #2 on:** January 03, 2011, 09:48 PM »

I think you're in la-la-land.

The move to .NET was not MS "dropping" VB. It was MS moving to the new paradigm for the future. The old paradigm was outdated.

The CLI is a fundamentally different and better way to do things.

MS is usually very good with backward compatibility, so the break there says something that is inherently against their character.

I wouldn't say a ".NET-style takeover", but I would say a "CLI-style takeover", which I am hoping for.

Let's beat that horse some more...

GO MONO~!

f0dder · « **Reply #3 on:** January 03, 2011, 10:30 PM »

Quote from: CodeTRUCKER on January 03, 2011, 09:27 PM

had their world shaken badly by the proprietary and unexpected act of dropping VB6 and going to .NET. Know any other war stories about this?

Eh?

VB6 is from 1998. As of March 2008 it has entered MS's unssuported phase. And that's about time, really - there's a lot of things that are horribly, horribly wrong with VB. 10 years is (way) enough.

40hz · « **Reply #4 on:** January 03, 2011, 10:37 PM »

Quote from: Renegade on January 03, 2011, 09:48 PM

Let's beat that horse some more...

GO MONO~!

Let's beat that horse some more...

Seriously bad idea.

IainB · « **Reply #5 on:** January 04, 2011, 02:22 AM »

@CodeTRUCKER: It could seem that M$oft had unilaterally mandated the demise of VB, but as @f0dder pointed out:

Quote

VB6 is from 1998. As of March 2008 it has entered MS's unssuported phase. And that's about time, really - there's a lot of things that are horribly, horribly wrong with VB. 10 years is (way) enough.

We are creatures of habit, and it's comforting to be able to continue with your programming in the languages that you have invested so much of your cognitive surplus in over the years, and so I guess in that way I still miss PLAN IV, FORTRAN, and BASIC - and even teaching my kids to use LOGO and BASIC. I have noticed that getting over the first language you learned and moving to another language often seems to be a big hurdle for many people. This is what is meant by "Resistance to change".

Having said that, I did wonder about the seemingly brutal and unannounced (well, I hadn't been told to expect it) introduction by M$oft of the ".NET Framework", and I thought to myself, "What the heck is this? Why is this necessary?" Then I saw how, unless I wished to be excommunicated, I really could not avoid having M$oft install this .NET Framework - what seemed to be a fat, bloated support infrastructure for .NET onto my Windows OS. This was supposed to make my PC experience a better world? I doubted it very much, and I still do. What it does do is consolidate M$oft's monopoly "lock-in" of us as helpless customers - and the same seems to be being repeated for Silverlight, which is becoming almost as promiscuous as Adobe products in installing itself into your OS. No thanks.

Regardless of the words spoken or arguments written about this, this probably isn't about "improving the experience of the end user" or "making life easier for developers" at all, but more a matter of unpublished M$oft policy for maintaining continued supremacy by introducing compellingly attractive/necessary products that improve M$oft lock-in. Nothing wrong in that in the capitalist model - it's what all great computer companies have practiced since at least the '70s. If, as a by-product of this, the experience of the developers can be said to have been improved in some way, well then, that's what it was all about, after all - wasn't it?

Presumably M$oft feels the need to keep itself ahead of their competitive monster, Java, and now the new kraken - the fat, bloated Adobe AIR.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #6 on:** January 04, 2011, 02:56 AM »

@IainB

Given your comments and experience, the *safest* pathway would be to stay away from the "locker-inners" and try to get connected with a solid community-supported language/IDE.

Ok.... that might sound like a good argument, except aren't all "community"-supported initiatives maintained (read: controlled) by a single individual or small group? Sounds like it might be trading one "locker-inner" for another, right?

I do like the concept of regardless of which locker-inner we willingly incarcerate ourselves by we can use the experience to grow! That is always good.

SKA · « **Reply #7 on:** January 04, 2011, 05:48 AM »

You may look at :
http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET.htm

SKA

Renegade · « **Reply #8 on:** January 04, 2011, 11:49 AM »

Quote from: SKA on January 04, 2011, 05:48 AM

You may look at :
http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET.htm

SKA

$1,200 or $2,000. Ouch. Definitely not for playing with or starting out.

IainB · « **Reply #9 on:** January 04, 2011, 01:44 PM »

@Renegade:

Quote

$1,200 or $2,000. Ouch. Definitely not for playing with or starting out.

Yes, ClarionNET looks like it might be a good (read "potentially profitable") entrepreneurial bolt-on to the .NET Framework. It looks like it could be quite innovative, but I can't help thinking that it's unnecessary. I mean, why would you really need to use it?

However, I am hugely sceptical. I didn't read much more about ClarionNET after my BS alarm went off. The site lacked credibility in my view - the potential giveaways being a lack of solid information about the company (I looked quite hard for that), the broken or bad use of English, and links to a lot of dubious-looking and incestuous sites from so-called "worldwide distributors". Like a lot of those scam sites that have been developed from inside the old Eastern bloc countries and India and that keep wanting to sell you "web development services" or for you to download software to "Speed up your PC!" (the latter now become a modern-day euphemism for a trojan).

I'd advise caution. Hold onto your wallets. Any organisation that does not publish pertinent and verifiable facts about itself and its formation may have something to hide. I always apply the general rule-of-thumb on "business ethics" given by Sir Adrian Cadbury in a Harvard Business Review paper in the '80s:

Quote

"If a business organisation or process is unable to stand the hard light of scrutiny, then there is probably something unethical about it."

SKA · « **Reply #10 on:** January 04, 2011, 03:09 PM »

Dear IanB

I have clients who use Clarion for Windows, recently they told me about Clarion.NET IDE which is why I posted about it in this thread. My first post on DC about Clarion was in 2006 , this is my second post
on Clarion.Net.

You are right - there is less info about Softvelocity the company behind Clarion - its mostly a product website.

On this newsgroup comp.lang.clarion I found this old post (in 2000) which seems to explain more about Clarion.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.clarion/browse_thread/thread/48fd6184ff0a44af/f1f29b8064e6a848?lnk=gst&q=history+of+clarion#f1f29b8064e6a848

Brief profile of Softvelocity is here : http://www.itconsulting.com/vendors/softvelocity-122706/

quote:
SoftVelocity produces the Clarion development environment -- Clarion is a data-centric Advanced Rapid Application Development (ARAD) tool featuring roundtrip code generation that preserves your hand written code and allows reiterative code generation. Clarion is used in corporate, government and military installations worldwide.

SoftVelocity, Inc. was founded in May of 2000 when it acquired the Clarion line application development tools from TopSpeed Corporation. The acquisition made SoftVelocity the owner of the Clarion technology that has been developed since 1989 and all products based on it, including the Clarion for Windows product line and a number of accessory development tools.
unquote

It does not look like as disreputable as you infer , but ofcourse you may know more than me.

Apart from Clarion.NET there is also Eiffel (www.eiffel.com) & Omnis Studio
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnis_Studio ) , also http://www.tigerlogic.com/omnis/
but I guess these are more expensive than Clarion.

SKA

IainB · « **Reply #11 on:** January 05, 2011, 02:22 AM »

Edit: 2011-01-06 0031hrs
I have removed my posted comment as it broke at least 3 of my own established rules for posting:
Rule 1: that there is no limit to our ignorance (including mine), and I should accept that;
Rule 2: to limit the contribution of my cognitive surplus to such people and their infinite ignorance/questions, by encouraging them to take more responsibility for seeking out/discovering their own answers.
Rule 3: that people generally seem to have little respect for and to have a limited capacity to internalise answers/knowledge which have come too easily to them, so generally avoid giving them any answers.
Rule 4: in any event, avoid "telling them the answer" or pushing my opinion forwards without substantiation in theory, experience and good practice (this takes work to communicate).

I am already regretting making the post.

SKA · « **Reply #12 on:** January 05, 2011, 07:21 AM »

Some links For CodeTrucker :

article by ClarionMag's publisher Dave Harms:
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v12/v12n10ireland.html

other links:
http://www.clarionmag.com/cmag/v12/v12n09devroadmaps.html
http://www.devroadmaps.com/drm/cm.html

Devroadmaps.com- online magazine on Dot Net :
http://www.devroadmaps.com/
http://www.devroadmaps.com/drm/about.html

"DevRoadmaps is about .NET development in general, not Clarion.NET development in particular. Clarion Magazine is still the place to find Clarion.NET information (at such time as the .NET AppGen is available and usable). Whether you're using Clarion.NET or non-Clarion tools, I believe you'll find DevRoadmaps.com to be a vital source of information for your .NET business software development."

Promo pricing for devroadmaps.com subscription:
http://www.devroadmaps.com/drm/y10/y10m09betaspecial.html

SKA

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #13 on:** January 05, 2011, 10:47 PM »

Thank you to you folks for your comments. I appreciate your contributions to my research!

Calvin

kyrathaba · « **Reply #14 on:** January 06, 2011, 01:19 AM »

CodeTRUCKER, one of the concerns you've mentioned is cross-platform portability. Well, .NET continues to be ported via the Mono project, which is quite advanced. Though not perfect (neither is .NET Framework itself), it's quite impressive. We're talking the ability to leverage massive amounts of pre-written, well-tested namespaces, and produce modern apps for either Windows or *nix. CLI really is the wave of the future. Now, there's no way to guard against future paradigm shifts, which will inevitably come around when their time has come. The important thing to realize is that the CLI is a very modern, forward-thinking paradigm that can be built upon for many years yet to come. And let me emphasize the relative ease of programming in a .NET language. They truly are Rapid Application Development languages.

CodeTRUCKER · « **Reply #15 on:** January 06, 2011, 06:52 AM »

@kryathaba,

Hey Man, I can feel your passion that I not miss out on what VB.NET may have for me and I appreciate your caring. That's the very thing that makes Cody sing so nicely around here! I will certainly take your thoughts into account as I explore my options.

Calvin

f0dder · « **Reply #16 on:** January 06, 2011, 10:37 AM »

Quote from: CodeTRUCKER on January 06, 2011, 06:52 AM

Hey Man, I can feel your passion that I not miss out on what VB.NET may have for me and I appreciate your caring.

Don't.

Pick any other .NET language, but please not VB.Net

kyrathaba · « **Reply #17 on:** January 06, 2011, 12:06 PM »

Quote

Pick any other .NET language, but please not VB.Net smiley

LOL. Personally, I much prefer C#, and would endorse it over VB.NET. It's syntax is much cleaner.

worstje · « **Reply #18 on:** January 06, 2011, 12:13 PM »

Agreed. Dodge VB, no matter what incarnation it might be: that is my advice. :-)

Renegade · « **Reply #19 on:** January 06, 2011, 12:57 PM »

VB.NET is trivial to learn. I think it's great to start with.

But once you have a basic grip on the .NET framework, switch to C# as soon as possible.

If you like functional programming, check out F#.

f0dder · « **Reply #20 on:** January 06, 2011, 01:29 PM »

Quote from: Renegade on January 06, 2011, 12:57 PM

VB.NET is trivial to learn. I think it's great to start with.

Why start with a lobotomy and then later on try to reverse it's effects?

To be fair, VB has a lot worse name than it deserves credit for - you can do decent stuff with it (it's just that 99% of the stuff you see produced with VB is crap, probably because it's so easy to start with that a monkey with no training can - and will - hack out horrors in it). But it's syntax is horrible, and it's really not that much harder to start with a proper language.

kyrathaba · « **Reply #21 on:** January 06, 2011, 04:32 PM »

And bear in mind that C# is the flagship .NET language, built from scratch to leverage the Framework while incorporating the best features of C++ and Java.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #22 on:** January 06, 2011, 05:17 PM »

Christ they've damn near got me talked into using C# at this point...

widgewunner · « **Reply #23 on:** January 06, 2011, 06:09 PM »

C#- C-shmardt!

Give me assembler, or give me death!

f0dder · « **Reply #24 on:** January 06, 2011, 06:20 PM »

Quote from: widgewunner on January 06, 2011, 06:09 PM

Give me assemblery, or give me death!

There, ftfy.