Microsoft Regroups with DotNetStories.com (and a little help from me)

I have a long history of using Microsoft products. Back before Classic ASP was even a language, I used Visual Basic executables and CGI as a web backend. At the time Perl was the dominate language and writing code in the VB IDE vs Perl/Notepad was a no brainer. Then, with the release of ASP and ASP.NET, Microsoft started to dominate the web programming languages.

But over the past few years things have changed. PHP has exploded with developers picking it over ASP.NET. To a developer just starting out, PHP seems like the obvious choice at first glance. With cheap hosting and only a simple text editor, the time to write a Hello World page is almost nothing at all. Major open source projects like Wordpress make it fun to create plug-ins and websites like Facebook have an officially supported PHP library. When you compare that to the open source projects written in ASP.NET you find many just don’t compare and even, until recently, an abandoned .NET Facebook library (something I’ve been vocal about in the past).

Microsoft was focusing on enterprise and ignoring the enthusiast web developer

With the recent release of DotNetStores.com, a website dedicated to featuring unexpected uses of products such as SQL Server, Windows, ASP.NET and Silverlight, Microsoft is determined to try and change that perception. The site highlights several people who use Microsoft products and details how they created their solution. One of the people highlighted is yours truly with my website Yappler.com. I use SQL Server and ASP.NET to offer the best iPhone App search engine around.

DotNetStories-Front DotNetStories-LearnMore

I was excited to be part of DotNetStories.com from the very beginning and not just for the ego trip. I’ve always believed Microsoft programming languages were superior to others but I didn’t think Microsoft was doing a good job of getting that message out. What frustrated me was the vast amount of enthusiast developers that pickup up PHP because, in the short term, it was easy to create a webpage.

What’s often missed is the time .NET saves you with the powerful Visual Studio IDE. Step-through debugging alone has saved me hundreds of hours in coding time. I can spot exactly where a bug is and squash it. With PHP, never mind the lack of step-through debugging, if you want to do any kind of debugging you have to litter your code with tons of print statements to have any shot of catching the bug. Ugly.

Update: My past experience with PHP debugging has been frustrating and didn’t compare with what I was using with VS. After posting this article several people have pointed out that PHP debugging is not what it use to be and there are robust PHP IDEs that have similar debugging capabilities.

Unfortunately, along with the power Visual Studio, you also get a level of complexity that requires a learning curve. But I think it’s a curve that’s worth pushing through in the long run. Sure, to get started you have to install the large Visual Studio program but it’s completely worth it. There’s even a great website asp.net that offers great videos and other resources to learn the language. Ask 5 PHP developers what IDE they uses to code and you’re likely to get 5 different answers and I’m willing to bet they aren’t as satisfied with their solution as a .NET programmer is with Visual Studio.

With the new website it looks like Microsoft is really trying hard to push how powerful and versatile their solutions can be. Past websites they’ve created that were left for dead have been revamped and even the Facebook toolkit has been given a new life with regular updates you can depend on.

I love developing with ASP.NET and SQL Server. I’ll keep singing their praises and trying to get more developers to use them. It’s great that Microsoft is now doing the same.

Special thank you to Brandon Watson, an entrepreneur on loan to Microsoft, for helping me be included in DotNetStories.com.

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Manuel

Hey mi you have another type here "an abandoned .NET Fackbook library " should be "an abandoned .NET Facebook library"

MichaelApproved

Fixed, thanks. Even after you pointed it out it took a while for me to catch the difference.

Anon

I have a Linux story for you here. It's to bad I can't add it to DotNetStories.com.

Parnell Springmeyer

The issue I've had with web sites/applications being built on top of proprietary technologies isn't necessarily the lack in the technology but a lack in the ability to modify, extend, and understand what is going on.

Also, Windows just plain sucks as a web server. IIS is nightmare (I've had to deal with it in the past) when trying to do anything but the Microsoft way, and the tools can get expensive. Emacs beats visual studio hands down, IMHO. LISP macros, any language under the sun, and it is open source so I can tinker with it (which I do).

I had a job where they used SQL Server exclusively and a few other Microsoft technologies. It all worked very well with some cool bells and whistles, but, it only worked when done the Microsoft way, or with Microsoft tools.

I also had a job (we were a PHP shop, exclusively) where the silly CEO bought some software from some dude that was built entirely on VB/IIS/SQL Server. We had to integrate it with our product which was PHP/Apache/MySQL. I won't get into the story, that statement should be enough.

Microsoft's technology will never be on par with the community's because their business model depends upon LIMITING interoperability and choice.

By the way, I think PHP does suck, even though it is my primary marketable skill. The language I prefer to program web applications with is Python a more powerful scripting language than anything MSFT can offer plus libraries MSFT can't beat. It's also open source.

I'm not up to date on all of this, so excuse me if my information is wrong or outdated.

MichaelApproved

I've had my share of problems with IIS and other MS tools but people have problems with other technology as well. I've had a large Oracle DB on a sun server and EMC drives with two dedicated DBAs and my main memory was about how much of a pain it was.

I actually have pretty good experience with interoperability. I run PHP/MySQL to handle http://katg.com and that gets a good amount of traffic to it. The site runs vbulletin just fine.

Did you have problems integrating the software because MS was limiting or the software code you bought was?

The Truth Hurts

"With PHP, never mind the lack of step-through debugging, if you want to do any kind of debugging you have to litter your code with tons of print statements to have any shot of catching the bug. Ugly."

Um....WRONG. There are many, many step through debuggers out there for PHP. Netbeans, for example, has extremely good (and free) step through debugging, along with many more features that are at least on par with what Visual Studio gives you.

If your intent is to give accurate and honest information, you should probably research your topic a bit. However, given the overall tone of the article, I'll wager honesty and accuracy were never really high on your list.

MichaelApproved

I updated the article based on your feedback. In the past when I've used PHP it was really frustrating trying to track down bugs. Looking again I see there some good possibilities out there. I'll checkout Netbeans and experiment with other IDEs again. It'll be nice to have an easier way to code PHP, thanks for pointing them out.

The Truth Hurts

Nice retraction. Thanks. Perhaps accuracy is higher on your list than I thought.

mister b.

you mean dotnetSTORIES, not STORES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MichaelApproved

Sadly, yes. Thanks for pointing it out. A typo in the worst possible place...