.Net: 3 Years of the 'Vision' Thing

[asj]

interesting read from eweek about the dying hope surrounding .net

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1184728,00.asp

The end of last month marked the third anniversary of Microsoft's launch
of its .Net strategy, which executives such as Chairman and Chief
Software Architect Bill Gates said at the time was a "bet-the-company
thing." But three years later, reactions are mixed as to whether that
strategy, along with the vision that accompanied it, has played out as
the Redmond, Wash., software developer had hoped.

Rob Helms, research director for Directions on Microsoft, a research
company that tracks Microsoft, in Kirkland, Wash., said the .Net
initiative described a vision for how software and the Internet would
evolve; a new platform for software development that supported the
vision; and a new business—applic ation hosting—that would drive future
growth for the company.

"Three years later, most of the hopes behind the .Net initiative have
not been realized," Helms said, adding that .Net has now almost vanished
from Microsoft's vocabulary.

On the thorny issue of the .Net platform versus the Java platform, Helms
said the slow growth of Web services has prevented Microsoft from
driving adoption of the .Net platform or giving it a leg up on Java. The
..Net platform itself has been hampered by immature Web service
standards.

[asj]

i meant "dying hYpe", not hope, but i guess that works just as well ;-)

asj wrote:

interesting read from eweek about the dying hope surrounding .net

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1184728,00.asp

The end of last month marked the third anniversary of Microsoft's launch
of its .Net strategy, which executives such as Chairman and Chief
Software Architect Bill Gates said at the time was a "bet-the-company
thing." But three years later, reactions are mixed as to whether that
strategy, along with the vision that accompanied it, has played out as
the Redmond, Wash., software developer had hoped.

Rob Helms, research director for Directions on Microsoft, a research
company that tracks Microsoft, in Kirkland, Wash., said the .Net
initiative described a vision for how software and the Internet would
evolve; a new platform for software development that supported the
vision; and a new business—applic ation hosting—that would drive future
growth for the company.

"Three years later, most of the hopes behind the .Net initiative have
not been realized," Helms said, adding that .Net has now almost vanished
from Microsoft's vocabulary.

On the thorny issue of the .Net platform versus the Java platform, Helms
said the slow growth of Web services has prevented Microsoft from
driving adoption of the .Net platform or giving it a leg up on Java. The
.Net platform itself has been hampered by immature Web service
standards.

[Roedy Green]

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 12:36:42 -0400, asj <as*@xzxx.com > wrote or quoted
:

"Three years later, most of the hopes behind the .Net initiative have
not been realized," Helms said, adding that .Net has now almost vanished
from Microsoft's vocabulary.

The problem is, the industry can't bet the farm on a technology that
Microsoft might dump. With Java, at least if Sun loses interest,
there are plenty of other parties who could take the ball.
Java has been fiercely multiplatform and multivendor since day 1. MS
has been fiercely proprietary.

Gates underestimated the impact of the Internet back in the 90s. I
think he has done it again. He misunderstood the need for software to
run on a wide variety of platforms from tiny handhelds to humongous.

I don't want to see .net die. The .net folk seem much more willing to
cater to the needs of application programmers to make their life
easier, even if it complicates the lives of the compiler writers. .net
is a good spur to Java's continued evolution to be more application
programmer-friendly.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.

[Eric Gunnerson]

"Roedy Green" <ro***@mindprod .com> wrote in message
news:sj******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 12:36:42 -0400, asj <as*@xzxx.com > wrote or quoted
:

"Three years later, most of the hopes behind the .Net initiative have
not been realized," Helms said, adding that .Net has now almost vanished
from Microsoft's vocabulary.

The problem is, the industry can't bet the farm on a technology that
Microsoft might dump. With Java, at least if Sun loses interest,
there are plenty of other parties who could take the ball.
Java has been fiercely multiplatform and multivendor since day 1. MS
has been fiercely proprietary.

Gates underestimated the impact of the Internet back in the 90s. I
think he has done it again. He misunderstood the need for software to
run on a wide variety of platforms from tiny handhelds to humongous.

I don't want to see .net die. The .net folk seem much more willing to
cater to the needs of application programmers to make their life
easier, even if it complicates the lives of the compiler writers. .net
is a good spur to Java's continued evolution to be more application
programmer-friendly.

The article is referring to the "Let's brand everything with .NET" marketing
frenzy of a couple years ago. That, thankfully, has run its course.

It's not referring to the .NET Platform and Frameworks, which are still very
much alive and talked about throughout the company. Longhorn will bring a
new set of managed interfaces to the O/S.

--
Visit the C# product team at http://www.csharp.net

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[asj]

YGBKM wrote:

Were was Java after 3 years? NOWHERE.

actually, by 1998, java was pretty much heralded as the next coming of
the messiah....it was being slotted into almost everything possible,
from the ill-fated NCs, to smartcards, to set-tops, etc, not to mention
the fact every second website had a really annoying, large applet
choking people's 28k modems. it was also trying to make it to the
enterprise at the time, with much derision and skepticism from some
quarters...and, oh, yeah, several idiots like corel were porting entire
office suites to it, even though the api's and jvms to handle such large
projects were not yet mature enough.

[Chris]

> i agree with you here, that microsoft has done a MUCH better job to make

life easier for developers. and it HAS forced java to make some changes,
even including many initiatives to make java almost VB in terms of ease
of programming (how long did it take the java vendors to think THIS up?)

Although on principal I would agree with the sentiment, there could be
a problem here: if developing Java apps becomes easier, any monkey
could hack something out and then we'd all have to reduce our rates to
the level of VB developers - not good!

Perhaps we should start petitioning Sun and Java-based vendors to
reduce functionality & user-friendliness?

;)

- sarge

[Jay Glynn]

"asj" <as*@xzxx.com > wrote in message news:3F******** ***@xzxx.com...

YGBKM wrote:

Were was Java after 3 years? NOWHERE.

actually, by 1998, java was pretty much heralded as the next coming of
the messiah....it was being slotted into almost everything possible,
from the ill-fated NCs, to smartcards, to set-tops, etc, not to mention
the fact every second website had a really annoying, large applet
choking people's 28k modems. it was also trying to make it to the
enterprise at the time, with much derision and skepticism from some
quarters...and, oh, yeah, several idiots like corel were porting entire
office suites to it, even though the api's and jvms to handle such large
projects were not yet mature enough.

Sounds like you just described .NET.

[asj]

Chris wrote:

Although on principal I would agree with the sentiment, there could be
a problem here: if developing Java apps becomes easier, any monkey
could hack something out and then we'd all have to reduce our rates to
the level of VB developers - not good!

Perhaps we should start petitioning Sun and Java-based vendors to
reduce functionality & user-friendliness?

;)

you're too late...sun wants to grow the number of developers to 10
MILLION in 3 years using something called "RAVE", which would make
creating advanced functionalities in java a drag and drop thing....if
that happens the ratio of supply of developers to demand will be larger,
perhaps driving enterprise java salaries lower overall....

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/53/31667.html

"Sun Microsystems has finally unveiled its long-promised development
environment to simplify programming in Java. Called "project Rave", it
is designed to bring drag-and-drop capabilities to programmers building
Java-based web services and applications."

"On a strategic and technical basis, Rave holds promise as a developers'
tool. Due in 2004, Rave is expected to compile Java code at the touch of
a button, and uses Java Server Faces to develop interfaces using
JavaServer Pages (JSPs). It is designed to import UI designs from
software such as Adobe Systems' Illustrator."

[asj]

Jay Glynn wrote:

"asj" <as*@xzxx.com > wrote in message news:3F******** ***@xzxx.com...

YGBKM wrote:

Were was Java after 3 years? NOWHERE.

actually, by 1998, java was pretty much heralded as the next coming of
the messiah....it was being slotted into almost everything possible,
from the ill-fated NCs, to smartcards, to set-tops, etc, not to mention
the fact every second website had a really annoying, large applet
choking people's 28k modems. it was also trying to make it to the
enterprise at the time, with much derision and skepticism from some
quarters...and, oh, yeah, several idiots like corel were porting entire
office suites to it, even though the api's and jvms to handle such large
projects were not yet mature enough.

Sounds like you just described .NET.

not that i know of...perhaps 3 years ago (when even gates described .net
as the be all and end all for microsoft), but not today, when it's
pretty much just another development environment for microsoft shops
that is cannibalizing older microsoft technologies like VB and COM.

[Mike Schilling]

"Eric Gunnerson" <er***********@ microsoft.nospa m.com> wrote in message
news:3f******** @news.microsoft .com...

It's not referring to the .NET Platform and Frameworks, which are still very much alive and talked about throughout the company. Longhorn will bring a
new set of managed interfaces to the O/S.

Including one to flush from a FileStream to the disk? It's annoying to me
that I need unsafe code to do this today.