wandaturtle
New Member
With everybody talking about this "Fundamental Shift in the way of writing ASP," has anybody thought about what will become of Chili!Soft? Let's look at what we've been told.<BR><BR>Microsoft *claims* at this point in time that this will run on all 32-bit versions of Windows. Actual release is 6 months out, minimum (I read that as "18 months before it is usable, minimum"). It is being billed as a "Next Generation Windows Service." Personally, I suspect that the first version we'll see will arrive around the same time as the fabled Win2K Data Center edition and will not function (ie: the documentation will be wrong) for anything less than Win2K [unless the NGWS is a layer on top of the OS which would effectively replace the OS as far as the NGWS service is concerned].<BR><BR>Given all of that, that leaves Chili!Soft out of luck. They can either pay a lot to license NGWS (if Microsoft will let them) or stick with the old ASP while Microsoft touts their new model all over the place. It's still vaporware and Wrox has a book out on it!<BR><BR>Let's look at some other things... C#, for example (looks like C Pound to me), is a blatant Java rip-off designed to displace J++ (always was a ******* hack anyway) with a Windows-standard COM language. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- building COM-based apps in C++ and J++ seems masochistically bizarre compared to simply compiling them in VB. I'm looking forward to learning C# when it gets here. I just wish that they wouldn't be hyping it so much because I can guarantee that there are some employers out there who already want applicants with "at least 2 years C# experience." It is neither new or innovative. It appears to be (from here) a healthy evolved language -- which only runs on Windows.<BR><BR>This matches up with ASP+ nicely. Anybody know where you can get <asp:textbox runat="server"> to do *anything* except on a NGWS server? Just checking. Now Microsoft says that we can ports of non-MS languages (like Perl for regular expression fiends) to run with NGWS. And I'm fairly certain in my expectation that Visual Interdev 7 will fluently speak ASP+ -- and doubt that it will speak much else.<BR><BR>Where are you left? You're left with Microsoft telling you that the best way to develop web apps is on their latest enterprise-level server with their latest enterprise-level database using their latest enterprise-level development suite. They will make it so easy for you to use these applications you won't believe it. The two things you won't be able to do are to 1)do it yourself or 2)move it to a non-NGWS server.<BR><BR>Maybe I sound like a bit of a purist here, but I though the web (and HTML and XML and all that) were supposed to be able to unite platforms. Instead, Microsoft is trying to steer developers away from united platforms to a single (very profitable for them) platform. I find that somewhere between distressing and annoying.<BR><BR>For more information on the history of the operating system, check out Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning Was the Command Line." It's a light, quick, amusing, and almost distressing read.<BR><BR>-- views expressed are those of an person, not a corporation --This is exactly what I'm worried about - on the one hand we have Microsoft going for a cross-language single platfrom approach that could really make our lives easier. On the other hand, the rest of the known universe is going for a cross-platform approach that could really make our lives easier, and never the twain shall meet. Meanwhile the web gets more and more fragmented as the people working solely on the MS platform never see anything else and don't care (or notice) that MS throws the standards compliance they've been going on about for a couple of years out of the window.<BR><BR><BR>Didn't IBM try this sort of this back in the early ' 80s? (I'm too young to remember.) <BR><BR>Ah, the sweet bondage of proprietary lock-in!<BR><BR>DuncAlthough ASP+ is a single platform design, NGWS will enable a cross-platform approach through use of Web Services and SOAP. This would easily provide a method of front end web-serving using Microsoft platform with all processing done on UNIX boxes or vice versa. There will be many NGWS language's available, just as there are VBScript/JScript/Perl/Python for ASP... but NGWS will now open the doors for using compiled languages for active-server-scripting.<BR><BR>You won't have to go the Microsoft route for everything ... It is highly likely that a SOAP/XML protocol will be available for most hardware/OS platforms and even if not someone will develop a bridging system for any other XML protocol standards to talk to SOAP.<BR><BR>Personally I think Microsoft should be applauded for the .NET model and ASP+/NGWS ... It's been (or will be) a long time coming but finally they do seem to be listening to what developers want.. There is going to be a lot of competition in the Web/Application SP area... and yet again Microsoft are ensuring they are at the front of the race (even if their release schedule is going to be the usual MS farce).<BR>As a C++ and COM person throughout, I was appalled to see people flock to JAVA/JSP/EJP, etc, even though web stuff done with JSP/EJB was extremely unstable and didnt have proper editors, etc. When I started studying JAVA, there was API difference b/w versions 1 and 2.<BR>Now that there is C#, there is much relief to upcoming developers like myself and with the revolutionary .NET and ASP+ stuff with NGWS, I think Microsoft guys will rule the world!<BR>Way to go .. MSFT...