Is there a point in learning .NET at the moment?

[ThatWasFat]

What's the point? No one has .NET except for the people that know what it is and want to download it (which is basically 0 compared to the number of people who dont know what .NET is). Plus, most good servers are not going to be running IIS anyway.

Why learn .NET? I love the platform, but why?

 

[Nothinman]

The .NET runtimes will be included in XP SE and XP SP 1 (I believe). MS will be pushing this hard, they want everyone to have it ASAP.

 

[spwango]

.NET just isn't for web apps...it is going to replace MFC and WinAPI work--

 

[Descartes]

What's the point? No one has .NET except for the people that know what it is and want to download it (which is basically 0 compared to the number of people who dont know what .NET is).

As Nothinman noted, the .NET runtime will soon be a pervasive element in Windows platforms. Also, most of the developers I know working with .NET aren't concerned about end-user deployment, at this point. It will be a long while before you see large applications that target the end-user built in .NET (imo). Where .NET does succeed, and has been in use by many for quite some time, is in the enterprise environment. If you're building applications for an enterprise, most notably a web application using web forms in ASP.NET, you control the environment, thus you can facilitate the .NET runtime installation.

When Java was officially released, it took a while before the VM became a pervasive element, expect the same here. It seems there are so many still caught up on "why should I use .NET", and "will .NET actually succeed" that they fail to realized that many enterprises and developers have been developing production applications even pre-release. .NET has succeeded in many respects, and it will only continue to grow.

Plus, most good servers are not going to be running IIS anyway

Now you've qualified your "Why .NET" statement with that IIS diatribe. That's completely absurd and unfounded.

 

[manly]

You're probably already well aware how successfully MSIE (as both a web client and a platform) became a de facto standard.

If MS anoints .Net as a favored platform (which they essentially have already done), then nobody really doubts it will become popular and ubiquitous in due time.

Besides a cornerstone of the .Net framework is the web application, where the framework lives on the server and all you need is a Web client (preferably IE). My hunch is that .Net will also become the dominant platform for many standalone applications, but it remains to be seen how long that adoption will take. I doubt most commercial software vendors would "port" their existing desktop apps just for the heck of it, and there are applications (i.e. games) that will be developed in C/C++ for some time.

As far as most good servers not running IIS, remember that PHBs who make the critical decisions don't evaluate their choice the same way you and I do.

 

[hoihtah]

bottom line.... just learn it.

 

[HJB417]

Originally posted by: spwango
.NET just isn't for web apps...it is going to replace MFC and WinAPI work--

you're right, but we're not totally there yet. It's not gonna be a replacement for the winapi for a while!!

 

[JellyBaby]

My hunch is that .Net will also become the dominant platform for many standalone applications

I bumped into a program written in some .NET language. I was doing to download it but in the description it said "required .net framework". This thing is apparently 21 MB or so. Compare that to, I think, 2-3 MB for the Visual Basic run-time!

I'd say until everyone has this framework (or broadband), .net programs won't be terribly popular.

 

[Descartes]

you're right, but we're not totally there yet. It's not gonna be a replacement for the winapi for a while!!

The win32 api will most likely never be replaced. Much of the BCL in .NET simply delegates calls to the win32 api. As p/invoke is a first-class facility in .NET (with DllImportAttribute and extern), it's obvious that you're still going to have to step outside of the BCL to accomplish some things. What the .NET BCL does do, is make probably 90% of what was previously extremely difficult, or tedious, with the win32 api extremely lucid.

It's somewhat analogous to VB in this regard. VB had facilities for much of what the programmer wanted to accomplish, but not everything. Whenever a programmer needed additional functionality, they'd have to step outside VB and call exported functions from win32 api libs. In VB, I found myself using the win32 api in many of my programs, but the need to "step outside" of the BCL in .NET is much less than the need to "step outside" of the VB runtime in VB.

 

[BuckleDownBen]

So what if the runtime is 20 MB? Any serious program will be distributed over a LAN or on a CD. People say that the size of the runtime makes .Net shareware impossible, and therefore .Net will either be a failure or will take years before it takes off. I really don't think MS is targeting the shareware developers with .Net. I don't think they are targeting the hobbyist developer who wants to e-mail his mother a program to track her recipes either. .Net is a lot like VB where most of the programs written with it will be for businesses.

 

[JellyBaby]

BuckleDownBen, I agree it won't matter for software shipped on CD. Last I checked shareware was "serious" software, though, and a 21 MB download does mean .NET isn't very viable for downloadable software. And it's not just that initial 21 MB hit -- no doubt MS will modify that framework over time and require subsequent update downloads, too. As you say for business development it won't matter.

 

[BuckleDownBen]

If someone wants your program bad enough, they will wait for a 20 MB download. There are plenty of people that download MP3's over a dial-up modem, and the average album is maybe 50 MB? Also, more and more people have broadband, so 20 MB is nothing. I reread what I said and I wish I had said that shareware is not serious software the way shrink-wrap and business software is. There are tons of great shareware apps.

 

[Nothinman]

And it's not just that initial 21 MB hit -- no doubt MS will modify that framework over time and require subsequent update downloads

They've already released 1 update to it via WindowsUpdate.

 

[DT4K]

Originally posted by: manly
As far as most good servers not running IIS, remember that PHBs who make the critical decisions don't evaluate their choice the same way you and I do.

This is true, but cost is one of the big factors they consider.
So if Microsoft continues with their plans for changing the licensing schemes to basically make corporations rent their software, we may see more companies considering open source solutions.