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Letters to the Editor

June 23, 2005

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Deploying Critical Solutions With .NET
Like Peter Banks, I am also one of the "in-the-trenches developers" [Letters to the Editor, ".NET: Too Little Progress," May 2005]. We don't care much about Web service calls, SOAP, XML, Pocket PC, intranets, extranets, or writing objects that run on $25K+ servers.

We do care about customers and solving their business problems with easy-to-develop, natural-to-use Windows apps that are cheap and pay for themselves quickly.

While I took my time to make the initial leap to .NET, I can happily say I haven't looked back. I have found .NET to be the most productive environment for developing stable, reliable, value-for-money software solutions for customers. I can create these solutions more quickly, with less bugs, and with less deployment headaches.

Best of all, the language and environment have been stable. There is no new version (with all new idiosyncrasies/bugs) every three to six months. There's no need to rewrite all of that support code (my toolkit, so to speak). There's no need to continually upgrade components, coding standards, or database access technology. Windows XP has standardized the desktops we support, and now SQL Server 2000 has standardized how our customers' data is stored. I can reliably develop internal documentation, tools, and standards that will be meaningful for longer periods of time and won't need to be rewritten before the ink even dries.

I'm looking forward to the new 2005 versions of all the tools. My hope is that the changes will help those at the bleeding edge and will only slightly impact those of us doing the "real and meaningful work." (I'm not even going to install a release candidate to a virtual PC until there is a clear date for release.)

While progress is a great thing and I'm all for development and improvements (I, too, miss edit-and-continue), I'm glad that the rate of change has reduced. I can concentrate on developing solid solutions using my existing code base, and in the end, make money—instead of having to "reinvent my wheels" every 12 months.