Ron Burk wrote a terrific, funny article “A Brief History of Windows Programming Revolutions” that describes the internal back-and-forth struggle between programming groups at Microsoft in their endless pursuit to eliminate DLL Hell. First there was DDE, then OLE, COM, ActiveX, MFC, ATL, and eventually .NET:
“And that brings us up to date with .NET (pronounced like ‘doughnut’, only different), which is like the Internet, only with more press releases. Let’s be very, very clear about one thing: .NET will eliminate DLL Hell. .NET includes a new programming language called C# (turns out there was a fatal flaw in Active++ Jspresso, so just as well it died). .NET includes a virtual runtime machine that all languages will use (turns out there’s a fatal flaw in relying on Intel CPUs).”
The serious point behind this funny article is how each of these Microsoft “revolutions” were supposed to be the panacea of Windows development, only to be replaced in a few short years by the next-best-thing.
At least Microsoft has stuck with .NET Framework for 8 years, but the churn continues within the .NET development ecosystem. Remember how WindowsForms was supposed to provide a rich client GUI that ran across all hardware platforms? Turns out it didn’t work so well in a web browser, so Microsoft invented WebForms. And MVC. WinForms also didn’t render well on Linux, so open-source geeks use Gtk# instead. And WinForms is too heavy to run on mobile devices, so Microsoft ejected it from the .NET Compact Framework. But .NET CF is too “old school” for smartphones, so now there’s Silverlight. Are you following me?
In the tech industry, the only constant is change.
Article published on September 3, 2010
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September 3rd, 2010 at 10:17 am
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September 5th, 2010 at 10:37 am
[…] .NET is pronounced like “Doughnut”, only different […]
September 30th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
How sad it is when I must stop and consider how true this is. Windows always seems to be promising that the Emerald City of functional software is just over the horizon, really it is, this time it’ll be better! .NET is just the latest in their expensive, over the top, (oh and by the way none of your old stuff will work with this new revolutionary technology so you’ll have to buy all new software) roller coaster. I swear, it’s enough to make you want to go and buy a Mac, which I’m betting is exactly what Steve Jobs is counting on. Either way, keeping an open source computing method is getting harder and harder.
February 5th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I’m glad Microsoft has actually stuck with the .NET framework. For me, I don’t normally pick up newer technology as it comes out because it can easily be replaced by something else. .NET is probably the best technology released to date!
February 17th, 2011 at 2:08 am
As a new player in software field, I am glad that I chose Java as my key language, rather that C#. For my point of view, J2EE is much more stabler than the ‘Doughnut’, cause so many people are working on it to improve its flexibility and strength.
One word should be said for Microsoft, she is maintaining his own property and directing it into a brighter future. Of course, that will be much more difficult than easily inventing a new one!
March 9th, 2011 at 1:42 am
I’m glad Microsoft has actually stuck with the .NET framework. For me, I don’t normally pick up newer technology as it comes out because it can easily be replaced by something else. .NET is probably the best technology released to date!