The collapse of the .NET ecosystem



  • Went to work, got fired, .NET ecosystem collapsed over the weekend. Alas.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Went to work, got fired, .NET ecosystem collapsed over the weekend. Alas.

    WTF? Really?

    Sorry to hear that. It seemed you were happy with your job.



  • @cartman82 said:

    So you laboriously recreate a feature browser gives you for free.

    Argument 1:

    var a = new ViewModel;
    var b = new View;
    b.Context = a;
    b.Show();

    Argument 2:

    That's no different than using an existing resource to add features to your application. I don't have to recreate the feature.



  • @xaade said:

    Feel free not to, but I'm only arguing that destop apps are still useful, not that web apps are inferior. I just believe that desktop apps are superior for internal business applications.

    I don't see everyone making a switch to web app document editing or email client.

    What you've done is say

    "When I converted this old desktop app to web app, it was suddenly better."

    Which I'm saying,

    "You could have simply redesigned it as a desktop app too, and also seen similar benefits."

    So it's not fair to say that when you refactor things, they get better, because web app.

    I was providing a counter-example to your claim. There are additional benefits to a web app that you cannot get with a desktop app, primarily around the update process.

    • Updates only need to be done in one place.
    • No need to see which version a user is running when they report a bug.
    • Hotfixes can be pushed without needing to alert the users.
    • Employees who work from home only need to connect to the VPN and then can access the app from their browser. No need to install it on their home computer.
    • With minimal work on my part, the app is able to take advantage of native browser capabilities, such as desktop notifications and tabbed browsing.

    In addition to all that, this app was initially designed because the commercially available software that does almost the same thing does not fulfill all the needs of our company, and some of our partners/competitors have expressed similar frustration. There has been talk of taking our program and creating a new company to market it as a cloud based competitor to the one currently available commercial option.

    So yes, there are reasons to rebuild something as a web app. Yes, web apps can be more responsive than desktop apps. Is a web app always the correct design decision? No. There have been projects here where I was asked to tack something on as a new feature to our web app, but I was able to point out that it didn't really fit with the rest of the app and should be designed as a desktop program instead. You need to take a look at the big picture in each case and determine what is best for your situation.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @xaade said:

    I don't see everyone making a switch to web app [...] email client.

    Really?



  • Not for businessland.

    It's shifting towards web clients, but there's still a significant number of desktop client users.

    And, even on my phone I use the app more than loading the website.

    And a lot of the statistics I'm seeing is lumbing mobile platforms in with web apps, because the account provider is the same.

    They differentiated Office from Office 365, because Office was always a desktop package.


    Then again, there are free desktop distros, but web is popular.


    On the flip side, I suppose there's no reason not to use the features that web provides, because my browser is already taking more resources than my desktop applications. Holy freakin hell.



  • Sucks, you have my commiserations.



  • Goddamned you people are humorless fucks. I was gonna sit back and let Cartman8887877 think I was actually fired, because lolz, but now TWO of you morons? Ugh.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I thought their posts were funny. But I couldn't tell if they were running with it or just got trolled. That was part of the fun.



  • Well I would have let it ride except I know they'd spread the lie that I was fired around and in 3 months I'd certainly be telling RaceProlapseUK that no, I wasn't fired, and over and over again no doubt considering dungheap's goldfish memory.


  • FoxDev

    On the contrary; I knew right away you were taking the piss ;)

    Oh, and you got the personal pronoun wrong again 😛



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Goddamned you people are humorless fucks. I was gonna sit back and let Cartman8887877 think I was actually fired, because lolz, but now TWO of you morons? Ugh.

    What!? So what, now I've gotta eat the entire "Hope life gets better" cake by myself!? AND HOW THE HELL AM I GONNA CALL BACK THE PACKAGE OF DUNG I SENT TO YOUR COMPANY!?



  • @abarker said:

    I was providing a counter-example to your claim. There are additional benefits to a web app that you cannot get with a desktop app, primarily around the update process.

    Updates only need to be done in one place.
    No need to see which version a user is running when they report a bug.
    Hotfixes can be pushed without needing to alert the users.
    Employees who work from home only need to connect to the VPN and then can access the app from their browser. No need to install it on their home computer.
    With minimal work on my part, the app is able to take advantage of native browser capabilities, such as desktop notifications and tabbed browsing.

    True, in part, but really what you've done is shifted the effort to a different platform. The browser in this case. So the benefits on the update side are offset (in some proportion), by things such as:

    • You have to keep track of at least one browser, normally as many as three, maybe more
    • Your users may be on different versions of their browsers
    • Your app may break on a new browser version
    • You are either limited to the smallest set of features that every browser supports, or have to test different combinations of features

    So webapps aren't a silver bullet for the update process either.



  • @Kian said:

    True, in part, but really what you've done is shifted the effort to a different platform. The browser in this case. So the benefits on the update side are offset (in some proportion), by things such as:

    • You have to keep track of at least one browser, normally as many as three, maybe more
    • Your users may be on different versions of their browsers
    • Your app may break on a new browser version
    • You are either limited to the smallest set of features that every browser supports, or have to test different combinations of features

    So webapps aren't a silver bullet for the update process either.

    For an in-house app, those are non-issues.

    • Force users to a specific browser without any trouble. We currently force everyone to use IE, although testing shows they could get away with Chrome.
    • Since Windows updates are centrally managed, we can ensure that all users are on the same version of IE.
    • This also means that testing can be done on new browser version before it is allowed to go to the users.
    • Feature limitations due to multi-browser support are not an issue the official line is that they are supposed to use IE.

    Now, if this were a commercial product, all your points would be valid. But it isn't a commercial product. It's a private, in-house web app. So all your "update downsides" mean jack shit.



  • @abarker said:

    We currently force everyone to use IE

    I'd rather take a bullet. I only use IE for sap, because I acknowledge that SAP will suck on any browser.

    @abarker said:

    Feature limitations due to multi-browser support are not an issue the official line is that they are supposed to use IE.

    Until you have legacy web apps that only work in IE 8, and a new web app that only works in IE 11.

    Enjoy telling your client they have to downgrade IE to perform an install, then upgrade IE to use the software that was installed.

    @Kian said:

    shifted the effort to a different platform

    And hidden all the problems of that platform.

    The only reason people don't protest the resource hog that is your platform (a browser) is because they already have that browser open to perform other tasks.



  • @xaade said:

    Enjoy telling your client they have to downgrade IE to perform an install, then upgrade IE to use the software that was installed.

    :wtf:

    This is in-house software for my employer, so there's no "telling my client" anything. Also, do you even know how web apps work? Installing through the browser? I don't think so. You can build a package to put everything where you need, but you you are really just deploying the files for the web app in the appropriate place on your web server. There's no "installing", and certainly nothing like the deranged hypothetical scenario that you've dreamed up.



  • In this particular case, it was installing client software that citrix would use.
    Except the installer was web-base, because.... WEBAPPSTM and didn't use the existing installer solution.
    And this installer was legacy. I can only guess that the level of scripting the install needed wasn't available at the time they wrote the legacy software.

    So they had to downgrade to install our client, then upgrade to continue using citrix.



  • So you had an experience with a browser based installer (one of the more idiotic ideas I've ever heard) and decided that it must somehow be applicable to internal web apps in general?

    :rolleyes:



  • @abarker said:

    Now, if this were a commercial product, all your points would be valid. But it isn't a commercial product. It's a private, in-house web app. So all your "update downsides" mean jack shit.

    Web app still doesn't win. If you can enforce a browser, you can push an app. Besides, app install problems were solved like ten years ago, and auto-updating desktops apps are pretty easy to make too. I would take app installation problem any day over browser compatibility issues - or even worse, browser vendors changing features and breaking your web app. This one was my favorite.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @flabdablet said:

    Just like Hypercard!

    I was the second like on that. Then I wondered who the first was.

    "I bet it is @boomzilla."

    -click-

    "Called it."


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Open source was almost non-existent on Mac Classic, and it was an extremely vibrant programming ecosystem for many, many years.

    Every time you bring up the fucking Mac Classic, I want to bash my head on my desk. My desk is glass. Unless you want to kill me, knock it off.



  • @Jaime said:

    breaking your web app. This one was my favorite.

    Well, obviously the solution is to force your users to use a compatible version of IE, languishing in an old version without security updates, for forever.

    I still point to the fact that programmers say web apps are better because they replaced their legacy program with a web app.

    "My MVC solution is much better than that old MFC application"

    Yeah, has nothing to do with the technology being 20 years apart.



  • @xaade said:

    Well, obviously the solution is to force your users to use a compatible version of IE, languishing in an old version without security updates, for forever.

    Nice sarcasm.

    Obviously, the implication is that more time must be devoted to maintaining a web app than a desktop app, since a web app will rot if you don't constantly keep up with browser changes. For a desktop app, you can use that effort to make the application better.

    How long do you think a typical JS heavy web app will continue to function properly without being maintained? Five years, maybe ten? Microsoft tries really hard not to break twenty year old desktop apps when they release new operating systems.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    None of those three things are features of a web app per se, though. You could've done all of them on a desktop app, just nobody bothered to.



  • @Polygeekery said:

    Unless you want to kill me, knock it off.

    Maybe he just thinks you need a new desk?



  • @FrostCat said:

    You could've done all of them on a desktop app, just nobody bothered to.

    If someone were to say, invent the wheel for desktop apps, then the web app advantage would be gone.
    There's no difference from your platform (browser) having a feature set, and your platform (3rd party dlls) having a feature set.



  • How's the job hunt going?



  • The collapse of the .NET ecosystem is making it pretty rough.



  • I hear there's always jobs in PHP.



  • @Captain said:

    I hear there's always jobs in PHP.

    There are certain limits one should not cross ...



  • This post is deleted!


    1. There's a login-gate in front of that link...

    2. Which means you have a 9gag login and have it set to auto-login.

    Jesus man. Have some self-respect. 9gag?



  • Fine,
    [spoiler]
    <img src=http://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/agveA7g_460s.jpg style="width:150px;height:150px;>
    [/spoiler]



  • @Polygeekery said:

    Unless you want to kill me, knock it off.

    Given the level of Blakey-persona's hatred for people and the number of times he's told people to die, I don't think this is likely to stop him.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Touchə


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Captain said:

    I hear there's always jobs in PHP.

    How's the Haskell market? Functional?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The collapse of the .NET ecosystem is making it pretty rough.

    I was going to suggest an opening at our company, but due to the collapse of the .NET ecosystem, we had to kill our C# client and are all in for some webX.0.


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