[quote user="Kev777"]
"It won't be all that hard to maintain html code because they can continue to use vs, dream, or even front page and use the vb interface to upload the template to the database. This will make it easy for the web designers (who don't know .net) to integrate their designs"
[/quote]
In other words, allowing the least-capable people to completely bypass all forms of testing, QA, and version control before making their changes "live". Brillant!
[quote user="Kev777"]
"the page logic is simple. Just parse this template and stuff that into the website wrapper (header and footer) template. "
[/quote]
This argument ended at the word "parse".
[quote user="Kev777"]
"this is exactly what sql report services is doing."
[/quote]
So go create some SQL reports if that's what they like doing.
[quote user="Kev777"]
"We are fed up with having to deploy and roll back dlls or fix problems late at night on production on spot "
[/quote]
In other words, they're fed up with trying to be mature professionals who follow appropriate processes and procedures. And why are there no staging environments to roll back to if this is such a constant problem?
[quote user="Kev777"]
"the more layers you have the more you have to maintain. "
[/quote]
It's called encapsulation and isolation, and it's a GOOD thing. It allows you to monkey around with one section of an application with little or no fear of unintended consequences in another. But that would require mature professionals to create such a cleanly layered application, and you clearly seem to be lacking same at your company.
[quote user="Kev777"]
"in five years we don't want to have every version of visual studio installed on our machines just to support all our web applications."
[/quote]
<sarcasm>Thankfully SQL server is never updated.</sarcasm> It would be quicker and easier to upgrade from 1.x to 2.0 than to allow this meltdown to occur. Unless you've done some really obtuse things in 1.x (which I'm not discounting after reading what they're doing now) the upgrade from 1.x to 2.0 is nearly seemless.
[quote user="Kev777"]
"we will code this in a very clean and efficent manner so that it will be easy to maintain"
[/quote]
So they're not competent enough to create and maintain any kind of proper process for application development, but they're going to be capable of keeping a complete pile of junk "clean" and "easy to maintain"? Laughable.
You should start looking to transfer - either to another team within your company or to another company altogether. This kind of brain-melt is precisely why we won't interview candidates until they've submitted sample code that they've written. Weeds out a lot of these ignorant buffoons long before they start wasting our time with interviews.