I maintain both PHP and ASP.NET sites. However, It’s come to the point that I’m really frustrated with how .NET complicates things while trying to simplify them.

The main reason I used .NET was for it’s easy integration with with MS Office and the ability to share classes with related Windows programs. However, developing for both PHP/Asp.NET takes it’s toll. So right now I’m trying to move everything to PHP.

I was under the impression that when you make a .NET web app or use a .NET CMS you have to have MSSQL server and databases attached. Now most hosts charged a reasonable sum of money for this, and I was just wanting to check it out, thought I don’t really want to be paying an extra £300 a month just because I’m being inquisitive. The prices may have dropped now, but i think it was around that price when i checked it out.

Was my assumption right, or could I have checked it out for much less?

Cheers

Another plus point for .net and the main reason I use it so much is the user management system out the box.

I have worked places where I have seen aweful use of .net and this mainly down to .net 1.0 libraries being based on java being ported along instead of being rewritten. I think alot of the people that were in the .net camp and then jumped to ruby are prime examples of developers who were using c# like java.

I myself currently develop on mac and win and mobiles and use .net, python, php and still find .net to be one the best performers out there (I am really enjoying coding in python too).

That said, there are ways round these issues. For example, you can do away with webforms and viewstate for some of your pages by overriding Page.DeterminePostBackMode() I do this to allow standard html forms/controls to use the PostBack architecture – this method also allows you to use multiple forms on one page – one of which can even be a .net webform.

The problem with fixing this kind of issue is amount of time you need to invest in building your own .net framework layer which doesn’t ultimately offer any new features in terms of user experience or development process.

The problem is not really .NET itself, but Microsoft. Microsoft became so powerful and dominant that they have created a sort of ghetto. There’s the MS world, and then there’s everyone else. MS have intentionally tried to lock people in and “encourage” them to do things the MS way (e.g., webforms). Open standards, cross-polination and “biodiversity” are not in the MS DNA (although they have been making very slow moves to change this). It has always been in the MS interest to do things their own way. It’s the nature of their business.

So in short, MS are like The Emprire, everyone else is like The Rebellion. And therein lies the rub. Microsoft has a serious image problem. No matter how good their tools, they are never going to gain the respect of the young, “I’m a Mac” demographic which makes up such a large proportion of web designers and developers. PHP is cheap, accessible and has a large volume of well loved “gateway” apps, such as WordPress, which in their own way are seen as “cool” and a little bit “rockstar”. It’s the same with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, only they have more respect from the computer science educated developers (PHP, it seems, is quite widely disliked and ridiculed as a pooly designed language by many well educated programmers).

Simply put, .NET is uncool, and “uncool” to a web designer is like holy water to a vampire. Unless MS can radically change its image, it’s never going to stop getting ladled with hate by the youthful web design digerati. It’s probably much easier to just transcend such petty quibblings and get on with the task of building cool stuff.

Final comment: I suggest listening to some <a href=”http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/”StackOverflow podcasts – they often discuss .NET (SoF was built using MVC.NET) and Joel and Jeff have quite a balanced outlook (well, apart from Jeff absolutely loathing PHP). I don’t use .NET myself (I use Ruby, Rails, PHP for the most part), but listening to the SoF podcast has given me a much better insight into it, and, dare I say it, a lot more respect.

Tim Snadden made a good point about using .NET in a better way is swimming against the tide, but this is only in terms of what Microsoft says you should do with it. What the really good developers, the ones that realise WebForms are a load of pish, are doing is looking outside Microsoft for solutions. This has led to many good open source projects and communities promoting best practices that aren’t Microsoft-led.

ASP.NET MVC could go a long way to fixing a lot of these issues, sadly I think it too will suffer from poor Microsoft tutorials in order to lower the barrier to entry.