I was under the impression that .NET included automated versioning
so that this can't happen. And the promise that all newer version will
support older programs was given as well!
Already busted. A security patch was put into the Whidbey framework that
busted a friends app pretty seriously. They have spent probably four weeks
working around the issue.
It's not just a matter of the American buyers always wanting the
greatest and latest! I seriously believe that the constant rush into new
technologies are just another way of causing a rush of new cash flow!
Quasi interesting story. About five years ago I interviewed for a job at
large corporation here in Atlanta. I got in and they told me they were
building a new healthcare app using leading technology... namely
ASP/jscript/html/SQL. I turned them down because I knew the users would
take one look at browser based app and compare it to the functionality of a
standalone exe and they would be toast. Two and half years ago they call me
again, now the are porting what they have written to vb.net and writing more
in webforms. Not interested... still going to have performance issues and
the same set of problems. Well caught up to the IT VP a few months ago and
to get performance up to snuff they were rewriting several critical parts in
winforms running over the net and he was going on and on about how cool the
technology is. I didn't say anything, but the healthcare app I worked on in
2000 ran over the internet using a 3 tier setup on Delphi. It is still
being sold, it is wicked fast, runs on all WinX platforms, incredibly
modular allowing for system changes very quickly and very pretty (we hired
artists to do the front end). Here they are 32 million dollars later with a
product that is just now catching up to a product written 8 years ago. The
technology they use doesn't offer their customers any significant advantage
either. They went web because it was the hot thing to do like a lot of dot
bust companies did not because it was the best technical solution.
Most companies aren't selling new tech. They are selling the same ole
product they have been selling for 10 years. Many companies decide to start
using new technologies when the old ones do what they need and often better.
I was consulting with a company just the other day that wrote their app in
Foxpro. They were asking me what .net would do for them. I told them the
interface might look a bit prettier when they were done, but their database
app would basically be the same, probably run slower, require more hardware
to run and in some cases they would need to upgrade the OSes of some
customers. If they had some cracked foundation and needed to rewrite it, I
would have told them to look at .net. However, they just wanted to be
"current" for no practical reason except hype.
Most customers using business apps could care less what it is written in.
They want to know feature for feature which product is better. How many
people care what their virus scanner is written in? Unless of course they
have to download a 30mb .net install on top of the antivirus program.
If this were not true, Borland wouldn't have rushed D8 and then
D9 out the door while they were both still beta products! They know they
have to compete to stay in business, but with them it's always too late
and
not good enough!
Borland sells software development tools... any change in the industry is
obviously going to be supported by them since it increases revenue. Have
apps gotten any fundamentally easier to write since Delphi 3? Sure some
nice features, but are you building significantly better products that
couldn't be written in Delphi 3 just as good? For Win32 the answer is
likely no. MS has a point building a better mousetrap to build web apps,
but lets not start kidding ourselves about how much better .net development
is over the old RADs. At best it is a marginal improvement and I bet on
several fronts it is a step backwards.
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