The .NET Fiasco

Author: Dave
Date: 12.11.09 - 6:02am

If you have looked around my site, you have probably noticed a lack of .NET code. Here is my little long overdue rant on .NET

First, let me say i love VB6. It has a great IDE, great debugging tools, very extensible, has enough power for most tasks, easy to add more horsepower in teh form in C dlls or COM objects, and makes GUI stuff an absolute breeze.

Sure i wish it had the capability of linking in C obj files, inline asm, directly linked in VB runtime, and some more default libraries like php has access to by default...but .NET was .NOT the answer.

In the early days of Java, everyone was all hot to trot on platform independance and web integration. The marketers went nuts pushing wares. MS hopped on board with J# until they got sued and lost. Now we have .NET which i consider to be MSs old J# retooled and reworked in their own flavor of poo.

I understand the .NET good debugging capabilities and a powerful IDE, and addresses some of the shortfalls i find with vb6, however they turned it into even a greater pile of bloatware. Everyone used to complain about the 1mb vb runtime that installed in seconds. So they turned around and created a 25mb runtime for .NET that takes tens of minutes to download and then tens of minutes to install.

What sparks this post is me looking at my add remove programs list. Right now I have 3 versions of that blasted runtime installed on my machine, each taking up close to 200mb a piece. Its just bloated crap.

Honestly i guess I am also a little peeved that VB.NET has very little in common with VB6. You cant realistically covert the code over. You can use old code as COM objects but still. Also I hate the class layout of Java and .NET. Its academic in design. Overly long and nested classes and object encapsulation. Makes all your code lines needlessly long.

I do understand its powerful to use .NET on embedded devices. To have one programming model across different processors and memory models, but for desktop development .NET is garbage in my book no matter how much they hype it. I wont even begin to talk about their web forms mess. ASP and PHP are still better solutions in my book.

Part of me also cant help but feel that their desire to incite the new language of the day isnt driven by their need to ship more product and refresh their IDE sales.

As a developer i dont need mindless break neck innovation just because you need more sales volume. I need a stable workable tool that lets me earn a living without having to go back and learn the ABCs of your language du jour.

If these are the choice we must make, then i would much rather pay a subscription yearly for continued license to my development IDE and operating system so that both of us have a stable operating base and tool set. Most of the innovations in VISTA are garbage also.

Mindless "innovation" and media hype for home users and fluff to sell the next sales unit.

Comments: (9)

On 08.21.10 - 9:08pm Dave wrote:
Ok, I have to be honest..maybe i was a bit harsh above. I have held this view for the last x years since .Net first came out. The performance seems to be much better now and the 2008 IDE is pretty nice. Great debugging tools, expanded feedback info with mouse overs and intellisense. Tons of built in classes, and now lots of help info online and lots of examples available. VB.net can still blow me..but C# i am warming to...I also like how you can include multiple classes in a single file. Still allot of nice w/ some of the intellisense default methods and zillions of classes but I guess i can deal. They also seem to have ways where you can monkey wrench more out of it than standard with the unsafe and fixed specifiers etc. (I am all for monkey wrenches!)

On 07.04.13 - 12:09pm Dave wrote:
Here is another nice rant on the topic.

On 03.04.14 - 5:10am Dave wrote:
Another post of mine on this top

On 03.04.14 - 5:12am Dave wrote:
The Silent Majority: Why Visual Basic 6 Still Thrives - David Platt (Teacher Harvard University)

On 03.04.14 - 5:14am Dave wrote:
Bring back Classic Visual Basic, an improved version of VB6 4,740 Votes, 657 comments.

On 03.04.14 - 5:15am Dave wrote:
http://classicvb.org/petition/ - 14,627 signatories including 265 Microsoft MVPs since March 8th, 2005.

On 10.23.15 - 12:11am Dave wrote:
Here is another thought why i love vb6. It was made by wizards of C++, COM and Windows GUI programming. They made a simple general use language that made GUI things a breeze. They kept it light and easy to use which made development fast and light. The intellisense lists were not overloaded with tons of crap. If you needed more power, it integrated easily with C and the entire world of COM. I really believe in programming in layers. The gui aspects are complex, the world of COM is super complex. VB6 was so perfect at these. ANd COM was a great match with Windows GUI. Fast, native, and works really well. .NET is everything and the kitchen sink and its a bloated turd. Holy crap..its been 15 frigging years now I still cant stop ranting about this..

On 03.28.16 - 4:54pm Dave wrote:
I ended up putting a bunch of the thoughts together into one document

http://sandsprite.com/CodeStuff/Why_I_Still_Use_VB6/

On 01.04.20 - 6:39am Mario wrote:
Dave, VB6 is VB6. Irreplaceable, and the best programming language ever made !

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