Carl and Mark have a chat with Sam Gentile about sci-fi authors, COM Interop’s problems, Extreme Programming, dual programming, unit testing, Sam’s thoughts on the state of the .NET Framework, Groove, the cross-platform potential of the .NET Framework, the CLI, Rotor and Mono.
Sam Gentile: .NET Rocks!
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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An interview that’s a window only executable…what will M$ come uo with next…
Here we have a Microsoft interview with a man who writes books about using .Net that he wants you to buy.
Is it really surprising that he gets no hard questions and gives no hard answers?
Still it was nice that Sam descibes Mono as ‘win/win’ for Microsoft, for developers and for non-Windows users.
No doubt it’ll be a self-extracting CAB archive or something. You could try cabextract (http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php) but check to see if it is a ZIP first
It is a self extracting media player file.
You can also go here
http://msdn.microsoft.com/dotnetrocks/
and click on title 45
From the page source
http://msdn.microsoft.com/dotnetrocks/en/20040115samg/dotnetrocks_0…
Yes, dotnet actually rocks. Anything I want to program programs up quickly and easily with c# and dotnet. Maybe you can lambast me for not needing to program anything really obscure that needs Eifel version 3.223, but dotnet is a slick and wonderful tool for my sw tasks.
There are things I don’t like about it, but they are the same things I don’t like about my favorite language #2 – java.
What I want to see is both c# and sun java interacting on the same VM, so I can use both in one project without having 2 VM’s running.
That “video” link was good for a scary laugh:
… the Microsoft-only executable for the Inter.NET
I don’t think I’ll be running any unknown Microsoft executables on my system just to hear the Microsoft gospel.
What else is a hired Microsoft shill going to say other than:
“.NET is great, my whole life is better now, I am so happy, everyone is buying it, all Microsoft software is cross-platform (Windows 2000/Windows XP), yada, yada…”
I do have to give Microsoft credit for making C# run faster than Java, though. Sun has a lot of work to do to catch up.
Mono isn’t really a win for Linux users because Linux users can use other libraries to get their work done for example LAMP, but it is a win for Windows users who are ready to convert to Linux.
>-Releasing a GUI library without decent layout management >in 2002!
The layout management on C# is basically the same as Delphi, I’ve never had an issues with either and I build quite comlex forms. I think you’re just not used to the different style. I for one can’t understand how Java people can live with their layout manager, maybe I’m not used to that style. However, assuming a Java GUi usses a windows still one can still spot a Java program by the way the lay is down, eg all the buttons are sometimes forced up against the lower part of the window.
The Delphi/C# works fine untill you start translating your GUI. Either your buttons start to other buttons or the text doesn’t fit anymore in the button.
That’s why I like Java’s/Qt’s/GTK’s layout management better.
Oops, forgot some words.
The Delphi/C# layout management method works fine untill you start translating your GUI. Either your buttons start to overlap other buttons or the text doesn’t fit anymore in the button.
That’s why I like Java’s/Qt’s/GTK’s layout management better.
As long as your platform is Microsoft. I can see MS busting down Mono, hard, the moment it is determined to be a serious threat.
It was all great when i was only playing with it and doing some examples or tutorials back in the beta days (when it was still asp+). The new framework looked great and very functional and i hoped (it’s really the best you can do with MS) that they would get the bugs out by their 1.something release.
Now we’re at version 1.1 and i’ve been doing real work in it for quite a while and frankly i do have some very annoying peeves. I’m not gonna sum them up but having to write your own rounding functions in a language that claims to be so high level and needing fewer lines of code than any other.
Or having a bug in the xml parser that doesn’t allow you to read a valid xml file into a data set (the xsd comes from higher authorities so there’s no real solution). etc etc etc
My main gripe with .NET is that it looks so good and is marketed so good, and get’s all the semi-skilled suits convinced that it’s a time saver but in the end it’s really hard to fullfill the hopes MS evangelists have raised.
Everybody that isn’t programming seems to think that with .NET everything is possible in a week, well some things just arent possible at all due to bugs.
my 2cts: .NET is java with a delphi IDE + a few gazillion bugs.
Ok I see, I guess I never write multilanguage applications, true other people might want to translate them but I’ve never had any requests for forgein versions but I write quite specialised software where translation is not high on the list. Still I’ve found the java etc way of doing less transparent, one only has to witness some of the poor layouts one sees in java etc apps to see that people do find it a bit difficult to handle correctly, or perhaps they simply don’t have the time work out how to do it correctly.
>The Delphi/C# layout management method works fine untill >you start translating your GUI. Either your buttons start >to overlap other buttons or the text doesn’t fit anymore >in the button.
>That’s why I like Java’s/Qt’s/GTK’s layout management >better.
Also, even changing the font size will break an app with absolute positioning!
Java’s layout managers might be harder to use correctly but when done well can produce very nice UIs. .net is easy for the crappy programmer but that is it.
Of course Gtk/Java like layouts were invented with keeping internationalization in mind. But it just doesn’t work correctly. Often different languages has verbs with drastically different word length and pseudo-automatically layed out forms look awful and bag for manual re-arrangement which is only 1% of development. Coding them needs bazilions of magical vboxes/hboxes which only eat-up resources and some effects are impossible to get. (Frankly speaking I hate plenty of Java apps with drop-down lists which resizes whole window just after choosing longer string from the list – brrr). Professional GUIs (pardon, but M$ apps are pretty good example of many GUI trends) designed with both eye-candiness and ergonomy, are almost all layed out using fixed positioning and anchor based layouts.
The way it looks to me is if what you want to do has been done by the .NET team then you will be fine. With the exceptions of some annoying bugs everything is ok.
However, try to do something different and you quickly realise. oh they haven’t built that functionality in yet or if they have the bugs are extremely annoying.
The functionality will be there one day I am sure. It is just a matter of how long do you want to wait.
And what is with the lack of a layout manager. Are we really expected to put up with a bunch of applications that don’t handle resizing!
some people (read americans) might not need translation, but in my country there are 3 official languages, so translation is a must.
Too bad .NET uses pixel positioning wich absolutely sucks because a translated string can get much longer or shorter than the original and it might not fit onto the button, or the button might stretch and overlap a text area…
ugly…
right on…
i’m feeling the same as you. you must use .NET on a regular basis too
What about changing the font size?
As far as I know in fixed-position layouts all units are logically based on the font size. In windows font size can be changed withouth violating applications’ look.
I vote for dabooty and David McPaul’s issues with .Net.
Everything is great, if you use it the way MS thinks you should use it. When designing applications that go off the beaten path, though, it becomes a real PITA. There are tons of short-comings in it. I feel like it was poorly implemented in the sense that MS really only wants you to use it the way they envision (dialog boxes, wizards, and like their *simple* tutorials). Don’t get complex, or you start having to work around numerous bugs and short-comings.
If you enable localization on your forms, the *entire layout* (not just the text) is stored in a .resx/.resources file.
You can then use the (free in the SDK) localization design tools which allow you to relay your dialogs appropriately for the new culture (including, of course, replacing not only the original text, but imagery, and any cultural differences in layout, positioning etc.)
The resulting resources are saved out in satellite resource assemblies, and loaded as appropriate for your culture.
On the layout manager front – there are several solutions, including grid and deck-based layouts that are available on MSDN, and Whidbey features new layout managers built in.
One thing that is badly documented in the current version is the *scalability* feature (which allows you to support hi-DPI displays). The key thing to be aware of there is that you need to ensure that you boostrap sizes (and your own layout code) *after* the real windows have been created – not just post-construction. Leveraging the Form.Load event is a good idea.
you are absolutely correct, but what a pain it is to have to make 3 layout files in contrast to having an auto scaling layout….
It will take years for any ISV except for Microsoft to build good apps using .NET. Anytime you want to do something a little bit different, it is time to go into never-never land exploring the guts of .NET… which are in many ways more complex than Win32.
Sure, you will be able to crank out simple corporate IT apps pretty well.
But Microsoft will once again have made sure they will not have any competition when it comes to top-shelf .NET business applications.
I like the Delphi / .NET style much better, as I easily and fast get good looking apps which also look good and work with different font sizes and with different language versions.
I have some app translated to Chinese and German, I can manually tweak the interface very easily with Visual Studio, thats very easy and truly gives better results than in Java, where I would end up having a somewhat “variable” but in the end ugly and not optimal design.
Of course with a lot of work also Java apps are able to look good.
“I do have to give Microsoft credit for making C# run faster than Java, though. Sun has a lot of work to do to catch up.”
>What on earth are you talking about?
probably only swing vs windows forms, where there is indeed a speed difference. Using it on a server for a real ntiered app is a whole different story
Hi
Java and c# are not comparable. one is going to be support by ms only on windows and sun is trying to support the other one on every operating system.
It funny to see also these so called ‘professional’ programmers harp on about the lack of a Java like layout approach in WinForms, it’s amazing because if it were truly better, then I imagine we seen a lot more Java apps, but unfortunately we don’t. There is nothing stopping anyone these days writing applications using SWING for Windows, but they don’t. The Java applications I’ve had to use on a professional basis (PVCS in particular) have been appalling with respect to UI responsiveness, looks and design.
I had to beta test a new application the other week, the looks weren’t too bad (they used Windows XP look), but the interface experience and responsiveness were still awful.
The proportion of GUI software written usng Java/GTK etc is negligible compared to apps written using VB, Delphi or even VC. So much for the vaunted superioriry of these alternative tools. What is also surprising and quite telling, is that these supposed superior tools are free, but the ones can are ‘inferior’ but are used for real apps, cost money!
What was the phrase someone used in one of the earlier messages?
“.net is easy for the crappy programmer but that is it.”