Category Archives: .net

.net, java, software development, windows

UK job stats show Java decline

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Long-time readers of this blog may recall that I occasionally track IT job vacancies at Jobserve. There may be better sites to track; but it carries a lot of vacancies, and I need to be consistent. I started in early 2002 with the goal of seeing how much adoption Microsoft was winning for its .NET technology. In March 2002, there were 153 vacancies which mentioned C#, versus 2092 for Java.

Since then, C# has grown steadily. Today it overtook Java for the first time (in my random and infrequent visits). There are 2206 C# vacancies, 2066 Java.

I also noticed that the absolute number of vacancies has declined substantially since my last visit, but Java by more than C#. The economy, I guess.

Is Microsoft really sweeping all before it? Well, no. Vista has disappointed; Apple sales grow ever higher; Netcraft’s web server survey shows a decline in the percentage of IIS sites on the Internet in September 2008 and observes that 75% of new web sites coming online use Apache. So it is a matter of what statistic you want to pick. Nevertheless, there is clearly still a lot of C# development out there.

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.net, microsoft, software development, windows

Tell me what’s wrong with Microsoft’s Team System

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At Microsoft’s Remix08 in Brighton last month, a developer asked about Visual Studio Team System during a panel discussion. What interested me was not so much the question itself, but that after the session she was surrounded by other delegates advising her not to use it. These were people who had tried it, or were using it, but found it frustrating. The general proposal was to use open-source tools instead – things like Subversion and CruiseControl.NET.

I was surprised by the strength of feeling. I’ve looked in some detail at Team System and been reasonably impressed by what it does – but that’s not the same as using it in anger, of course. I admit, for my own work I do use Subversion, just because it is lightweight, works well cross-platform, and runs on my Linux web space as well as locally; but I am not part of a team of developers working on Microsoft platform projects, which is where Team System ought to make sense.

For the sake of balance, I’ll add that I met a developer at the airport on the way to Remix Las Vegas earlier this year, who loves Team System and told me that it is Microsoft’s best product.

I’d love to hear in more detail what users think of Team System. Is it broken, or does it depend on how it is set up and maintained? What are the key things that Microsoft needs to fix? Or is it just great, and those complainers in Brighton atypical?

.net, linux, microsoft, software development, web authoring

Silverlight on Linux: Moonlight or moonshine?

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Microsoft’s press release for Silverlight 2.0 says this:

Cross-platform and cross-browser support. This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux in Firefox, Safari and Windows Internet Explorer.

The use of the present tense for Linux support is … misleading, to be generous. I tried visiting the official Silverlight site on Ubuntu. Here’s what I’m offered as downloads:

Hmmm. If I go to the official Moonlight site, I see this:

Note that not even Silverlight 1.0 is fully released; further, it says “no video or mp3 playback is enabled”. The installers are said to be incomplete.

I asked about this at the press conference; the answer was “we’re working on it” and “as soon as possible” and “Miguel is speaking at PDC”.

That’s fair enough and I understand that these things take time. But if you read the press release, you might suppose that a Linux user could use it now. Other than for geeky and experimental users, that is not the case.

.net, mono, silverlight, software development, web authoring

Silverlight 2.0 is released, Eclipse tools for Silverlight announced

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie has announced the final release of Silverlight 2.0, its browser plug-in which includes a cross-platform implementation of the .NET runtime as well as a multimedia rendering engine. It will be available for download tomorrow.

Not really a surprise, but nonetheless a significant moment for Microsoft. I have been watching the project closely since it was first announced at PDC 2005 as Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere. I am particularly interested in the cross-platform aspect. When .NET was first released in 2001, as Microsoft’s answer to Java after falling out with Sun, it had obvious cross-platform potential, yet the company held back form any commercial implementation outside Windows. Miguel de Icaza took independent action to create an unofficial open source Linux implementation, that also runs on Mac and Windows, called Mono. Microsoft was initially wary of Mono, but in my view the company had more to gain than to lose by supporting it. That now appears to be recognized, with Microsoft working formally with Mono to support Moonlight, Silverlight on Linux, and to provide it with multimedia codecs.

Microsoft has also announced Eclipse tools for Silverlight, in partnership with Soyatec, the idea being to enable Java developers to develop for the Silverlight client within Eclipse.

One clarification: although the press release says “This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux”, the Mac support for Silverlight 2.0 is Intel Mac only, and the Linux version lacks multimedia support and the 2.0 version is described as “Experimental”; it is a long way from full release. Although Microsoft is now working with Mono, cross-platform currently means Windows and Intel Mac, though this does account for a large proportion of active Web users.

Press release is here.

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.net, microsoft, software development

What’s new in .NET Framework 4.0?

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Good question. There are a few things we know about Microsoft’s managed application runtime and class library:

There will be major updates to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Workflow Foundation (WF). According to this announcement along with this post by Steven Martin we are going to see “better support for Web 2.0 technologies like REST, POX and ATOM” and a 10x performance increase in WF.

The table shown here also mentions a bigger role for XAML:

Seamless integration between WF and WCF and unified XAML model. Build entire application in XAML from presentation to data to services to workflow.

There will be a new application server codenamed Dublin, which hosts WF/WCF applications and manages messages, long-running transactions, state management. Dublin extends Internet Information Services (IIS) and will run on Windows Server – probably Server 2008 only.*

Dublin supports Oslo, which is Microsoft’s latest attempt at model-driven development. I guess Dublin is the host for Oslo applications, as this post implies. XAML is a good fit with modelling, because it is both declarative and well-suited for visual representation. Models do not have to be visual, and Oslo includes a new textual language which could also be based on XAML (?), but nevertheless there is synergy between modelling and visual designers.

Putting this together, we have a new take on Microsoft’s end-to-end stack, developed in Visual Studio with XAML supplemented by procedural code where needed, hosted on Dublin, and using WPF or perhaps Silverlight(?) for the presentation layer. Thanks to the new REST support, or the old SOAP support, you could also use other clients including JavaScript or Java.

It is all a bit perplexing if you currently think of the .NET Framework as the runtime engine and class library for C# and Visual Basic. It sounds as if .NET Framework 4.0 is enterprisey, more JEE than Java. We are seeing increasing fragmentation or more positively, diversification, in Microsoft’s .NET story. There are micro versions, cross-platform versions (Silverlight), desktop versions (client profile), and more and more pieces that only belong on servers.

How much of Oslo and the Dublin application server is likely to be implemented in Mono, I wonder? I suspect not that much, since Mono has focused in the past on the common language runtime and ASP.NET. There was no WPF support in Mono until Moonlight.

All this begs the question: is .NET becoming too complex? I interviewed Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP Developer Division, at the Remix conference in Brighton last month. I asked him about Oslo, thinking that he must be closely involved in what is, according to some at Microsoft, a major step forward in application development. His reply: “That’s not my world”.

Guthrie is a simplifier. He was one of the original developers of ASP.NET, along with Mark Anders, and as I recall, when asked what modelling tool he used he replied, “a whiteboard”. I spoke to Anders about the early days of ASP.NET and he emphasized the value of simplifying what already exists; see also How ASP.NET began in Java.

Microsoft also claims that Oslo/Dublin will make complex things easier for developers, but looking at all these pieces I’m waiting to be convinced. PDC 2008 is where we will find out more.

*According to this post “Dublin” actually refers to the next version of Windows Server itself, though this announcement says “a set of enhanced Windows Server capabilities codenamed ‘Dublin’ that will offer greater scalability and easier manageability.” I guess this comes to the same thing, and that preview versions of Dublin could either be early releases of the entire OS, or preview bits that install into Server 2008.

.net, microsoft, software development, windows

Microsoft’s cloud platform, multi-touch Windows 7: mining the PDC schedule

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I’ve been looking at the PDC Session schedule, as posted so far. Microsoft is serious about its new cloud computing platform. For a start, count the sessions.

Out of 180 posted so far, here are the subjects with 10 or more sessions:

  1. Cloud services [33]
  2. Windows 7 [22]
  3. SQL Server [16]
  4. Visual Studio [16]
  5. Silverlight [13]
  6. Live Platform [11]
  7. ASP.NET [10]
  8. Languages [10]

That’s a huge focus on the cloud. Microsoft’s problem: the company is not perceived as a leader in cloud computing. It has two distinct challenges: first, getting the technology in place, and second, winning developers to its new platform. In mitigation, it is in theory well placed to migrate users from on-premise Windows and Office to cloud equivalents.

Here’s a few snippets about Microsoft’s cloud platform:

A lap around Cloud Services: … Learn about the pillars of the platform, its service lifecycle, and see how they fit with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. Also, hear about the services roadmap over the next few years.

Cloud Computing: Economics and Service Level Agreements: … Topics include the pricing model for the cloud computing platform, how to monetize a service, and how to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Connecting Active Directory to Microsoft Cloud Services: … Manage and secure end user access to cloud services using your existing investment in Active Directory. Enable end users to access cloud services through existing Active Directory accounts, the same way they access your intranet-hosted software today. Hear how to enable existing software to use new service capabilities without re-writes, and do it all through the use of open and standard protocols.

That last item is a big deal. Managing separate user identities for local and cloud services is horrible.

What else can we glean from the PDC schedule. Here’s a few items that intrigued me:

Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code … Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code.

Windows 7: Developing Multi-touch Applications … This session highlights the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explains how you can leverage them in your applications.

Oomph: A Microformat Toolkit … a toolkit from the MIX Online Team, that is aimed at web developers and designers to make it easier to create, consume, and style Microformats on the web. See also here.

Concurrent programming: Microsoft Visual Studio: Bringing out the Best in Multicore Systems … demonstrations of the parallel performance analysis and optimization tools in the next release of Microsoft Visual Studio. .

Oslo of course: A Lap around "Oslo" … “Oslo" is the family of new technologies that enable data-driven development and execution of services and applications. Come and learn how to capture all aspects of an application schematized in the "Oslo" repository and use "Oslo" directly to drive the execution of deployed applications.

Generics and constructors in XAML: Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML … Learn about XAML additions like: support for generics, object references, non-default constructors, and more.

Instant cloud apps: Research: BAM, AjaxScope, and Doloto … Hear how BAM can turn a simple specification into a web-based cloud application with the click of a button. Learn how AjaxScope and Doloto automatically instrument and rewrite your web applications’ JavaScript code for end-to-end monitoring and optimization.

Office, a big feature of PDC 2005 when the ribbon was introduced, only has 3 sessions posted so far, though there may be more to come. Normally a new version of Office accompanies each new version of the Windows client.

Another question: what is in .NET Framework 4.0, to merit a full new version number? There is surprisingly little mention of it so far.

.net, microsoft, open source, software development, windows

Microsoft’s open source breakthrough

Microsoft’s integration of jQuery and Visual Studio/ASP.NET is significant and I wrote about it on the ITJobBlog. I’ve included some comments from Scott Guthrie about ASP.Net AJAX vs jQuery.

Miguel de Icaza, who works on open source versions of .NET, also says it is a “first time for Microsoft”.

Rick Strahl, who is an ASP.NET MVP and writes an excellent technical blog, says in a comment to Guthrie’s original post:

To me jQuery has easily  the most game changing component in Web Development since ASP.NET originally was released.

It is a breakthrough; but note that it comes from the developer division, which is more inclined towards open source than other divisions running Windows and Office.

.net, apple, microsoft, software development

Microsoft’s design crisis: Interview from Remix Brighton

The Reg has posted my interview with Bill Buxton, in which he talks about the challenge of getting Microsoft to put design at the core of its products. It has a great quote where Ballmer apparently told the company conference “Change or we die”. Can Microsoft change? That’s the big question; and one commenter has already given his opinion. I have more to say on this issue; but for now do read the interview; I find it a fascinating topic.

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.net, microsoft, web authoring

A few notes on ASP.NET MVC

Here at Remix in Brighton Scott Guthrie is presenting on ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller). This is an alternative to web forms, the classic ASP.NET programming model.

What is ASP.NET MVC better for? Here are the things that Guthrie highlights:

  • Clean code separation presentation/logic
  • Clean URLS, SEO and REST friendly. For example, URLS like: yoursite.com/products/beverages
  • Better for unit testing. Ability to test model, view, controller separately. Guthrie demos some tests; all the main .NET test frameworks are supported inlcuding Nunit as well as Team System.
  • Closer to the HTTP/HTML model. For example, you don’t handle a button click event on the server as web forms allow; rather, you handle a form submission.

ASP.NET Preview 5 is available now; beta soon; full release by the end of the year (That timing strikes me as tight).

I think this will prove popular among ASP.NET developers.

.net, internet, microsoft

Silverlight: 1.5 million installations per day, says Microsoft

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Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP Developer Division at Microsoft, spoke at Remix in Brighton about Silverlight deployment. He says there are around 1.5 million installations per day, and that version 1.0 will auto-update to version 2.0 when it is released, which he says is “shortly”.

Wide deployment is critical for Silverlight, though a limitation of version 2.0 (the one with the .NET runtime included) is that it does not work on PowerPC Macs.

Guthrie also mentioned Internet Explorer 8, which he says will ship “towards the end of the year”.