Visual C#.NET: First Impressions
Currently sitting in an Intro to Visual C#.NET class at Cleveland State. This is my first real introduction to programming in Microsoft's .NET environment. My impressions so far? While I have mixed feelings in general (which may be more due to my nervousness about getting into more programmy-developery kinds of things than anything else), I'd have to say that on the whole I'm actually pretty impressed. I didn't know before this that Microsoft actually makes a stripped-down version of Visual Studio available for free on their website. I also kind of like the fact that .NET is sort of a one-stop shop as far as application development is concerned. You need to make a Windows application? Or a web application? Bam. You can. In the same language, even.
The only thing I don't like about it so far is how opaque a lot of the system is. The basic thought behind the .NET framework, as I understand is, is that Microsoft sat down one day and thought, "You know, I'm tired of making different code libraries for different projects. Let's just make a bunch of REALLY BIG libraries that can do basically EVERYTHING, and make sure everyone has them, which we can do because we're Microsoft!" Fair enough, but in doing so, they seem to have made tasks that are very simple in other languages very complicated. For instance, during the first class, our instructor was trying to show us how to change the background color on a form element. Problem is, he couldn't just say "set to this color." Nope. We eventually had to do a Google search before we figured out that basic colors are hidden in their own separate little class in a obscure corner of the System library. And the MSDN documentation is nigh-incomprehensible, at least for me, so there's no official, simple, plain English explanation of how to do this stuff. I can't help but think there must be a better and more accessible way to go about these things.
Also, unless I'm mistaken, Macs and Linux computers can't use .NET stuff yet. Which is a problem for me. I like making stuff everyone can use.
That said, do you know that there's someone out there making PHP for .NET? From what I've read so far, it should allow one to use both the PHP and .NET libraries - which I find verrry interesting. Something to keep an eye on, I guess.
The only thing I don't like about it so far is how opaque a lot of the system is. The basic thought behind the .NET framework, as I understand is, is that Microsoft sat down one day and thought, "You know, I'm tired of making different code libraries for different projects. Let's just make a bunch of REALLY BIG libraries that can do basically EVERYTHING, and make sure everyone has them, which we can do because we're Microsoft!" Fair enough, but in doing so, they seem to have made tasks that are very simple in other languages very complicated. For instance, during the first class, our instructor was trying to show us how to change the background color on a form element. Problem is, he couldn't just say "set to this color." Nope. We eventually had to do a Google search before we figured out that basic colors are hidden in their own separate little class in a obscure corner of the System library. And the MSDN documentation is nigh-incomprehensible, at least for me, so there's no official, simple, plain English explanation of how to do this stuff. I can't help but think there must be a better and more accessible way to go about these things.
Also, unless I'm mistaken, Macs and Linux computers can't use .NET stuff yet. Which is a problem for me. I like making stuff everyone can use.
That said, do you know that there's someone out there making PHP for .NET? From what I've read so far, it should allow one to use both the PHP and .NET libraries - which I find verrry interesting. Something to keep an eye on, I guess.