Rick Strahl is a well known ASP.NET developer, writer, conference speaker, and Web application framework developer who influence me quite a bit about 10 years ago when I first became interested in developing my own Web application framework. So it was with some surprise that I came across a blog post where he plays the Devil's advocate and speculates on a number of ASP.NET and Microsoft failings.
http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/453551.aspx
The blog post was an interesting read, and generated 148 additional comments.
His main concern seems to be that ASP.NET has not gained the traction in the market that he expected. I'm not sure what he expected - perhaps he's disappointed that Microsoft's desktop monopoly hasn't grown to include servers by now.
Playing devil's advocate he points out that:
Free and open-source tools - the LAMP stack in particular (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl/Ruby) seem to be formidable competitors.
ASP.NET is seen as a big and bulky - a huge framework & runtime - requiring large servers, lots of memory etc.
ASP.NET has a steep learning curve.
Most of the criticism leveled against ASP.NET has to do with Web Forms and using Web Forms in it's default drag & drop way.
The energy level at conferences is way down - topics and mood are dull & boring.
Microsoft has let ASP.NET stagnate since the release of .NET 2.0.
Microsoft's answer to Ajax is the bulky and clumsy ASP.NET AJAX framework.
People outside of the Microsoft fold have intense loathing of Microsoft - its perception as an evil empire - only out to get your money.
Advertising for ASP.NET tends to be targeted at .NET developers, which is just preaching to the choir.
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I've been critical of drag & drop web-forms in the past, so it was refreshing to have that point validated by Rick and other commentators.
Notwithstanding his speculations as a Devil's advocate, he does his best to characterize ASP.NET failings as perceptions, mostly.
Nathan.
midrange.com
