All kidding aside, it seems to me that your programming practices are heavily influenced by what languages you’ve worked with. Developers who got their start with .NET may be very proficient with all of .NET’s built-in controls and niceties and they may even be incredibly productive because of it.

On the other hand, I got my start in QBASIC (3 years), and later C++ (4 years) and became used to dealing with the nitty gritty. When .NET first came out as a Beta I began working with it right way and loved most aspects about it. But even in my .NET development I would tend to create a lot of custom solutions for which I thought some of .NET’s built-in controls were lacking.

Since then I’ve always been wary of new features introduced in .NET. Many new features are good, but I really want to understand them before using them. And just because it’s new doesn’t mean I have to use it.

So, this is what Microsoft does with all fans of .net — instead of diving in principles of solid solutons it protect them with new and new and new tools, libs and components. That’s the difference.

I’m a .NET developer, but I do like Java’s approach — Spring.net and NHibernate, IoC and Fluents, and many others. Maybe it makes sense to switch to Java searching for next employer.

I’m constantly frustrated by my co-workers love of the single-layer, drag-n-drop, one-off applications (suckling off the microsoft teet as I call it). I’m interested in patterns, SOLID, mocking frameworks and all the cool stuff that my RSS reader just downloaded.

However, here and at many other places, I’m in the minority. Our primary business isn’t software, and I’d be burned at the stake for turning a one week project into a one month project in the name of ‘good software engineering practices’.

You are right that a lot of .NET developers don’t have the motivation or interest to move past a junior level, but don’t forget that many development shops exist to support some other business. Some of them also don’t have the opportunity, and there is a reason that the RAD/DnD approach to development became popular.

As for me….well, I’ll be job hunting as soon as the market picks up. I prefer to be challenged.

1. .NET developers ensure their job security by constantly and quickly adding new features supplied by Microsoft tools into development.

2. Java developers ensure their job security by making their code harder to be imitated by those junior developers.

if you’re looking for more stuff you can do with an IOC container, i’d look into the AOP possibilities of your container, and instead of looking for examples to see if you might consider using that, think of some usage scenarios that you actually need or that could help you a lot and then try to get it working.

Basically, go over your codebase with a critical eye and think “where can i make improvements here?”… it doesn’t have to be specific to your IOC container… using the container (or any piece of technology) is only a means to an end, remember that.

I’d be very interested in seeing your reply to this question

Regards

Pete

Each has its benefits and drawbacks.

In MS.Net most of your tools are closely integrated. I can’t say that they are consistent, but they are integrated. Visual Studio IDE is an example, the know-it-all beast.

In Java, you have a mind-boggling number of tools available for you. Some poorly designed, some not, but some are truly ahead of MS. They are less integrated, but they are pluggable, and they are more suited to a lot more problems that MS can ever imagine, or think of.

In a way, MS always think of the building first, then build tools to build that building. In Java, you build the tools robustly first, and then you construct any kind of buildings you want.

Overall, this kind of criticism is healthy, it symbolizes progress.

I agree that the platform is generally moving in the right direction… but that doesn’t mean that everyone is moving along with it as well, at least not in how to properly use all of the new features/libraries/frameworks

@Jonathan

the lack of care is indeed one of the biggest root causes of most of the problems in this industry… well, probably every industry actually.

Why i am posting here is because people listen to you and I would prefer is you focused more on the cause of crap developers. Things like lack of caring or poor guidance in the begining of their career. Maybe something that would ignite a spark for developers who don’t care.

I don’t know, maybe I am rambling but I don’t like alt.net. Let me first say, it is VERY possible I missed their message but i read ALT.NET as developers who are always doing something new and different and rewriting everything. If this is true, then I think this is a developer I do not want to work with either. Some things are solid. there needs to be a balance.

I appologize if this comment lost focus of a single subject but all in all i agree with you but I don’t think you are addressing a deeper issue that affects any job: the lack of caring.

But, by and large, the easier a language is to get started in, the more you attract non-developers (morts). But I’m not concerned with them. I think it is necessary to have some languages that are easy to approach (even if the systems are limited in nature) because people are able to get stuff done, and it doesn’t burden their actual jobs. When it does, guys like me come in.

But for professional developer, that is another story. Every developer that I felt was below potential had one thing in common: they typically knew ONE system well. Be it C#, VB.Net, C++, Ruby, or SQL. And they did EVERYTHING there. I would see a palatable fear of new technology.

That is the experience of my 10 years of being of rogue developer anyway.

It seems to me that the big recent changes in .NET have been the introduction of generic and functional-style programming (Linq-to-objects, heavily influenced by languages like Haskell, Scheme, etc.), the declarative style of WPF (like using the HTML/DOM to make rich clients) and the ASP.NET MVC framework. None of these have anything to do with running wizards and throwing half-baked solutions together. They’re all really good directions for a platform to move in.

I think that the real reason for Morts being so influential is that they are, simply put, the most profitable type of developer within the context of the majority of business problems that are required to be solved. Microsoft knows this and shapes their toolset accordingly.

I’ll end with this- the one thing I’ve always admired about the MS stack is simplicity with incredible customization and extensibility. You can start with a simple web page with a bound control to an automatic data source and end up with MVC, a layered architecture, finely tuned sp’s, various caching strategies, messaging strategies, an incredible web service framework with numerous transports- all in the same framework with a common api and toolset. With minimal configuration and retooling. All easily integrated.

There’s plenty of information and people who are sharing that knowledge all the time.

the last part of the post is all about people like Phil Haack, Scott Hanselman, Jeremy Miller, Ayende, etc…

I encourage you to explore the .NET world more. There are plenty of strong .NET programmers out there- Rob Conery, Phil Haack, Jeremy Miller, Scott Hanselman, Ayende- pushing best practices that have nothing to do with Mort. Look at incredible OS projects like Mass Transit and Fluent NHibernate- these are driven by strong community members pushing great stuff into the .NET world.

You just have to find it- both the information and the right people to talk with!

“We are a self-organizing, ad-hoc community of developers”

We are people, who isn’t?

“bound by a desire to improve ourselves, challenge assumptions, and help each other pursue excellence in the practice of software development”

We like to write better code than we used it, many crap coders do too.

But then the useless part is this:

“All are welcome to shape and form the dialog in blogs and lists and face-to-face gatherings both local and global.”

Poster designers always put the most visually appealing part of their design in the middle. This is because people naturally try to assess the whole as quickly as possible before deciding if they wish to spend their time looking in detail, if they like it they will start reading from the top.

Why is that relevant? I don’t know about other people but I remember my first experience of this site being something like.

1: Read some text – yeah, what’s so special about that?
2: See some links.
3: I don’t want to read loads of information which might be a waste of time, I will quickly scan some to decide if it is any good or not.
4: I wont choose the first link because it’s likely to be beginner stuff.
5: I wont choose the last link because if it is too advanced at this stage I wont understand it.
6: I will try something near the middle.

Right then, what do we have?
A: Blogs – At the moment lots of conference announcements, and… FRONTPAGE? Not looking good so far.

B: Look further down the list, LOCAL / GLOBAL
LOCAL = Philidelpha? Not very local to me
GLOBAL = Sold out event in Seattle. Again no interest to me in the UK.
At this point I have the option to “Identify myself” – Not sure why I would want to give out my details, so I’ll skip it.

C: Dialog – I click it and end up on IRC. I’ve been there for a while, not much learning going on in there to be honest. I stay because I was already aware of a few things, but most of the time it is quiet especially during GMT waking hours.

D: I see “Shape” as a link. I’m sorry but at this point it’s already too late. The word “Shape” suggests nothing to me at all and the other links were big disasters. I’ll be off now, it’s just another website with not much on it. I need to get some work done, I have a deadline.

That’s a user story based on my first experience of the alt.net website. Pretty poor really.

Another thing that is apparent in the .NET world is that many people/companies simply wont touch anything that isn’t from Microsoft. I expect it is based on past experiences of buying (or using free) 3rd party tool kits and having the vendor disappear or the tool kit’s development just drying up. Sure MS do this too, but nobody ever got sacked for choosing Microsoft.

Then onto Microsoft itself. Here I am writing apps, tight deadlines and all that usual stuff. Any free time I have I probably end up working to meet my deadline anyway so it leaves little time for learning. Then you discover something like “Patterns and Practises”, a quick browse through the site reveals a mammoth looking set of projects, the learning curve looks huge, and you don’t have time to learn anything new unless it is quick to learn and has an immediate return for your investment.

You say that many people use IoC etc for testing. I confess, that’s me! I use it to aid testing. Sure I love it, and it really helps me to split up my app into smaller more managable chunks too. I am aware that I can intercept calls etc but at the moment I don’t see an immediate return on the investment of learning how to do it. When I used IoC + RhinoMocks for unit testing I saw an *immediate* benefit and it didn’t take long to learn either, I was benefitting from it the same day and that’s a great thing!

If you ask me there should be a big “Quick productivity guid” link at the top of the alt.net page. Have a numerically ordered list (to clearly show it’s ordered and should be read top to bottom) starting with the simplest thing you can do to make your life easier. Then the next, and so on. It may take the reader a year or even longer to get to the last item on the list, but at least they will work their way as far through as they feel comfortable with. I don’t want to look at a catalogue of stuff and decide what looks the easiest to learn because I first have to understand everything and that takes too much time. Tell me the easiest thing, then the next easiest, and so on.

Another problem is, if you have never heard of something how do you Google for it? I remember years ago Googling for “Dont use data base components get the objects to save themselves” because I didn’t know the term Object Persistence Framework (as it was called at the time). It’s no good saying that people should learn this stuff because many people don’t know they should, they’ve never heard of it!

Rant over