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I’m not known as a person who particularly likes the .NET framework but I still have to use it. The .NET Framework is basically a massive library of general purpose functions, much like the Standard Library is to C or the Standard Template Library is to C++.

But what if it all would be discontinued?

It’s not an impossibility and rather likely considering Microsoft’s track-record. The millions of applications, libraries and websites created with .NET would be useless.

I’ve been *fortunate* enough to be part of a VB6 (CGI) to ASP.NET (VB) conversion team and, trust me when I say this, you don’t want to be part of such an effort. These conversions require truckloads of time and money, and if you work for a mid-sized to large corporation, this could easily lead into the millions of dollars.

Now imagine all of your code obsolete. Everything you’ve coded since .NET 1.0. What would you do? Let’s take FoxPro as an example. Microsoft bought FoxPro in 1992 and released a couple of versions under the “Visual”-family of products. The last version was released in 2007 and a statement of Microsoft suggests that this is the last version.

No migration tools to any other language are being provided.

Another product would be J#, which will be retired in 2015. Keep in mind that J# is a fairly recent product and was only released with Visual Studio.NET.

How far will .NET go before a turning point is reached? Consider that .NET was first released publicly in 2002 and will be a decade old in less than four years. Knowing Microsoft, the end is quite possibly much nearer than you think.

Maybe this news is a bit old but Visual Studio 2010 CTP was released, you can get it at the following location:

Visual Studio 2010 CTP Site

For you who don’t know, CTP means Community Technology Preview and can almost be regarded as a public beta version.

For C/C++ developers, you can find more info on the next version of Visual C++ 2010 on the Visual C++ Team Blog. I’m glad to see that IntelliSense for VC++ is being improved since in 2008/2005 it’s a quite horrible technology. This version also has support for some C++0x functionality.

First of all, I have to mention that this colleague has been a C and ASM programmer for most of his lengthy professional career, I won’t mention his name here but let’s just call him “Joe the Programmer” in light of current braindead naming schemes.

Joe the Programmer recently started programming with the .NET framework but yesterday came to a stop. When he was asked to help out with .NET development using ASP.NET, he took some time and to his amazement couldn’t find the ASP.NET programming language in the Visual Studio “new project” dialog.

At first this made me chuckle and I brushed it off, but then I realized he was correct to assume that there should be an ASP.NET programming language. After all, there used to be an ASP programming language although it looked suspiciously much like BASIC.

After explaining that ASP.NET is not as much a language but a technology, he went on his way and continued programming.

This all made me think that maybe the name, ASP.NET, is ambiguous, vague and might be a concept difficult to grasp for guys like Joe the Programmer. I just hope that he has a concept of OOP to go along with his newly found knowledge of ASP.NET.

Hot off the press, get it now: DirectX SDK August 2008

Following is a list of the major features that have been announced to be included in Direct3D 11, the next generation Graphics API included in the DirectX SDK. In my opinion, the changes (rather, additions) brought into this API are excellent so far. It seems as if the API has finally grown up and is in no way, shape or form comparable with older DX versions and deprecates OpenGL 3.0 at this point.

Major Direct3D 11 Features:

1. Compatibility: Ability to run on previous generation hardware (9, 10, 10.1)
2. Multithreading: Resources may be created asynchronously on separate threads.
3. Tesselation: Allows for subdivision surface operations (Fixed Function, not programmable)
4. Compute Shaders: Allows for general programming on the CPU, much like NVIDIA’s CUDA.
5. No Overhaul: Direct3D 11 is a superset of Direct3D 10, no learning curve as with 9 → 10.

A DX11 preview should appear in your November 2008 DirectX SDK. Keep your eyes on this page for GDC 2008 DirectX 11 papers.

Notes
1. Although you may use the Direct3D 11 SDK on older hardware features will naturally be limited to the hardware itself.

I don’t like Visual Basic, yet in many Microsoft shops, VB is still being used especially in combination with ASP.NET. The problem with Visual Basic is that it’s not very strongly typed. Conventions are often thrown out of the window and Senior VB developers often hold their seniority as experience which, is more fiction than fact.

How many more times do I have to see Functions which don’t return anything and should have been declared as Subs.

Or: Variable 'XYZ' is used before it has been assigned a value.
Or: Variable declaration without an 'As' clause; type of Object assumed.

Ugh. You’d think that people with 15 years of development experience wouldn’t dismiss this kind of stuff and just do the right thing.

I’m happy to announce that the “Direct3D, OpenGL and XNA Fieldguide” is back and improved. The article outlines the pros and cons of the major graphics APIs available and should be a useful reference in the back of every beginner graphics programmer’s mind.

While reading Betsy Aoki’s blog I stumbled upon her post about Gotdotnet being dead. I’m not crying about it, I barely knew that site, but when you go to the old URL you’ll be presented with what seems to be Microsoft’s implementation of a resource dump: the MSDN Code Gallery — which is pretty neat.

Sure, there are only 4 C++ related things so far but if you’re a .NET programmer this site is pretty nifty, it even allows you to post your own snippets or host your own discussion. Of course there’s a huge license you’ll have to obey to and you have to donate your firstborn to Microsoft before posting anything… but that’s besides the point