Is .Net really that important to MS as they touted ?

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Microsoft has been pushing very hard behind .Net, but why haven't we seen any
real action or plan that Microsoft is going to port its own software,
especially Office onto .Net? If they don't want to do it, why should we go
with .Net?
 
<=?Utf-8?B?dmluY2VudCB3YW5n?= <vincent
Microsoft has been pushing very hard behind .Net, but why haven't we
seen any real action or plan that Microsoft is going to port its own
software, especially Office onto .Net? If they don't want to do it,
why should we go with .Net?
Click to expand...

Porting huge existing products which really *have* to be backwardly
compatible isn't a particularly good idea, and I don't believe MS has
ever said it is.

However, there are MS products out and coming out which *do* use .NET
(to a greater or lesser extent), and Longhorn in particular will use it
extensively.
 
Jon Skeet said:
Porting huge existing products which really *have* to be backwardly
compatible isn't a particularly good idea, and I don't believe MS has
ever said it is.

However, there are MS products out and coming out which *do* use .NET
(to a greater or lesser extent), and Longhorn in particular will use it
extensively.
Click to expand...
Developing *NEW* product is only a small part of the software industry,
upgrading takes the big share. According to what you said, only *NEW* product
will us .Net, that would be very disappointed to MS. And it’s also a little
bit funny that MS will run a non-.Net Office on .Net based Longhorn.
 
<=?Utf-8?B?VmluY2VudCBXYW5n?= <Vincent
Developing *NEW* product is only a small part of the software industry,
upgrading takes the big share.
Click to expand...

I don't know how true that is - particularly if you consider internal
projects rather than just ones that are sold.
According to what you said, only *NEW* product
will us .Net, that would be very disappointed to MS.
Click to expand...

The same is true for any development platform though. Unless you're
going for a rewrite anyway, why would you port hundreds of thousands of
lines of code?

For web applications it may be worth it, but for normal applications
it's usually not.
And it?s also a little
bit funny that MS will run a non-.Net Office on .Net based Longhorn.
Click to expand...

Why? There will be various other non-.NET applications on Longhorn, I'm
sure.
 
I am sure they have plans. Keep in mind that Office has evolved over the
past 15-20 years. There is probably much code that has existed since
day-one. With literally millions of lines of code, it would be foolish to
assume that such a product line would be ported overnight, after all, .NET
has only existed for a few years. Give them time.

Also, sometimes it may not be practical to rewrite an entire application
suite at once. Legacy system can be ported piecemeal.

Backward compatibility really does not have much to do with whether or not
Office is written in .NET. Office is no longer supported on anything prior
to Win2000 and so all machines hosting Office will be able to have the
framework available. Compatibility only relies on the file format, and the
language they choose is independent of the format.
 
Peter Rilling said:
I am sure they have plans. Keep in mind that Office has evolved over the
past 15-20 years. There is probably much code that has existed since
day-one. With literally millions of lines of code, it would be foolish to
assume that such a product line would be ported overnight, after all, .NET
has only existed for a few years. Give them time.

Also, sometimes it may not be practical to rewrite an entire application
suite at once. Legacy system can be ported piecemeal.

Backward compatibility really does not have much to do with whether or not
Office is written in .NET. Office is no longer supported on anything prior
to Win2000 and so all machines hosting Office will be able to have the
framework available. Compatibility only relies on the file format, and the
language they choose is independent of the format.
Click to expand...

Not in terms of add-ons. You've got all the VBA code to consider, along
with things which use the Office COM objects externally. MS wouldn't
want to ditch compatibility with that in a hurry, IMO.
 
Our biggest frustration has been the slow distribution of the .NET Framework
(DNF) itself.
Perhaps some of you have read "2004: A Microsoft Christmas Carol" that I
penned and posted to several newsgroups.

On the other hand, slow upgrades to Office Systems 2003 is said to be
affecting the revenues which has to be playing a role in the recent
attention being paid to Office. While we're frustrated with the slow time
schedule it also gives us more time to finish development of products and
services that we are integrating with Office products so its one of those
blessings is disguise situations. But to which end if there is no framework
on the number of desktops needed to become profitable selling applications
developed with the DNF?

Now when it comes to IE I am not so understanding as FireFox is a killer app
for browsing, especially for web developers.

--
<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee "Regional Information Services"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/





Peter Rilling said:
Did not think of those. That is what I get for such short-sight. :}


foolish
to
Click to expand...
and
Click to expand...
 
When you concider apps like BizTalk server (over million lines of c# code)
and WebMatrix, you can see some direction there. I don't see the value in
porting existing c++ apps to .net unless you have a major rewrite or
something. Also, I don't believe they ever said all apps should be .net.
They will still support and build on native c++ long into the future I would
guess.
 
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