Is "Whidbey" going to de-skill developers ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fresh Air Rider
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Fresh Air Rider

Hi

I understand that ASP.net 2.0 (Whidbey) is going to reduce coding by
70%.

Surely this is going to de-skill or dumb down the developer's task and
open up the task of web development to less qualified and trained
staff.

Tell me if I'm wrong.
 
I understand that ASP.net 2.0 (Whidbey) is going to reduce coding by
70%.

Surely this is going to de-skill or dumb down the developer's task and
open up the task of web development to less qualified and trained
staff.
Click to expand...


I do not believe so.

ASP.Net 2.0 is like adding an innovation in the building trades... like
prebuilt cabinets.

So we get prebuilt cabinets when designing a home. Sure, now we don't need
as many clever carpenters putting in cabinets to build a kitchen. On the
other hand, more houses will end up with more cabinets because they are
easier to put in and less expensive to do well.

The hard stuff is not the cabinets, or the plumbing, or the electrical. The
hard stuff is the architecture, the design, the internal spaces that people
live in.

Same thing goes for computing. We get one more tool, and it takes away a
little more of the grunt work. A real architect will use this code when it
works, and ignore it when it doesn't, without complaint. No one cares if
the design deviates from the "average every-day design" if the results are
beautiful in their own way. On the other hand, with more of the grunt work
done, we can focus on the hard stuff, the elegant stuff, the opportunity to
make something truly great.

So, those folks who can move closer to elegant design will continue to do
so. The folks who can do "sturdy cabinets", but nothing else, will go work
in RPG until they retire. If anything, the average IQ of the .Net developer
community goes up... not down.

--
--- Nick Malik [Microsoft]
MCSD, CFPS, Certified Scrummaster
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this forum are my own, and not
representative of my employer.
I do not answer questions on behalf of my employer. I'm just a
programmer helping programmers.
 
The Data Access Application Block cut down my ADO.NET code from anywhere of
50% to 90%.

I don't feel dumb.
 
my goodness, Eric. I never found that application block to be that useful.
I'll have to take another look.

--
--- Nick Malik [Microsoft]
MCSD, CFPS, Certified Scrummaster
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this forum are my own, and not
representative of my employer.
I do not answer questions on behalf of my employer. I'm just a
programmer helping programmers.
--
 
Ciaran said:
Hasnt this already happened with the introduction of dotnet
Click to expand...

If anything was going to replace developers, it would have been the rise of
the "application" server around 2000/2002. These soup-to-nuts servers
promised that every user could "develop" their own web applications.

Of course, we've heard that before, and now most of these companies are on
the verge of bankruptcy.

The one size fits all and "every man a programmer" approach sounds good to
management ( and many spent billions implementing it ) -- but the end
result: a couple of really good 'c' programmers can do the job a lot
cheaper, with more flexibility and faster than all this "easy to use
stuff".

Will a lot of companies spend a lot money buying Whidbey? Yes.

Will a lot of real world production projects, that serve millions of
customers with transactional processing get built with it? Nope.
 
I completely agree with Nick Malik. Technology is here to
simplify life and it builds on what has gone before.

Now with .NET simplifying things we can concentrate on the
architecture and design principles. This is obviously going
to need thought from the developer and cannot be classified
as a lesser skill
 
You're wrong ;-) they'll have time to do new and more important things - and
take advantage of all the cool new features.

Every new release makes stuff easier - but things get more and more
complex - not less and less complex b/c the bar gets raised and new things
become possible.
 
tribal said:
I completely agree with Nick Malik. Technology is here to
simplify life and it builds on what has gone before.
Click to expand...

Anyone can learn English.

Very few people are Hemmingway.
 
Nick Malik [Microsoft] wrote:

ASP.Net 2.0 is like adding an innovation in the building trades... like
prebuilt cabinets.
Click to expand...

Is it so hard to believe that Bill would cheat his own grandfather to make
another nickel?
 
Anyone can learn English.
Very few people are Hemmingway.
Click to expand...

So which are you? An average learner of English, or a budding Hemmingway?

Are you afraid that you aren't up to the task?

There are a billion people in China, and a billion more in India. Their
schools teach math and engineering and science. They are graduating more
computer science graduates in individual states and provinces of those
nations than we graduate in the US, nationwide. Every year. And our
numbers are falling.

And they work for 30-60% less than we do.

If you don't love this stuff, if you don't "eat, drink, and sleep this
stuff," you are going to have to compete with the advancing army of
intelligent, well educated, very competitive, hard working, young, and brave
software engineers pouring out of these markets.

You have two choices: seek higher ground, or get swept away. Get better, or
quit now.

To avoid the issue is about as effective as turning your back on an
approaching hurricane.

--
--- Nick Malik [Microsoft]
MCSD, CFPS, Certified Scrummaster
http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this forum are my own, and not
representative of my employer.
I do not answer questions on behalf of my employer. I'm just a
programmer helping programmers.
--
 
Nick said:
So which are you? An average learner of English, or a budding Hemmingway?
Click to expand...

I consider myself wanting to be among the best, but "learning".

..Net is such a daunting and magnificent platform, that I would hesitate to
put myself in that league yet.
There are a billion people in China, and a billion more in India. Their
schools teach math and engineering and science. They are graduating more
computer science graduates in individual states and provinces of those
Click to expand...

Yet, as you yourself pointed out, .net is not really about "computer
science" -- it is a creative and design oriented tool. I think they are
still way behind what we are doing with our software in the U.S.

Remember, the Big 4 Internet companies, Google, Yahoo!, e-Bay and Amazon,
are all pure U.S. inventions. They are the web/database/search engine
applications that server millions each day. ( And, BTW, none of them
use .Net )
And they work for 30-60% less than we do.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Many of us work many more hours than the 40 hours that our
salaries are computed on. Now that the days of perpetual high hourly
contract wages are gone, I, for example, work on salary. But I also feel
that I work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, because I live breathe and eat
my work in .net When I divide my hourly wage by all the work I do,
including personal training, programming for learning and fun etc, I
calculate my wage at about $15 an hour. Whereas the typical overseas
person, whose consulting company will charge you for each and every hour
and who provides no measure of efficency, will charge about $25.

Also, just reading these newsgroups, there are a lot of these consultants
who don't seem to know very much beyond the basics and come here with
questions like "how do I create a database driven website" or some all
encompassing task that they want us to fully program for them.
If you don't love this stuff, if you don't "eat, drink, and sleep this
stuff," you are going to have to compete with the advancing army of
intelligent, well educated, very competitive, hard working, young, and
brave software engineers pouring out of these markets.
Click to expand...

As Kirstin Dunst said, "Bring It On."
 
A Microsoft technology described as "an approaching hurricane" from a
Microsoft guy.

Who can argue?
 
Aristotle denounced written language saying it'll have a bad effect on human
memory.

Anyway, in a *real* enterprise app, you'll still be writing a whole lot of
code. The MS built in stuff that ships with ASP.NET 2.0 isn't suitable for a
multi portal architecture. Much of it is real cool but also will not work
downward compatible on Netscape 4.x.

You might ask why bother with that? Every government site has to be Section
508 compliant and the cool breadcrumb/treeview etc. are not. Not to mention
web parts/treeview are very very microsoftish - when it comes to designing
websites that are intended for huge audiences, your designers will more
often than not choose a non microsoftish look.

Consider that you are developing amazon.com, and consider what all ASP.NET
2.0 built in stuff will you be able to use? Your site must support every
browser out there, it has to be just as presentable to a non-logged in user
as it is to a logged in user. Can it be developed in ASP.NET 2.0? YES SURE
!! Is it a 2 day job? HELL NO !! :)

Look at any other big commercial website. You will find the same situation.
None of those are out of the box implementations with even ASP.NET 2.0. Or
atleast as much as they'd like you to believe, they are not.

Secondly, in ASP.NET in general, microsoft has been very very very very very
very security heady. (Read this
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/sahilmalik/archive/2004/10/28/30241.aspx ).
While I cannot argue that security isn't important, I feel in this entire
rhetoric of creating unbreakable security and creating more and more cool
stuff around creating things more and more secure, a few other important
facets are getting missed out. These could be skinning/layout/content
management/browser compatibility/failover schemes/memory
management/alerts/redundancy etc. etc. etc. Think about it - SQL Server and
IIS are both "Servers". They both have equally important roles. But SQL
Server is so much more mature, and IIS is so ultra lame in comparison. Yes
they serve different purposes, but that doesn't mean IIS (or web servers in
general) doesn't have room for improvement. The initial web servers were
written to deliver content, and we are beating the same dead horse today to
run SAP applications. C'mon !! Can we not come up with something better?

If I had to name two products that have stopped in the passage of time, it'd
be IE 6, and IIS 6. These two have failed to evolve when we moved from VB6
to .NET, from SQL Server 7 to Sql Server 2005.

Not to mention I've met very very few developers who really understood .NET
security, which means they implement their own much more home grown
vulnerable concoction. Yes what they do is incorrect, but it does happen.

Anyway, bottom line - ASP.NET 2.0 is an improvement, and if it were so cool
that it could put you out of a job, they'd probably had written a cool
utility called MakeMySite.Exe .. but there is no such utility so yes you
will still have a job. As a matter of fact, the improvmenets in ASP.NET 2.0
will force the few idiots who are still stuck on JSP to finally convert
over, and the job pool will actually increase.

.............. However (man I just keep going) ....... I feel that with the
introduction of ClickOnce, and eventually with Longhorn, when web based
XAML/Avalon applications show up. And the firefox XUL attempt are harbinger
to deathblows to HTML based web apps. And rightfully deserved so, HTML
sucks, it limits you so much, and the way it came into
development/evolvement was netscape and ie fighting over each other, it is
in essence the grandaddy of VB 6, i.e. it decides to ignore your mistakes to
be ultra compatible. What that gives you is a completely non-standard
uncontrollable look and feel and a very very tied hands developer that
cannot take advantage by far of the rich underlying protocols that could
seriously make the internet SO SO SO much more worthwhile than Internet
Explorer and HTML let you.

I feel in ClickOnce we see the beginning of the end of HTML based web
platforms, this change might take 5-10 years even, but it will happen IMHO.

The best part about ASP.NET 2.0 is that you don't have to use it :-)

- Sahil Malik
http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sahilmalik
 
but, is anyone ever really happy with those pre-built cabinets? I had to get
those when I moved in, but eventually I remodeled the kitchen and got some
real quality custom cabinets.

Wifee is MUCH happier!!!
 
MO said:
but, is anyone ever really happy with those pre-built cabinets? I had to
get those when I moved in, but eventually I remodeled the kitchen and got
some real quality custom cabinets.

Wifee is MUCH happier!!!
Click to expand...

Using Whidbey will be like buying cheap bookcases and furniture from IKEA.

The wheels will fall off, there won't be the right number of nails, and
the /special/ /tool/ will be missing.

Whidbey will be best used as a tool for seeing how *not* to do the job
right.
 
Using Whidbey will be like buying cheap bookcases and furniture from IKEA.
The wheels will fall off, there won't be the right number of nails, and
the /special/ /tool/ will be missing.
Click to expand...

Can you proof what you wrote above in the general way you wrote this?

IKEA claims they do a lot of testing in advance to prevent that. That is one
of the basics of there success, although a lot of people are jealous on
that.

The parallel in this writing is not an coincidence.

Cor
 
Japan has created a new kind of computer that will automate programming to
such a fine degree that it will put most programmers out of work within a
couple of years. There will no longer be a need for such skilled people,
working with source code statements and I dont recommend college students
take programming or any of the card punch classes, programming will be fully
automated so dont bother to study it.

popular culture circa 1979

When a breakthru comes along? People tend to move up on the ladder, not
down. People who learned the hard way, like using C with goto statements,
making scanf actually work; or MFC where every 3rd statement is a pointer or
pointer referenced data? When you get a new tool? It makes you better
because youve lived thru the older stuff.

The misconceptions of future trends? Thats a constant. The old 50s and 60s
science documentaries where things like the future kitchen would have
cabinets that move inside walls, plates that you simply throw away each
night and a machine re melts the plastic and casts new ones, even some of
the Disney exhibits of "tomorrow world" have not happened and never will. A
safe bet? If the earth is around 100 years from now, people will still enjoy
Levis jeans and cotton t shirts.

In the 50s? Some company put asbestos filters on cigarettes to reduce tar,
they advertised the new cigarettes "to YOUR health".

Wasnt a famous Microsoft employee quoted as saying computers wouldnt need
much more than 640K of memory? I dont know if that was a hoax or he said it,
but history is filled with poor observations by brilliant pioneers. The
electric guy, Edison? he wanted only DC electricity, when AC was proposed he
fought it, saying it was bad or something, and wouldnt go along with it. But
even to this day we use AC for household power.
 
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