Classic ASP owns ASP.NET

[nero120]

Right, after working on this thing for a few weeks now it is clear to me that classic ASP was so much more productive than ASP.NET. Classic was lightweight and easy to implement. It was not restrictive and that meant that you could easily build a site in classic alongside reams of javascript controls and anything else. And best of all you could build sites easily using notepad.

ASP.NET however sacrifices productivity for overwhelmingly pointless strict typing, confusion, 100s of times more lines of pointless code, the need to use Visual Studio if you expect to get anywhere in less than 3 weeks, and more crap.

Ive spent my time building a simple site to manage XML files using a datagrid control, and the amount of wasted time checking countless methods, properties, events, types, etc, etc is unbelievable! I could have built the site in classic in half this time and added far more functionality than ASP.NET allows me to (in a reasonable amount of effort).

I cannot understand why anyone would require such an overbloated and complex platform to built a fricking website. What a shame that ASP.NET is here to stay. Talk about taking a step backwards.

 

[nero120]

ASP.NET is an enterprise tool, and coupled with Vistual Studio you probably won't find a better development environment out there (uh-oh, flamewar time)....so I'd guess you just need to get used to it to learn the ropes, styles and shortcuts etc.

But you have to define 'better'. My comparison was down to the time taken to pick up the technology from scratch, the tools needed to implement the technology, and the time taken to implement the application in the technology. For my project, ASP.NET lost miserably at these things. I cannot imagine many web applications that would justify such complexity, yet all you hear is "ASP.NET! ASP.NET!".

You're both right that its all about picking the right tools for the job, but who is really doing that with ASP.NET? Because its the new buzz technology everyone wants to use it to their detrement. A simple or medium-sized web application that could be implemented quickly and maintained easily with high staff turnover, becomes a monster of an application that requires masses of documentation and people familiar with the code to maintain it. Plus, you have to use Visual Studio if you want to get anything done, which is ridiculous.

 

[nero120]

I'll have to pass specific questions on ASP.NET because I've only ever written a few lines of ASP* in my entire life and I very much dislike it (maybe I'm just a PHP/Perl guy or maybe I'm just not familiar enough to love it yet)

Well I've done ASP, ASP.NET, Java, Perl, PHP and Pascal. I am a fan of simplicity. I don't like my life being complicated for no reason. I simply don't like ASP.NET because it overcomplicates problems. I suppose this doesnt just apply to .NET, but the whole OOP paradigm. Java I also found to be a royal pain in the ass, but at that time it was being used to develop client based applications, and so I could forgive it. I just don't see a place for OOP in most web based applications, for what are essentially getdata;manipulatedata;displaydata operations.

I am also not a fan of strong typing. I can appreciate not assigning an Integer a String Value, but getting an error because I tried to assign a String hex value to the BackColor property of a TextBox object when it should have been a Color object is a little too pedantic for my liking. So now I have to create a color object, assign it a hex value and convert it to a string, 3 more tasks rather than the 1 that it used to be! That is what bugs me, more work for no gain.

 

[nero120]

I'm lost

I've used the ASP.Net datagrid for a few years now, and I just don't understand what your problem is.

IF you're using the DataGrid template, which in itself is a series of HTML encoded on your aspx page (not the code behind), then defining the colours for, say, column headers, alternating colours, footers, a particular column, etc, is exactly the same as you would normally assign a background colour for any HTML element. None of this hex->String->Control of what ever you have done.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but if used properly (and that is NOT meant to be insulting, so apologies if it comes across as that), but if used properly, it's a damn handy little grid. Albeit NOT the best, but it's pretty damn easy to use.

Yeah, its easy if you want a static datagrid when you know how many columns you have, but once you try to add generic behaviour thats when the problems start. To actually manipulate the elements of the datagrid when you dont know how many columns there will be is much more effort than it should be. What if I wanted to change certain edit textbox properties dynamically depending on their possible text value? To do that you have to understand the events of the datagrid, and that is wasted time as far as im concerned. I just wanted to change a fricking textbox colour!

And that is my point. ASP.NET sure is powerful, but that power comes at the cost of complexity. You have to understand a server control completely before you can utilise it in any reasonable way (especially if you are not using Visual Studio), and considering how many events, properties and methods that entails, it is a lot of work to simply change a textbox colour at runtime.

Im a pretty sharp guy (I got a 1st at uni in Software Engineering), but its taken me about a whole day to figure out just how you do that, and that is really unacceptable to me. Im sure as time goes by I'll get much more comfortable with the coding approach that ASP.NET demands, but I don't want to have to become an expert to change the sodding colour of a textbox!

 

[nero120]

LOL - yeah, I know what you mean.

You're right, it is damn powerful and years ago it was probably acceptable to have something powerful AND hard to understand, but not today, especially if something is to be classed as a RAD environment.

Thats it. I used to love web development because of the fact that it wasnt such a brain ache to create a very functional web app with minimal effort. Thanks to ASP.NET that has now changed, and web dev is as boring as com dev!

Stick with it though, I remember having the same problem, especially when it came to creating dynamically created datagrids. The online documentation didn't help, I had to rely on tricks from other developers (even cheats I guess they'd be). Like for dynamically sizing the number of columns, I'd do all the data integregation to see how many columns I needed, and then in the Page_Render event (which is before the Page_Load event), I'd create several dozen lines of HTML script that created the datagrid control for me with however many columns.

It's the clever things like that which you'll never read in the official documentation.

Yeah, thats exactly what Im finding. MSDN is not helping me at all and could their code examples be any worse??!!!

Anyway, glad to see you got the colour of the textbox sorted, let's just hope your customer doesn't want it alternating

ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

 

[nero120]

When you try building a BIG enterprise level web bases application in ASP classic you'll realise just what a step forward ASP.net (and even moreso ASP.net 2.0) is form the classic way of doing things. We use all C# (well mostly retrained java) delvelopment and can use the classic OOP techniques to make an agile and extremly reative development model work. To do all this in ASP classic would lead to millions of lines of script that would be impossible to debug and maintain.

Totally, and thats what it was made for. What annoys me is this attitude that every web app has to be in .net, even small and medium sized ones, and thanks to microsoft depredating classic they have to be. So for anything except big enterprise level apps you have a law of diminishing returns.

you find ASP easy becaue you know it, once you know and understand the .net 2.0 libraries you'll find it much easier and faster to build large complex applications in ASP.net than it would be to build that same application in ASP classic

Thats true, but classic took no time at all to pick up and use effectively, where as ASP.NET is obviously a lot harder to pick up. Im sure you're right that one day I will fly through those libraries, and I guess thats something, but when I need to change the textbox colour right now it doesn thelp at all!!

 

[nero120]

Sorry I completly disagree, asp is a complete nightmare to try and learn, it's just so friggin horrible. I've used asp.net 1.1 for over a year and now two major projects in 2.0 I simply cannot go back. The whole team thinks it, even the ones that loved asp and fought really hard to keep it. When you have a whole team working across 3 projects at different times VS2005 and team foundation server really start to work for you. All the biz, data, trasport layers etc are so easily reused. But I do agree with it being totally over speced for smaller sites.

I cannot argue against ASP.NET for larger projects, but it is a shame that microsoft has decided not to continue classic (or an updated form of classic) for small to medium projects. I think they are needlessly throwing away potential projects when it would do no harm to provide a cut down environment that is much more user friendly, easy to pick up and doesnt require their dev tools. People will no doubt turn to php to develop their smaller projects when they would have potentially used microsoft tools. But one look at ASP.NET will probably make them sick!

And step away from the datagrid, put it down before it goes off in your hand We just use Repeaters everywhere for tables etc. Full control of whats going on, divs, tables etc etc. Much clearner html and you can almost get it fully compliant lol

But at the cost of much more code! Datagrids are usefull because they have some neat functionality built in (when you can get it to work ). Repeaters are much more customisable, but you have to add all functionality yourself. Had I have known getting into the nitty gritty of data grids would be such a pain, I may have gone with repeaters after all!