Would it make good business sense to create web based software on the .net framework. Microsoft comes out with a new version of .net every 10 months or so... The support for the older versions of .net will be fading away gradually ...
+2
A:
What other options are you looking at?
If you continue to wait until the next version, then you will never create your software at all. Technology will always be changing so you just have to use what is currently available and upgrade later if needed. Not all changes to the framework are necessary for all applications.
Typically, .NET applications are easily transitioned from one version to another. If your business / client needs it now and it will be profitable now, then there is no reason not to.
JTA
2008-10-24 18:44:11
+1
A:
It's not as if the older versions go away somewhere. The only thing to really worry about is security patches, which eventually they'll stop making for the oldest versions. But the various .NET versions are mostly backwards-compatible, so if you bring code from an older version into a newer version, there are few if any things that will suddenly stop working.
So, why worry about it?
Kyralessa
2008-10-24 18:46:20
+5
A:
Yes, it makes fine business sense. Each version of .NET is pretty much backward compatible, so there is no real worry about it not being supported. New versions of PHP, Java, Ruby, etc are released every few months. You wouldn't use the same arguments not to use those. The fact that new versions are coming out means they are supported.
.NET is a pleasure to work with as a developer. I am not a Microsoft boy, I do plenty of PHP and have done plenty of Java, but .NET is well thought out and expresses my thoughts as a programmer succinctly and elegantly. It is also fairly easy to find decent programmers for .NET.
Rob Prouse
2008-10-24 18:47:46
+6
A:
Unless you count service packs, MS doesn't come up with a new version of .NET every 10 months.
- v1.0 - January 2002
- v1.1 - April 2003
- v2.0 - November 2005
- v3.0 - November 2006
- v3.5 - November 2007
Not a single pair of releases in that list is within 10 months, let alone averaging it. It's nearly November 2008 and there's certainly no sign of .NET 4.0 being "about to be released".
But yes, Microsoft is certainly still evolving the platform. Why would you think that's a bad thing? Yes, it takes effort to keep up-to-date - but like it or not, technology is moving on all over the place, and if you don't put in the time to learn new things, you will fall behind.
The pace of change is definitely not a reason to avoid developing web applications on .NET.
Jon Skeet
2008-10-24 18:50:35
Even this is kind of a spurious comparison, since they haven't changed the CLR since 2005. The worst that could happen to you in the interim is failing to take advantage of some new features.
Adam Lassek
2008-10-24 18:53:44
It is not that i am worried about the framework in itself, it has also got to do with the IDE (vs 2008) being tied to the framework. Will the next version of VS support 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0 .....
Nick
2008-10-24 18:56:13
There's not much precedent, since they've done both. VS2003 -> VS2005 targeted different framework versions, but VS2008 supports both 2.0 and 3.5. I think this may largly depend on whether they release a new CLR, but I don't know a definitive answer.
Adam Lassek
2008-10-24 19:02:44
Nick: I expect VS2010 will still support .NET 2.0, but by then I'd hope you'd have upgraded to .NET 3.5 anyway. The backward compatibility is very good in general, and there are significant benefits in keeping up.
Jon Skeet
2008-10-24 19:22:12
+6
A:
While I expect support for older frameworks to be dropped eventually from VisualStudio, although VS2008 supporing 2.0 through 3.5 is encouraging, all of the frameworks are available for us in the OS. Nothing requires you to update tools AND you can have multiple versions of the tools installed on the same workstation if you want. I have both VS2005 and VS2008 on mine right now.
On top of this, it isn't terribly difficult to bring older code up to newer versions as others have noted. I've had pretty good success with this.
Also, I don't think that the problem of versioning is unique to .NET -- all frameworks have it...and we're glad they do since it means newer, better tools to work with.
tvanfosson
2008-10-24 19:08:18
VS 2008 supports 2.0 through 3.5 because 3.0 and 3.5 are really just extensions of 2.0, not replacements for it.
Erik Forbes
2008-10-24 19:31:32
Exactly the problem, Erik, there's a lot of .Net 1.x stuff out there that isn't that old, but you can't work on it in VS 2008. And I read recently that VS 2010 is going to have backward-compatibility issues.
DOK
2008-10-24 20:04:42
I haven't heard anything about the next version of VS but I think it's encouraging that the last two versions layer on top of existing code instead of replacing it. Perhaps that means the underlying framework has stabilized and we'll see more of this.
tvanfosson
2008-10-25 02:55:54
A:
They still provide COM support. They still have Win32. They still have GDI. I have no worries about any version of .NET going anywhere any time soon.
Jeff Yates
2008-10-24 19:32:58
A:
On top of that, .Net 2.0 and .Net 3.5 SP1 is still running on the same runtime!
Bjørn
2008-10-25 14:37:36