MVC AND RAZOR BIZSPARK AND SCOTT GU AKA DOT GLUE

This is my first blog post in a while, I took some time away from programming. To bring you up to speed, I stopped using Visual Studio and .BLOAT and I made the switch to PHP, MYSQL and playing with Ruby a bit. Seems odd after 20+ years of programming and strictly with MS Tools since VFP 2.0 and interdev but it is worth it. Granted the open source tools may not be anything to get excited over and the syntax a little cryptic but it is nice to know you can actually learn a language or technology and it will be around a month from now.

On a side note: many of you may not be aware of this but I was a Microsoft cheerleader for VS 6.0, Sql Server and VFP 9. Now I dread even touching their software. My main pc setup I run linux and open office and another PC running XP used for Visual Studio and testing the sites on I.E. so I can put all the hacks in required to render a page correctly.

I just read the blog postings on the Internet about silver light, now Microsoft is back pedaling with silver light after they slipped up and let the cat out of the bag that this is a dying platform once HTML 5 is released. Yeah so what netflix uses silverlight I wonder how much Bill Gates paid them.

Here are some other tool sets or frameworks (I use that term loosely related to Microsoft) if you still think Microsoft has any plan for it's development product line, pop fly is in the grave after all the hype my Friend Soma wrote on his blog. From what I been hearing from a reliable source the Linq to Sql team has been dissolved and the ADO.NET team is taking it over, which they have already stated they are no longer enhancing the product. So the BLOATED slow and unstable entity framework with LINQ will be your tool of choice for data access, have fun! Remind me again when was the last time the MS Ajax toolkit has been updated?

Now all my new development is using open source development tools, I love knowing I am no longer feeding the Microsoft machine or supporting the economy of India. I am so glad I am outside the webforms mvc drama, hats off Microsoft for splitting your own development community. I still get the occasional client for which I have to painfully open Visual Studio. This one last week I had was blog worthy.

I had to implement several changes to an MVC website, I open up the source code and it is over 2 freaking million lines of code using the BETA version of MVC which is not compatible with the production version, WTF! Folks it took 2 hours to configure a computer just to maintain this code. Where is the productivity in that mess.

Trust me THE GLUE and the MVC lovers are full of shit about MVC. This company has 15 programmers supporting this single website and still required my assistance in implementing these changes because it turned into such a bastardize amount of spaghetti code and the performance was subpar. How can you expect anything else when the following array of technologies are used:

1) .BLOAT Wrapper classes
2) Jquery
3) Javascript
4) Blend
5) C#
6) CSS
7) HTML
8) Visual Studio
9) MVC
10) Webservices
11) SQL Server Stored Procedures
12) Entity Framework
13) LINQ
14) Dataset - to fill in the holes, like reporting, where LINQ and EF don't work
16) AJAX
17) ASPX - for somes pages that the MVC framework was to time consuming to use.

Folks this is what DOT GLUE doesn't tell you about the learning curve and technology overhead when you get into Microsoft MVC and blindly implement stuff after reading the blogs written by cheerleaders. Seriously MVC is 1970's programming writing htmlhelper a million times and alligator syntax it is seriously a step back closer to classic ASP.

Sure there are so many things wrong with this scenario as personally I wouldn't recommend using any Microsoft tools until service pack two is released (but the problem is Microsoft tools never make it into production anymore with any of their development tools they just call everything a RC, CTP) and definitely would NOT use beta software on a production website, but besides the point, 2 million lines of code what the hell are people thinking. Is that worth getting "CLOSE TO THE CHROME or METAL" however microsoft and the cheerleaders are spinning Scott Gu's and the Visual Studios Team's inability to build an innvoative productive development paradigm, write contols, class browsers (that works) and build designers. Given they can't write anything worthwhile on their own they copied Rails or at least tried to in their own BLOATED fashion. Disagree it is bloat refer to the above list.

Look point blank, Microsoft's MVC has zero RAD tools, no controls and for the most part you are on technology overload. Are developers that in love with .BLOAT that they pay to use an over bloated set of Operating System Wrapper Classes in controllers? If you want the MVC model use Ruby it seems to work well and the best part is it is not based on Microsoft's .CRAP wrapper classes.

What I find amusing is how Microsoft's is scrambling now to release the new MVC Razor view engine in hopes it fixes all the problems with their current view engine for MVC.

Then I read Scott GU'S blog and there are all these want-a-bees suck ups praising DOT GLUE for MVC release candidate 78,233 while DOT GLUE is posting comments about all the hacks and bugs in that framework and it has only been out a couple days. Didn't MSFT test any of this software? given DOT GLUE only writes elementary school tutorials on his blog that the want-a-bees cream over you know he won't find a bug in that framework, what a freaking joke.

Yes you read that correct DOT GLUE is stating in short YES WE F'D UP ANOTHER RELEASE and still the MSFT cheerleaders and want-a-bees are thanking him. This is directly off the DOT GLUE'S blog. "... If you installed the async CTP and the new MVC RC3 .... You will likely experience problems in VS with debugging (potentially other things)... I didn't paraphrase the (potentially other things) DOT GLUE wrote it - so what he is saying is he doesn't even know what the hell will go wrong.

Every person that posts thanks scott or cool, great job, I have a question for you what the hell is wrong with you? Look I will spell it out for you THE SOFTWARE DOESN'T WORK OR INSTALL CORRECTLY without jumping through hoops and Microsoft is even losing control of their technology base. Let me ask you this when was the last time a client told you good job for giving them software that is unstable? Moreover if you bought a car and the door wouldn't open and you were told just crawl through the trunk would you be happy. Why do so many developers HOLD MICROSOFT and DOT GLUE to such a pathetic level of competance?

The funniest post was some dude wrote: (and I am paraphrasing here) I opened up the MVC release candidate and I started to cry because this that and the other thing didn't work.... and DOT GLUE wrote some crap back like don't cry blah blah blah. I literally became physically ill reading his blog. Folks there is a reason this tool is ONLY being used by a small number of websites, regardless of how much spin DOT GLUE puts on it, its a trainwreck!

After being involved in the open source community for months now, I think there is such a negative impression and distrust towards Microsoft, and rightfully so, there is not a development tool they can release (and that includes Webmatrix - which is like an unfinished version of "access" for web development and still .CRAP based) that would gain back the developers that have left their camp. Soma is blogging about giving .BLOAT away under the Biz Spark umbrella to trick users into using it. Look, Microsoft doesn't care about your success, just ask any VFP or VB programmer, this is a marketing gimmick - don't buy into in. Microsoft is fully aware of the cost to change platforms so they give you their tools for free for 3 years (which is how long its take to write 100 million lines of code and hire a tribe of indian developers to use .BLOAT) knowing there is a high cost barrier to change platforms.

Unless Microsoft changes course, gets their head out of their asses and fixes this mess in 5 years the only folks still using .BLOAT and Visual Studio will be intranet corporate enterprise accounts, it will be a non-existant player on the web - sort of like BING (But it's Not Google search engine) and Live (is that even still around?).

Don't expect me to rip open source EVER, the software is free and it is the lesser of the two evils. Moreover the open source community didn't issue an end of life on every single development platform they had that worked, like Microsoft did. I find it completely ironic there is MORE stability in open source then with Microsoft tools.

Enough for now take care everyone.

Your Friend
.Mark

By The Way, If you read my Bing blog post when it first was released, I predicted it's failure and sure enough it happened, so what does Microsoft do, it gets balled up with yahoo and buys Bing's way into facebook and still can't make any inroads. Bing was written using Visual Studio and Google and Facebook weren't, need I say more.