I do not have experience with DevExpress products, so I do not know which license i should take.
My first thought obviously was not going for some of their components, as this is not really interesting for 'personal' use.
So one of their Visual Studio® Productivity Tools looks interesting. But which one is the most interesting?
What do you guys think?
If you are already using a productivity addin, I'd go for the .NET control packs - DevExpress have done an amazing job redesigning a lot of the standard functionality that .NET brings with its controls, and it's well worth the download.
If you aren't already using a productivity addin (CodeRush or ReSharper seem to be the main contenders) - I'd go for CodeRush + Refactor - an excellent set of productivity tools that seriously improve your coding speed.
I'd go for .NET control packs. Winforms or ASP.NET, or both, if possible. They were pretty good, a vast improvement over the default ones that .NET has built in.
I'd opt for CodeRush + Refactor, a great set of tools to help your productivity.
CodeRush and Refactor! are amazing products. The templating engine, especially, is a blast. Customizable, extendable, context-aware... try it and you won't ever want to use Visual Studio without it again.
I've also been using their WinForms control for almost ten years now. They're nice, but you must be very careful using them because unfortunately DevExpress has a strong culture of swallowing exceptions. It ain't my only concern with them but it's most certainly the main one.
If you can I would get the universal license it gives you access to all DX products.
Related
I want to throw together a .net website as an interface to a subsystem I manage.
I'm planning to use ASP.net (on .net 2.0) because this is the shop's standard.
I would like to use an ORM because I was playing with Django a little bit ago and realize the time saver and code simplifier it was. I realize I may not get the time saving aspect because of the setup but I think it should make maintenance easier.
Can someone recommend a stable, very easy to learn/setup ORM product that works with ASP.NET 2.0. I prefer open source, but as long as the product is free it's fine.
Because learning something is dependent on the learner I want to share that I'm an experienced developer. I use a lot of languages and generally learn quickly with good material.
I'd recommend Castle Active Record.
It's built ontop of NHibernate, which is a pretty popular one, but Castle's AR is faster to get off the ground with in my opinion.
I used it on my last ASP.NET project so can vouch for usefulness there. :)
Edit - Here's a quick link to "Getting started".
I recommend NHibernate. It is full featured, very mature and (in my experience) quite stable. Take a look at the summer of nhibernate screencasts (also free) and you'll have enough knowledge to get up and running in no time!
Has anyone actually built and deployed a website with IronPython and ASP.NET. What were your experiences and is the combination ready for prime-time?
I asked this question just over a year ago. And the consensus seemed to be "not really".
What's the status now?
I haven't actually ever tried it, however I do know there's a library available which allows you to write inline python in your ASP.NET.
It would seem to me that this is very usable in a production scenario.
Gestalt
I believe that if you want to do anthing useful/em> with .NET + IronPython, you need better support for the dynamicy of Microsoft's CLR environment, and you'll need VS2010 for that.
You may have better luck just building a strait up python app. Why bother using ASP.NET? Are you integrating with another codebase?
I don't believe that ASP.NET was ever ready for prime time. The framework is contrived and an awful fit for designing web applications. It was made for VB6 programmers that only know how to drag controls onto a design surface.
Most decent(and pretty much all bad) applications written on ASP.NET don't use it as it was designed, and if that's the case then what's the point.
I work in a shop that is mostly .NET based, and we're trying to pick out a content management system to use. This means we mostly likely won't be able to use any of the common open source CMS projects (Plone, phpNuke, anthing not based on .NET, etc.).
Since I'm a huge usability nerd (just finished reading The Design of Everyday Things by Norman), I've been looking at them from that point of view. Frankly, I haven't been too impressed. This quote sums it up:
Most open source content management software is useless. The only thing worse is every commercial CMS I’ve used. - Jeffrey Veen
Here's a short list of our requirements:
Has to be .NET based
Prefer open source or on the inexpensive side
Limited feature set (we don't need too many features and they make things harder to use)
Does need Active Directory integration and robust permissions
Should be focused on web standards and usability
I know it's probably an impossible feature list, but are there any content management systems that kinda sorta look like they might not suck more than a Dyson?
Edit:
Here's the current situation:
I'm going to push for N2. I've got Active Directory integration working well (I even wrote a custom role provider). The only thing missing is workflow functionality. Hopefully I can get something going with that since it's the last sticking point. The N2Contrib project might provide a starting point if I can figure it out.
I would still love to check out Stencil CMS if/when it gets off the ground.
One of my co-workers was trying to get Umbraco going but wasn't having much luck.
Thanks for the help!
Self-plug is lame, but what you're describing is pretty much exactly what I am getting ready to release for $79 a pop. If you're still looking in a few weeks, take a peek. If you'd like, shoot me an email (rex#stencilcms.com).
I've heard both positive and negative feedback about Umbraco. A lot of people like Graffiti, but it's more blog-oriented than a full-blown CMS.
Check out N2 (http://n2cms.com/). I think that it covers most, if not all, of your requirements (I don't think it has Active Directory capability at this time). We are using N2 and I have really enjoyed how flexible it has been.
My company just completed a review of several commercial .NET-based CMS/portal platforms and, while I can't reveal who was in them (thanks, NDAs!), I can tell you that IMO they all sucked very, very badly.
Good luck on your search. I'll keep an eye on this thread in the hopes that there's something we missed.
We had a similar set of requirements and chose Telerik Sitefinity. It's got it's faults but overall I've been happy with it so far.
Unfortunately Jeffery speaks the truth. Which is probably why I build a new custom cms from the ground up every few years. Basically, the motivation for "boxed" CMS packages is to have every feature on earth and be everything to everyone and therefore do nothing particularly well for anyone. With the feature bloat comes the usability nightmares. Unless you start customizing and then you usually end up forking the project and losing the advantage of community updates.
Kentico CMS according your list:
Has to be .NET based
It's .net based, .NET Framework 2.0 or later
Prefer open source or on the inexpensive side
Free edition which can be used for commercial purposes is available, paid license starts at $750, source code is an option
Limited feature set (we don't need too many features and they make things harder to use)
Many built-in modules/features, anyway they can be easily disabled to keep the UI simple to use
Does need Active Directory integration and robust permissions
AD, Forms and Live Id! Integration
Should be focused on web standards and usability
UTF-8 Support including RTL languages, WAI Compliant, XHTML Compliant, XML, XHTML, HTML, XSLT, CSS.
Instant on-line demo or download available at:
http://www.kentico.com/Download.aspx
Recently I witnessed an acquaintance developing an ASP.Net site with SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, and I was blown away by his level of productivity.
I mainly develop servers and sometimes Windows Forms applications. I only do a ASP.Net project every once in a while. So, when one comes up, there's usually a little bit of ramp up time to get my productivity back.
This guy, he was developing complicated .aspx and .ascx pages with seemingly little effort.
How can I become that guy? What are the secrets that I should know?
Experience is the best productivity boost I could ever hope for.
To me, "secret" is a word used to sell books more than anything else. Nothing is really a secret when it comes to software development techniques and patterns.
I think the key to being highly productive is to gain a very solid understanding of software development patterns, and to be reasonably proficient with your technology of choice.
There are no real secrets (well, aside from that one I won't tell you) but, basically, the trick is to use things that do your work for you.
Unit testing
ORMs
Deployment tools
Build tools
etc. There are many many others. But generally, try and avoid doing work, and focus only on actual 'application-specific' things.
At least that's what I do.
A note of advice: Asp.net has everything you need out of the box to develop small website. You will be able to do practically everything you want to do. Practically. And then you start hitting the virtual ceiling and it takes considerably longer to implement what you thought would be a simple change. Basicly, asp.net is a leaky abstraction (interesting article) when you start to do medium and larger websites.
Anyway, back to your actual question, to keep the productivity level high, avoid the AJAX.net stuff. Use jquery, dojo any other library instead.
This question is similar to my earlier question.
I have used ASP .Net in Visual Studio 2005 about 4 years ago. How long would it take to get back up to speed with the latest versions?
That depends on how much you "used" it. An experienced developer should have no trouble updating his knowledge of the 3.0 to 3.5 Framework changes and language specific changes. The largest introduction, I'd say since then has been LINQ, giving the ability to query data from the language level rather than SQL.
But if you're not an experience developer and don't have a good foundation in the previous version, most of what you'll be learning will be the Framework 3.0 and VS2005.
So, ultimately, if you're just going from VS2005 to 2008, it shouldn't be much trouble at all.
Not very long. The major addition to VS 2008 is support for Linq, but you don't have to use this (or any of the new features).
The IDE is extremely similar to VS 2005.
Essentially, 2005 targets the 3.0 framework, and 2008 target the 3.5 framework, but these are both just expansions of the 2.0 framework, and not new versions (unlike the change from 1.1 to 2.0).
If you were already proficient in it earlier, then you'll be able to jump into it very quickly again. The core concepts haven't changed much, so you should feel right at home.
If you were able to produce and application back then, you can probably still build exactly the same application now.
As has already been stated, .NET v3.5 is merely v2.0 with extra bells and whistles, like LINQ and AJAX. These are tools in a broader toolkit, and there is no requirement that you must use any/all of them.
So start where you left off. Refresh yourself, and once you are back in the swing of things, have a look through some of the latest enhancements, and pick out one or two that you think will be useful to you. One step at a time!
Everyone else is correct that it should be easy. I'd just add that the ListView control is one of the additions, so be sure to check that one out.
It depends on what you want to use ASP.NET for.
If you live in the HTTP Request/Response world, it will take time. Most of that time will be spent trying to shift documentations which completely ignore the Requrest/Respone world in favor of ViewState and other similar items.
If you want to go ViewState way, not too long, since Microsoft's website is overflowing with tutorials on it.
Take a look at some of the starter kits like Kigg, DinnerNow, and DropThings . You'll get an idea of MVC, WCF and LINQ. Ignore that sinking feeling and get to work learning!