back to article Microsoft's elderly .NET Framework shakes stick at whippersnapper Core while Visual Studio drops another preview

A third preview of Visual Studio 2017 15.9 made an appearance last night, along with teasers for what Microsoft has planned for its .NET Framework and Core products. ARM64 for everyone and Siri Shortcuts in Visual Studio It has been possible to build Arm apps in Visual Studio for some time, but building a Universal Windows …

  1. JDX Gold badge

    there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

    >While there can be multiple versions of .NET Core on one computer, .NET Framework is not so fortunate, and Redmond knows it.

    Unless things changed recently, different versions of .NET framework ARE very much separate for exactly this reason, that .NET can introduce breaking changes. Certainly when I was last working on .NET you'd commonly see different frameworks installed side by side. If you needed 2.0 then your 4.0 installation wouldn't (IIRC) work?

    1. Davidmb

      Re: there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

      That used to be the case, yes...

      Since 4.0, every release has replaced the previous version upon installation. This may be why they're still on the 4.x version numbering, as they always install to the 4.0 folder. For this reason no breaking changes are allowed.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

        Thanks for clarifying

    2. Geoffrey W

      Re: there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

      Are you sure? I still maintain .NET 2.0 software for someone who doesn't want to get more with it, daddy-O, alongside 4.x, 4.y, and 4.z, all on the same machine. I think I even have some .NET 3.X on there too. I don't recall any problems.

      1. iron Silver badge

        Re: there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

        .Net 2.0 and 3.5 run on the 2.0 CLR, the various 4.x flavours all run on the 4.0 CLR. So when MS release a new 4.x version it replaces the previous 4.x version but leaves 2.0 (and therefore 3.5) alone. Why they abandoned allowing multiple framework versions (beyond 2.0 and 4.x) I have no idea.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll be interested to see if a .NET Core 3 Winforms or WPF app runs on Ubuntu!

    1. John P

      I think they've already said that Winforms and WPF are going to remain Windows only, hence why they're in Net Core 3 but not Net Standard.

      Looks like Xamarin is leading the way with cross-platform desktop UIs with WPF, Mac and Linux heads all in preview, longer term I think that's what everyone will be heading to for desktop x-plat UIs.

  3. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Mushroom

    .NET Core 3 has already gained Entity Framework 6 support, along with WinForms and WPF

    Well, Entity Framework and WPF are two things they really ought to be taking out the back of the woodshed along with the .Net Framework, I reckon.

    My reasoning? Well, Entity Framework is great in theory, but in practice it often assumes developers have total control over schemas they often don't. (I once worked on a project where we weren't even allowed to create new indexes on existing tables...)

    As for WPF... an XML based UI language that uses a totally different font rendering engine to the rest of Windows, leading to problems for people who have eye issues and can't use ClearType, but can't turn it off in WPF? Yeah, WPF should have been thrown in the bin like the trash it is.

    1. John P

      I have an odd relationship with WPF.

      I appreciate that it is extremely flexible and you can do pretty much whatever you want with it and that's great. However, if you want to step one foot beyond basic, you've got to become a 300 level expert before you can get any further. If, like me, you only dip in to it every now and then, it means every time having to relearn massive amounts of XAML just to slightly tweak how your textbox is rendered.

      I thought they solved the ClearType issues years ago when VS switched to using WPF for its UI?

      As for EF, I can't disagree. EF Core solves some of those issues but progress on it is so glacial that I'm glad they decided to just port EF6 over. The Stack Overflow approach to ORMs is a pragmatic one that I am starting to err on the side of: use Dapper for your selects so you've got all the control you need on your retrieval, just use L2S/EF for your complicated inserts & updates.

    2. takno

      That's one of the things I hate about easy entity frameworks and naive migration tools. "Worked in test" isn't such a reassuring concept when the table with a few hundred million rows locks unexpectedly for an hour, and write performance becomes too poor to keep up with peak load.

      Sure, that isn't a problem in most places, but when it is you *really* don't want to hire a new team that can move faster because they don't have to waste time on planning thanks to this cool new tech...

  4. Waseem Alkurdi

    From the article:

    Visual BASIC

    Sirs, it's called Visual Basic. BASIC is a totally different beast, of which Visual Basic is certainly not a derivative.

    On a different note, .NET Framework should definitely die. Too old.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      "On a different note, .NET Framework should definitely die. Too old gone HORRIBLY wrong."

      Fixed it for ya. [being 'old' is NOT a reason for it to die].

      And 'die' could be better expressed as: KILLED to DEATH by BURNING with FIRE, then DISSOLVING with SOLVENT. [that should 'solve' it, heh]

      '.Not' and C-pound are 2 of Micro-shafts WORST decision in the last 2 decades!!! They should've just made C++ and MFC easier and tighter, and friendlier for STATIC LINKING. Well, THAT didn't really happen EITHER...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Are you off your meds again?

        1. Geoffrey W

          If only Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer could have met Bob at those critical moments in their lives...what a glorious and beautifully basic (pun or no pun intended: I haven't decided) C++ development world we could all be living in right now, slowly coding our open source masterpieces using a text editor with a bit of syntax highlighting and minimal platform assistance, wishing the editors developers would stop trying to earn enough money to eat and heat, or stop playing murder simulator games, and get on with creating a few more features. A slower world with lightning fast software that does very little, with time to leave our mothers basements and stand blinking tearily in the sunshine...happy...happy...happy...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "'.Not' and C-pound are 2 of Micro-shafts WORST decision"

        Well .Net is a thousand times preferable to Java which is the main alternative option and I have never heard of C£.

        1. BongoJoe
          Headmaster

          and I have never heard of C£.

          I believe that which the gentlemen above you refers to should be known as "C Octothorp"

          1. Electric Pencil

            I demur

            The symbol # has been named "sharp" by musicians for hundreds of years, whereas the earliest recorded use of "octothorpe" (note the spelling) is at Bell Labs in the sixties.

            Since the language is called "English" and not "American" or "European Trade Language" it is reasonable to reject this attempt to rename the symbol. Americans please note that your dialect is spoken by only 19% of the English speaking world.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You sound like a 100-year old man, maybe you should just retire.

  5. AndrueC Silver badge
    Mushroom

    I'd just like the VS team to fix the various stability issues. I just want VS to build shit when I ask it, to debug for as long as I need it and not to crash out at random (but seemingly the most inconvenient) moments.

    It used to be a goodtolerable IDE. Now it just gets in the way,

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      VS/DS "Now it just gets in the way,"

      Ack. 'Getting In the way' ever since the first release after VS '97

      I liked VS '97, especially the dialog editor and class wizard integration. It was really easy to work with if you're a typist, ESPECIALLY if you want to leave BOTH hands on the keyboard, instead of having to lift one off of home row just to mousie-fiddle with some *STUPID* *[deadpool-worthy pejorativde]* *PROPERTY* 'SHIT'.

      I *REALLY* *HATE* the VB-ness of DevStudio, nowadays... [worst of both worlds for a C/C++ developer]

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yep, you definitely forgot to take your meds again.

      2. DCFusor

        Bob, that was a big reason that we jumped off the MS ship and onto linux as a shop here right then.

        We love the old devstudio before they VB'd it up - we even used it for multiplatform projects; windows code that drove a DSP somewhere, with all the code files in the same project and built with f5 with only a little scripting and of course, the other required compilers It made doing hardware/software product design for a big customer a breeze...then ...

        We switched to linux, and after training some interns at our customer on windows internals (so they could support our customer's customers), helped the customer switch their own internal systems to linux - way back then. They still thank us now and then.

    2. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Wish I could disagree - I mean, you'd expect that with increase in features and capabilities comes a cost in increased resource usage.

      But man, VS just has crossed that line into ginormous bloat, with much of it getting in the way.

      I look at my daily work with IDEs and find that what used to be all VS is now VSCode or Jetbrains (who wisely make you use a different more stripped down IDE for each language/framework even if they're based on the same underlying "engine" as opposed to one massive Swiss Army knife from hell).

      I used to maintain my Jetbrains sub for access to Resharper and a little bit of the IDEs. That has now pretty much flipped and it's all about being able to jump between PyCharm, CLion, Ryder and Webstorm. Horses for courses.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apparently I'm in the minority here...

    .Net is wonderful.

    The same backend code being used from microcontrollers, through Phones and Desktops and up to Cloud solutions. Memory management and error handling made simple- until you want to reach into that side of things and take more control. Cross-platform operation enabled with projects like Mono.

    For Getting Things Done it's vastly better than C++, even if it's less efficient.

  7. WibbleMe

    Perhaps its just random luck, but I do websites and mobile apps, I see jobs advertised for these skills that want .net etc but Iv never see a products or met anyone that actually uses these MS skills. I make a nice profit with node/js/angular and classic HTML/CSS, perhaps its because I don't have to pay for licences and certified retraining or when I make a website in HTML, I can leave it there for 10 year and it will still work perfectly regardless of changes to the server software and not get hacked. We also never hear what MS feels about Googles Firebase platform that includes a JSON/NoSQL database, functions and hosting.

    1. Alan Bourke

      Your point?

      "I don't have to pay for licences and certified retraining"

      .NET Core, ASP.Net, SQL Server Express, VS Developer Edition, all free and who's making you do certified training?

      "We also never hear what MS feels about Googles Firebase platform"

      The one where you have to pay for licences?

      1. J27

        Re: Your point?

        Visual Studio is only free for organizations that clear less than $1 million USD/year. Unless you're self-employed, it's pretty easy to exceed that value. I suppose you could use Visual Studio Code, but it's not really the same thing is it?

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