5 ms·

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively you

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively young.

douche 10y ago
WebForms can die in a fire, and thankfully has, for the most part, but WinForms is still plenty good enough for cranking out quick and dirty tools. Maybe I'm old, or it's just because I started out in high school doing VB6 forms applications, but I still prefer it unless I have a good reason, over WPF. WinForms is also a pretty thin layer over Win32 controls, as well, so if you have to switch between .Net and native C/C++ Windows dev, it's less of a context switch.
- themartorana 10y ago
  WebForms changed the game. ASP was a sub-subset of VB, but WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. I had never felt such power and freedom programming for the web. Yes, some people would put humongous data structures in view state, and yes, more-better solutions have arisen, but WebForms deserves your respect!
  - robin_reala 10y ago
    It really doesn’t. I’ve never seen a good WebForms site / app and I’ve always dreaded working with them. They were a regressive step.
  - insulanian 10y ago
    If you worked long enough with WebForms, then you'd know what an inefficient, slow and complicated event-hairball it is. I curse every time I have to go back to any old WebForms-based project to do some changes.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. And that is why it can go die in a fire!
ourmandave 10y ago
We do a lot of new development in Winforms. Ironically, it's our migration path away from green screen programs.
- th0waway 10y ago
  I've never really understood the problem with green screen programs: for most businesses, a green screen is perfectly usable, and it has the added bandwidth of low bandwidth requirements. A company I worked for uses Windows apps hosted in a Citrix environment. A green screen would lower the bandwidth requirements and remove a lot of the parasitic drag between servicing the customer and storing data.
markbnj 10y ago
>> I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. >> And I am relatively young. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who worked on WinForms and never used MFC or ATL or wrote C code to the Win16/32 API :). And I'm... er... used to be young.
- deathanatos 10y ago
  I'm in my 20s, and when I was starting it was the Win32 API, in C. It really wasn't that long ago.
greggman 10y ago
Unity3d is probably exposing tons of people to .net without winforms
fuzzy2 10y ago
Not all development involves GUIs. Well, let’s go even further and say most development is not GUI-related. Business logic and algorithms is what it’s all about.
- amelius 10y ago
  Most algorithms are reusable, while most GUI code is not. Hence, most actual programming is happening on GUIs.
  - fuzzy2 10y ago
    Hm, depends on the business, I guess. Because from my experience, most business algorithms are proprietary and don’t have proper specifications. You can’t just use them somewhere else. You have to recreate them from scratch.
    - gaius 10y ago
      Probably because your devs didn't write them in stored procs like they should.
      - animal531 10y ago
        Only roughly half the world believes in SP's. The other half (like me) believes that writing even the barest of hints of logic into SP's is a serious crime.
        gaius 10y ago
        So you'd rather write the same logic in every app, and trust that every developer of every app does the same and gets it identical? Good for keeping busy I suppose but if I were your manager I wouldn't pay you for it.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. And I am relatively young.

douche 10y ago

WebForms can die in a fire, and thankfully has, for the most part, but WinForms is still plenty good enough for cranking out quick and dirty tools. Maybe I'm old, or it's just because I started out in high school doing VB6 forms applications, but I still prefer it unless I have a good reason, over WPF. WinForms is also a pretty thin layer over Win32 controls, as well, so if you have to switch between .Net and native C/C++ Windows dev, it's less of a context switch.

themartorana 10y ago
WebForms changed the game. ASP was a sub-subset of VB, but WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. I had never felt such power and freedom programming for the web. Yes, some people would put humongous data structures in view state, and yes, more-better solutions have arisen, but WebForms deserves your respect!
- robin_reala 10y ago
  It really doesn’t. I’ve never seen a good WebForms site / app and I’ve always dreaded working with them. They were a regressive step.
- insulanian 10y ago
  If you worked long enough with WebForms, then you'd know what an inefficient, slow and complicated event-hairball it is. I curse every time I have to go back to any old WebForms-based project to do some changes.
- flukus 10y ago
  > WebForms with C# made websites full-scale eventful and stateful programs for the first time. And that is why it can go die in a fire!

ourmandave 10y ago

We do a lot of new development in Winforms. Ironically, it's our migration path away from green screen programs.

th0waway 10y ago
I've never really understood the problem with green screen programs: for most businesses, a green screen is perfectly usable, and it has the added bandwidth of low bandwidth requirements. A company I worked for uses Windows apps hosted in a Citrix environment. A green screen would lower the bandwidth requirements and remove a lot of the parasitic drag between servicing the customer and storing data.

markbnj 10y ago

>> I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who work on .NET and have never touched either WinForms or WebForms. >> And I am relatively young. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we have developers who worked on WinForms and never used MFC or ATL or wrote C code to the Win16/32 API :). And I'm... er... used to be young.

deathanatos 10y ago
I'm in my 20s, and when I was starting it was the Win32 API, in C. It really wasn't that long ago.

greggman 10y ago

Unity3d is probably exposing tons of people to .net without winforms

fuzzy2 10y ago

Not all development involves GUIs. Well, let’s go even further and say most development is not GUI-related. Business logic and algorithms is what it’s all about.

amelius 10y ago
Most algorithms are reusable, while most GUI code is not. Hence, most actual programming is happening on GUIs.
- fuzzy2 10y ago
  Hm, depends on the business, I guess. Because from my experience, most business algorithms are proprietary and don’t have proper specifications. You can’t just use them somewhere else. You have to recreate them from scratch.
  - gaius 10y ago
    Probably because your devs didn't write them in stored procs like they should.
    - animal531 10y ago
      Only roughly half the world believes in SP's. The other half (like me) believes that writing even the barest of hints of logic into SP's is a serious crime.
      - gaius 10y ago
        So you'd rather write the same logic in every app, and trust that every developer of every app does the same and gets it identical? Good for keeping busy I suppose but if I were your manager I wouldn't pay you for it.