4 ms·

My big problem with .NET is that a lot of line-of-business apps were written using ASP.NET Web Forms, but there is no upgrade path other than “rewrite most of i

My big problem with .NET is that a lot of line-of-business apps were written using ASP.NET Web Forms, but there is no upgrade path other than “rewrite most of it”. It feels like the pain everyone went through upgrading from Python 2 to Python 3. It also doesn’t help that .NET Framework has its support cycle tied to the OS, and hence is 10+ years. This means that businesses can be lazy and just leave these old apps to fester and still be technically “supported”. As web standards evolve, I’m seeing these web apps slowly break. It’s actually a big problem and Microsoft doesn’t seem to care much. It’s only in .NET 7 that they’ve finally introduced some incremental migration features, but they’re buggy and incomplete. As a random example of the issues: .NET Core 1.0 broke DataContract deserialisation because of a missing thing in the BCL. A decade later this is present now but they still haven’t fixed the service client generator tool! Every time I’ve tried to migrate an app, it’s one breaking issue after another with 3-year old GitHub issues that have no responses from Microsoft. Talking about the awesome future of .NET is great and all, but you've got to give people a path to get there...

Kwpolska 4y ago
ASP.NET Web Forms are a complete trainwreck and an abuse of HTTP and other basic web development standards (e.g. by using javascript: URLs and POSTing forms for every single interaction with the page). It is broken by design. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 came out in 2009, there was plenty of time to modernize those apps.
- Someone1234 4y ago
  I'm not sure you're addressing anything the comment above said. Their complaint was that people invested a lot of resources into a technology that Microsoft promoted, and then that technology hit a dead-end with no good upgrade path aside from "rewrite it all!" What year that occurred is irrelevant. Ironically you brought up MVC 1.0, which Microsoft did EXACTLY THE SAME THING TO, when they released Asp.Net Core MVC which also has no direct upgrade path. In fact, it wasn't until the last twelve months that Microsoft even tried offering anything when they realized it has been ten years and a lot of companies remain stuck to this day on .Net Framework. Yes, Web Forms was poorly designed. But this is about Microsoft's poor upgrade offerings more than any specific technology, and an import lesson for people investing time/resources into Blazor today (given that it uses a proprietary WebAssembly compilation system and a proprietary back-end not dissimilar from WebForms in terms of lock-in).
- shreyasonline 4y ago
  It seems you have not kept up with .NET development. Web Forms have been obsolete since many years by now.
mattmanser 4y ago
The writing was on the wall a long, long time ago! These companies had 15 years to do it. And it was fairly easy to get webforms + MVC running side-by-side on the same site so you could gradually migrate. Too late for that now though, you can't run webforms + MVC Core side-by-side. You could put a load balancer in front of the old app and start moving end points to a new code base. It's akin to moaning that MS haven't got an upgrade path from IE7. Or your Adobe Air app has stopped working. On the plus side, doesn't 4.7 still have a huge support window because it's tied to one of the windows server versions?
- alexjplant 4y ago
  > The writing was on the wall a long, long time ago! [...] These companies had 15 years to do it. I pointed this out in 2013 only to be literally shouted down by my manager. I did so again in 2017 under a different manager on the same team with the suggestion that we investigate using SPAs and RESTful frameworks only to be told that Razor Pages was the way forward which, while an improvement, didn't do any wonders for our ability to attract/build technical talent or create rich user experiences. As a sibling comment points out (in a sentiment that I've echoed on HN before): > ASP.NET Web Forms are a complete trainwreck and an abuse of HTTP and other basic web development standards (e.g. by using javascript: URLs and POSTing forms for every single interaction with the page). It is broken by design. You can probably see why developers that chose this framework in the first place aren't interested in upgrading... learning actual web standards and state management isn't something they wanted to do in the first place.
  - andix 4y ago
    Classic management f**-up. Some products/companies just die, because of bad management that doesn’t react to change. Get a new job ;)
    - alexjplant 4y ago
      > Get a new job ;) Done :-). > Some products/companies just die, because of bad management that doesn’t react to change Some don't have to because they get paid no matter what.
andix 4y ago
Technologies don’t live forever. At some point you need to upgrade, and at some points there will be some major breaking changes. .NET 4.8 is still fully supported, and there is no end-of-life communicated yet. It is a part of windows server 2022, which will be supported until 2031, that’s probably the earliest possible end-of-life date for .NET 4.8.
- Someone1234 4y ago
  If people are looking at what technologies and companies to invest in, knowing that they may be left high and dry with a "full rewrite"-level of breaking changes is a valid and relevant critique. You want to know you'll be supported through difficult transitions, and that isn't unreasonable. I don't understand why people are coming out of the woodwork to tell everyone that full rewrites are a perfectly normal and expected regular occurrence that you should expect from your tech choice. Python 3 is famous for how much they hurt themselves by ignoring the problem. Many companies never did migrate from 2 to 3, and instead picked tech with better guarantees. I expect the same to occur with .Net Framework.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The big difference between the two is that the classic .NET Framework is still supported for as long as the underlying version of Windows is (and to remind, it still ships in Win11). So old .NET apps don't have to be rewritten to continue running securely.
  - andix 4y ago
    Do you have any example what technology gave you a clean upgrade path from 2005 until now, without the need to do major changes? With .NET you can still, use most of your code from 2001, just the UI frameworks (and WCF) are not supported anymore on .NET 5+. They are supported at least until 2031 on .NET 4.8. So you can easily move your business logic to a newer version and leave the UI on an older version. But seriously, who is still happy with a web application built in 2005?
    - WorldMaker 4y ago

Kwpolska 4y ago

ASP.NET Web Forms are a complete trainwreck and an abuse of HTTP and other basic web development standards (e.g. by using javascript: URLs and POSTing forms for every single interaction with the page). It is broken by design. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 came out in 2009, there was plenty of time to modernize those apps.

Someone1234 4y ago
I'm not sure you're addressing anything the comment above said. Their complaint was that people invested a lot of resources into a technology that Microsoft promoted, and then that technology hit a dead-end with no good upgrade path aside from "rewrite it all!" What year that occurred is irrelevant. Ironically you brought up MVC 1.0, which Microsoft did EXACTLY THE SAME THING TO, when they released Asp.Net Core MVC which also has no direct upgrade path. In fact, it wasn't until the last twelve months that Microsoft even tried offering anything when they realized it has been ten years and a lot of companies remain stuck to this day on .Net Framework. Yes, Web Forms was poorly designed. But this is about Microsoft's poor upgrade offerings more than any specific technology, and an import lesson for people investing time/resources into Blazor today (given that it uses a proprietary WebAssembly compilation system and a proprietary back-end not dissimilar from WebForms in terms of lock-in).
shreyasonline 4y ago
It seems you have not kept up with .NET development. Web Forms have been obsolete since many years by now.

mattmanser 4y ago

The writing was on the wall a long, long time ago! These companies had 15 years to do it. And it was fairly easy to get webforms + MVC running side-by-side on the same site so you could gradually migrate. Too late for that now though, you can't run webforms + MVC Core side-by-side. You could put a load balancer in front of the old app and start moving end points to a new code base. It's akin to moaning that MS haven't got an upgrade path from IE7. Or your Adobe Air app has stopped working. On the plus side, doesn't 4.7 still have a huge support window because it's tied to one of the windows server versions?

alexjplant 4y ago
> The writing was on the wall a long, long time ago! [...] These companies had 15 years to do it. I pointed this out in 2013 only to be literally shouted down by my manager. I did so again in 2017 under a different manager on the same team with the suggestion that we investigate using SPAs and RESTful frameworks only to be told that Razor Pages was the way forward which, while an improvement, didn't do any wonders for our ability to attract/build technical talent or create rich user experiences. As a sibling comment points out (in a sentiment that I've echoed on HN before): > ASP.NET Web Forms are a complete trainwreck and an abuse of HTTP and other basic web development standards (e.g. by using javascript: URLs and POSTing forms for every single interaction with the page). It is broken by design. You can probably see why developers that chose this framework in the first place aren't interested in upgrading... learning actual web standards and state management isn't something they wanted to do in the first place.
- andix 4y ago
  Classic management f**-up. Some products/companies just die, because of bad management that doesn’t react to change. Get a new job ;)
  - alexjplant 4y ago
    > Get a new job ;) Done :-). > Some products/companies just die, because of bad management that doesn’t react to change Some don't have to because they get paid no matter what.

andix 4y ago

Technologies don’t live forever. At some point you need to upgrade, and at some points there will be some major breaking changes. .NET 4.8 is still fully supported, and there is no end-of-life communicated yet. It is a part of windows server 2022, which will be supported until 2031, that’s probably the earliest possible end-of-life date for .NET 4.8.

Someone1234 4y ago
If people are looking at what technologies and companies to invest in, knowing that they may be left high and dry with a "full rewrite"-level of breaking changes is a valid and relevant critique. You want to know you'll be supported through difficult transitions, and that isn't unreasonable. I don't understand why people are coming out of the woodwork to tell everyone that full rewrites are a perfectly normal and expected regular occurrence that you should expect from your tech choice. Python 3 is famous for how much they hurt themselves by ignoring the problem. Many companies never did migrate from 2 to 3, and instead picked tech with better guarantees. I expect the same to occur with .Net Framework.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The big difference between the two is that the classic .NET Framework is still supported for as long as the underlying version of Windows is (and to remind, it still ships in Win11). So old .NET apps don't have to be rewritten to continue running securely.
- andix 4y ago
  Do you have any example what technology gave you a clean upgrade path from 2005 until now, without the need to do major changes? With .NET you can still, use most of your code from 2001, just the UI frameworks (and WCF) are not supported anymore on .NET 5+. They are supported at least until 2031 on .NET 4.8. So you can easily move your business logic to a newer version and leave the UI on an older version. But seriously, who is still happy with a web application built in 2005?
  - WorldMaker 4y ago