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I came from a PHP and Coldfusion background and jumped into VB.NET/ASP.NET development after some brief self training through our company training portal. Basic

I came from a PHP and Coldfusion background and jumped into VB.NET/ASP.NET development after some brief self training through our company training portal. Basically, they gave me a copy of VS2008 and said okay, "We have this project that is behind and we need help, do you think you can handle it?" I had a 2 day training on the internal corporate framework and then I was unleashed on the codebase. I would say it took maybe a month for me to 'get it' but after that it was just a matter of code reviews and common sense. If you can write good code in one language, you should be able to translate it over. That said, the event model is a bit different than the straight scripting in PHP or legacy CF. Once you get used to it you're going to feel spoiled. In the WebForms model, a lot is already done for you. Templates are built in, grids are built in, paging is built in... It can almost be annoying how much is built in, but then you realize how little time it takes to get things done. You have more time to spend on real business logic, which is a good thing. I would recommend checking out ASP.NET MVC RC1 if you're coming from Rails and Django. Less is built in, but it better suits the design patterns you've come from. The languages are the same, so if you learn WebForms first it doesn't matter: VB and C# are standalone. Once you learn them, you can use them anywhere whether its the web, GUI apps, or console batch code.

BrandonWatson 18y ago
I was lucky enough to discover ASP.NET MVC a couple of days ago, and it's much, much better. I think ASP.NET is fine for internal development, but for anyone looking to build consumer sites, is it a reasonable tool? Yes, I know MySpace is on it, but when I look at PHP adoption, and use of Rails/Django, I find people are willing to try that "new hotness" but just don't like MSFT. Someone told me that they didn't learn ASP.NET because they didn't think it would help their resume (for startup type jobs - for IT it's good). Is that a generally held view/opinion?
- ahpeeyem 18y ago
  That's definitely the way I see it -- hardly any startups use ASP.NET, but it's everywhere in corporate environments. I guess it doesn't make as much sense to build your product on a platform that's controlled by a company who may either turn off support for it (eg. VB6 -> VB.NET not being backwards compatible), whereas an open source community isn't going to disappear overnight and if it does, you can maintain the platform yourself - at least in theory.
- abyssknight 18y ago
  Personally, I think that would be an immature opinion. The language you write the application in has little to do with the outcome. I know of at least one company in town who moved from Ruby on Rails to ASP.NET recently. They were looking to hire new .NET developers to convert their code. The issue is that the stack is expensive. Windows licenses, SQL Server licenses, hosting... It all piles up, and a start up cannot afford that out of the gate. MSFT has been making strides to inject into that market. Visual Web Developer Express is a good example. They are giving the IDE away for free. That said, for start ups, certainly a Linux based stack is far more practical. I just think that discounting an entire language or stack because the company behind it isn't 'liked' by a minority in the community is off base. Heck, one of the lead developers of PHP quit randomly. It happens, and the community plows ahead. If ASP.NET support just died, entire industries would have to rewrite but what they had already written will still work as is. Likewise when any new version of anything comes out there are rewrites. That is just the way our industry works. You are right though, .NET is generally considered an 'enterprisey' solution. It does however help on a resume. Usually boosts your going salary by $10k or more. ;)

BrandonWatson 18y ago

I was lucky enough to discover ASP.NET MVC a couple of days ago, and it's much, much better. I think ASP.NET is fine for internal development, but for anyone looking to build consumer sites, is it a reasonable tool? Yes, I know MySpace is on it, but when I look at PHP adoption, and use of Rails/Django, I find people are willing to try that "new hotness" but just don't like MSFT. Someone told me that they didn't learn ASP.NET because they didn't think it would help their resume (for startup type jobs - for IT it's good). Is that a generally held view/opinion?

ahpeeyem 18y ago
That's definitely the way I see it -- hardly any startups use ASP.NET, but it's everywhere in corporate environments. I guess it doesn't make as much sense to build your product on a platform that's controlled by a company who may either turn off support for it (eg. VB6 -> VB.NET not being backwards compatible), whereas an open source community isn't going to disappear overnight and if it does, you can maintain the platform yourself - at least in theory.
abyssknight 18y ago
Personally, I think that would be an immature opinion. The language you write the application in has little to do with the outcome. I know of at least one company in town who moved from Ruby on Rails to ASP.NET recently. They were looking to hire new .NET developers to convert their code. The issue is that the stack is expensive. Windows licenses, SQL Server licenses, hosting... It all piles up, and a start up cannot afford that out of the gate. MSFT has been making strides to inject into that market. Visual Web Developer Express is a good example. They are giving the IDE away for free. That said, for start ups, certainly a Linux based stack is far more practical. I just think that discounting an entire language or stack because the company behind it isn't 'liked' by a minority in the community is off base. Heck, one of the lead developers of PHP quit randomly. It happens, and the community plows ahead. If ASP.NET support just died, entire industries would have to rewrite but what they had already written will still work as is. Likewise when any new version of anything comes out there are rewrites. That is just the way our industry works. You are right though, .NET is generally considered an 'enterprisey' solution. It does however help on a resume. Usually boosts your going salary by $10k or more. ;)