Re: some interesting perspectives on .NET from the other camp ...

From: Dan Barclay (Dan_at_MVPs.org)
Date: 02/14/05 

Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 20:30:51 -0600

"Bob Dawson" <RBDawson@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:420fb7bd$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
> "Dan Barclay" wrote
>>
>> Your approach seems to echo those of most .Net developers
>> I've seen.
>
> Actually, the choice was largely rhetorical, so I'm not sure what you mean
> by my approach.

Maybe I misread what you were trying to say. If so, sorry. I thought I was
reading into it that you thought bringing framework directly into apps, at a
high level, was a good idea. I was breezing through pretty fast so I could
have got the wrong impression.

>> [...] where is the forward path for
>> those who now write apps so heavily steeped in direct .Net calls?
>
> One might say the same of MFC, or VCL, or win32 dependencies.

Yes, that's true in general. Core business rules should be written in a way
that they are as "timeless" as possible. That means disconnecting them from
the outside world as much as possible, reducing dependency on anything but
the core language.

Starting backwards on your list, with Win32 dependencies I preach writing
functions that accomplish what you want, using Win32 when necessary *in*
those functions. Sometimes it's as simple as a wrapper, sometimes it's more
complex. Bottom line is that you have the functions, in the core language,
that are needed by the business end of your app. When Platform.Next comes
along you have some functions to implement, but you don't have API calls
sprayed all through your app.

VCL and MFC are libs intended to do what I describe above, only they are
written by someone other than yourself. MFC is, essentially, written in C++
and VCL (I presume) is primarily Delphi. That gets to be a matter of how
much you trust that particular library. I consider those sort of a middle
ground. I've been down the road before of heavily using 3rd party
libraries, and I've been bit in a previous life by one of them going belly
up. Source is a GoodThing.

>> Second, one of the major purposes if a language is to provide a
>> mechanism to more easily implement apps.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> New functionality and structure should be made
>> a part of the core language.
>
> How does that follow? Why shouldn't common core functionalities be
> embedded
> into the platform itself, and then be inherited (or rather exploited) by
> all
> languages written for the platform? OS responsibilities have been growing
> steadily since CP/M let us stop worrying about video devices and simply
> stuff a couple of registers and jmp to 100. The .NET FCL is another step
> in
> the same march: eliminate pointless reduncancies in programs and
> programming
> languages by offering a more feature-rich platform.

That depends entirely on how you take advantage of it. I have a really hard
time thinking the use of API's inline to core code is a good idea. I think
it's much safer to provide a language (or your own library) function wich,
in turn, calls whatever framework or foundation function it needs. DotNet
is no different in that regard than CP/M was. There are (or were<g>)
functions in VB to trim strings, for example. Most VB.Net users would now
rather use framework functionality directly. They're going to get burned if
they try to move that app to Whatever.Next, unless the framework gets moved
as well. Before you say "well, they'll just move the framework", how many
of the Win32 API's were moved directly to DotNet? They were *replaced* but
not moved.

Dan

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