Re: There is no .NET in Vista Code?

I.P. Nichols wrote:
"Lurkio" wrote:

I.P. Nichols wrote:

Yes, but the points I am making (and those of the article I
linked to) about .NET aren't rants against Microsoft /per se/
(although I /am/ an admitted sceptic <g>) but expressions of
concern at serious flaws we see in the design of the framework.
If those points are fatuous then by all means tear them apart
but complaining about alleged bias and immediately jumping to
negative conclusions regarding the authors credentials makes it
look all the more like they've hit the target and that you don't
have an answer to their questions...


I don't remember Joel's rant as asking specific questions but mostly complaints but if the question was "why can't I have a linker" then I gave an answer to that question but I didn't say you would agree.

As for my immediately jumping to negative conclusion - give me a break - upon reading his article I knew he didn't have a valid point about absolutely needing Microsoft to supply a linker. Which BTW seems to be what you keep coming back to and my answer to you is go try one of the available linkers and see if you like it.

I already answered your point about looking at third-party
linkers and told you that I found them to be expensive and
not officially endorsed by Microsoft - in fact, I had came
around to a point where I would /agree with you/ that they
go against how the whole framework was designed in the first
place - which is why I provided a link to the justification
for this provided by an MS insider.

My linking to Joels article was less about the need for a
linker (which /you/ keep coming back to accusing me off
saying) than the potential pitfalls and problems of
deploying the run-time re-distributable - which you don't
seem to want to acknowledge.

I definitely take your point about the validity of the
capability to seamlessly "float up" from 32-bit to 64-bit
(though having seen first hand how plenty of un-tethered
.NET apps seem to break when floating up to the latest
framework version, I would want to see this in action
before betting my mortgage on it <g>) but you fail to
acknowledge /my/ central point about the fact that
/there is no single, monolithic entity called .NET/ that
a developer can safely assume will be available on the
target customer machine.

Of course I can't guarantee what may or may not be on someone's machine but I damn well can have my app test and report what's on his machine and make recommendations if they need to install the runtime.

....and that frankly does the square root of nothing in
removing the deployment problem of the re-distributable
run-time. What does your message say, "OK, you don't
have the run-time installed but I'll let you off from
installing it just this once" ? :-P

The spiffy new 32bit application you've tied to 1.1 can't
very well seamlessly float up to 64bit when the target
machine has only got 2.0 on it now, can it ? :-P

I don't have a 64bit machine to test on so I can't swear it will happen but do believe that a well designed 1.1 would seamlessly float up to .NET 2.0 - 64bit.

You keep implying that it's almost a certainty that a 1.1 apps will break on 2.0 but all my experience and that of lots of others don't reach that conclusion.

I /never/ said that it was "almost a certainty" but the
fact of the matter is that the /whole purpose/ of Microsoft
allowing you to tie your application to a specific framework
version is to prevent such a scenario happening because they
*do not guarantee absolute backwards compatibility* between
framework versions.

What they are saying is that if you let your application float
up to use the latest version, they *will not* guarantee that
it won't break - on your own head be it. The corollary of this
is that if there is another application on a target machine
that does float up, your own program can unwittingly break it
if you are tied to (and therefore install) a later framework
version with breaking changes - and as far as the customer is
concerned it is /your/ fault even though you have did everything
right and it was the other guys code that was taking all the
chances !!!

I had this happen on my machine when the installation of an
application tied to 1.1 broke an application that floated
up from 1.0...and ironically enough it was Microsoft's free
Web Matrix application that was the one that broke :-0

To again make sure I'm on firm ground I ran a little
> experiment this <snip home install success story>

Good for you, I hope you feel better now :-)

Are you going to go around all of your customers
machines and do the same for them ? :-P

Yeah, well in my opinion they certainly didn't think enough
about the PITA deployment issues it gives to many people out
in the real world...and these are simply going to get worse
as the accumulation of versions increases unless they do
something to address it.

Opinions are opinions and facts are facts. On my machine running Win-XP SP2 I have .Net 1.1 and 2.0 plus the Feb CTP of WinFX installed and I haven't experienced *any* problems running *any* 1.1 or 2.0 or WinFX apps.

Well I /have/ - maybe I've just been very unlucky...
or maybe you have just been lucky :-)

Either way, my own experience says to me that letting
applications float up /can/ bring down a whole world of
trouble on your head if some unknown future framework
version makes breaking changes...and the solution
/anointed by Microsoft/ is tying your application to a
specific framework version that you will subsequently
always have to either ship or get your customer to
download and install themselves.

Understand I'm not saying that there may not be some apps that break but I can't confirm your belief that it's a major PITA problem that's gonna get worst.

Well it remains to be seen whether it does get worse
or not so we'll have to agree to disagree for now :-)

I rather doubt that I have lessened you worst nightmare fears but at least I've provided some food for thought.

Hey, I'm not having nightmares (I'm a Delphi Win32 guy for
non-internal apps) but you .NET accolytes should be (don't
get mad, just a little friendly joke)... :-)
.

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