Back to basics while taking one giant leap ahead: how AJAX really affects ASP.NET developers
“The biggest challenges in creating AJAX applications are not technical. The core Ajax technologies are mature, stable, and well understood. Instead, the challenges are for the designers of these applications: to forget what we think we know about the limitations of the Web, and begin to imagine a wider, richer range of possibilities.”
Jesse James Garrett, AdaptivePath (credited with coining the term “AJAX”)
I've got no problem with Jesse's assertion. It's quoted from a beautfully-written article, one I've printed, bookmarked, copied, and bound for my personal collection, both online and in real life. As a journalist/developer, I think it's a gem. I fully agree that broadly speaking, web developers are going to really get a lot out of AJAX.
But specifically with ASP.NET developers, I see a larger, additional challenge ahead that is, in fact, technical in nature: a return to writing JavaScript by hand...and from scratch. I say this because the initial rollout of ASP.NET was so feature-rich and included so much automation, that so many of us abandoned the need to write client-side routines for things like validation, rollover aesthetics and DHTML gimmickry. Thus we willingly let our JavaScript skills slip, because we honestly didn't need them - this being one of the major attractions about the .NET SDK. Only in later months after the 2001 release of ASP.NET did we see publications, books, blogs, and tutorials begin to incorporate client-side functionality as a means of enhancing, extending, or in some cases, making up for, the Framework's shipped capabilities.
In short, we've all got work to do.
Sure, maybe Atlas will ultimately be the saving grace and the world will be run by the almighty asynchronous callback. But until then, I'll be one of many catching up on my JavaScript.