Jon Galloway

There are lots of client apps within Vista that use managed code.

For example: many of the new admin tools in Vista are written in managed code (for example: the IIS7 admin UI and the Windows EventViewer). The InfoCard authentication UI in Internet Explorer is also written in managed code.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Scott, that's true, but none of these will be used by normal users. These are developer tools. I very much agree that the developer tools teams at Microsoft are shipping tons of .NET code, but none of it gets near average users.

Fedora's shipping desktop applications targeted towards non-developers. I wish Vista would do that.

Jon, what's the benefit of a non-developer knowing whether or not an app is built with .NET?

As Scott pointed out, developer wise MS is including some .NET stuff which is where Microsoft needs to be fighting their battles and showing commitment to their framework. The end user doesn't care about frameworks, my mom doesn't care about frameworks, only us geeks do.

Look at it like house building, if I'm a carpenter I may care about the specifics of the lumber used for the frame but if all I care about is a good shelter for my family who cares what's behind the dry wall?

Justin

Justin, valid points.

However, the difference is that my carpenter also sells construction products for DIY projects, and has been pushing drywall for the past 5 years: "You don't want to use that plaster stuff! It's way too slow, and it's not even very safe!"

Then I happen to notice he's remodeling his home, and he's using lathe and plaster.

What's the deal?

Microsoft built the best development framework around several years ago, but they're not really using it where it matters to them - Windows, IE, Office (other than little addons and widgets).

Plus, my mom is sick of her applications corrupting memory and the vulnerabilities caused by buffer overruns and underruns etc...

Managed code is no panacea, but it's a lot easier to write more secure code with it. Consider that a majority of the major vulnerabilities are issues with buffer overruns, something that's hard to do in .NET.

.Net apps are fine on the server but Please.. Don't pressure Microsoft into putting winforms on my desktop. I want fast and snappy applications from Microsoft. Managed code is about cheapening development costs, not providing the best user experience possible.

Save those Managed Code apps for cheap feeling one off applications intended for 1 or 2 users.

Right, Dave, because we want slow code on the servers. I know I'm willing to put up with memory leaks and buffer overruns to get that 2% speed advantage...

Oops - except there is no real speed advantage in most cases. In many cases, .NET is faster than native code. Richard Grimes says it better than I can:
"There is nothing in .NET that means that it should automatically be much slower than native code, indeed, as these results have shown there are cases when managed code is quicker than unmanaged code. Anyone who tells you that .NET should be slower has not thought through the issues."
Read the comparison he did (with real world tests on FFT's) here: http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/dotnet/man_unman.htm

Most of the Media Center Edition is built with C# if I'm not mistaken.

Eddie, you're right. Jeff Atwood wrote about that here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000542.html

It's a big success story for .NET WinForm development, especially since it's a responsive, media centric application that does the kind of things old school developers contend demands "close to the metal" unmanaged code. It abstracts the hard work to DirectX and provides a great interface layer on top.

However, Media Center is a side offering that's primarily being pushed through bundling right now. Maybe it will be more mainstream in the Vista lineup.

So, if Media Center can run on managed code, why can't more of the new "applet" sort of programs?

I think the answer is that they'd be written in .NET today, but they _were_ written in unmanaged code back in the stone age and they'll probably stay there for a very long time. I understand the aversion to porting or rewriting working applications, but the problem is that legacy apps don't get updated. If Paint, Notepad, and IE (to pick a few examples) ran on managed code, they'd be a lot easier (and safer) to improve / extend / fix today.

I agree with you. I would like to see more .net code shipped with windows. For one thing it would help validate the use of .net for serious apps.

But at the same time, I understand why they don't. If you have a codebase that is 95% COM are you going to spend time re-writing those same apps with the same features just so you can say they are .Net? Or are you going to spend your resources (which like or not, mainly C++ developers) on adding features that can be produced faster and leverage your existing code base?

John -
Good points. I think the COM codebase is an asset that is quickly decaying into a liability. It's tougher to support, let alone extend. So, of course you shouldn't port code just to say you've done it, but I believe there are immediate and long term advantages to advancing the platform beyond COM.

Wellcome to the real world.

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