I'm still constantly amazed at how very, very easy ASP.NET makes things on me. In fact, I'm sometimes amazed at the things that are now simply possible. The pipeline and the ease at adding modules is my current favorite. I'm now trying to free my mind and realize that what was impossible now isn't, what had to be a ISAPI filter now doesn't, and what used to take weeks or months is already done.

Take this, for instance: A friend at another client site that is just starting to use ASP.NET had his boss come over and say that they needed to support gzip encoding on websites, per their IT guys. He showed my friend a package from a third party with a 12-step install, that would require "only" $2,000 to license for the high-traffic site. He asked, was it a good idea ?

In literally 10 minutes, I have a web module implementing gzip and deflate [source only] (thanks to #ziplib). No, really 10 minutes. Actually less if you don't include time to zip it up and include a readme. It may not be polished or optimized, but 10 minutes? I can't even get an ISAPI filter installed in 10 minutes, let alone write one.

So now that I am again realizing that there is no spoon, I'm finishing up another project that I thought would be impossible : A web module that allows you to watch a user browse your site - It's actually two parts. The web module provides a list of session IDs and allows tracking of a session, and a fat client that hooks up. The client asks for a session ID (from the list), then you sit back as an embedded browser follows along with the user. Very useful if you're on the phone with a user and can't recreate the problem from their incoherent descriptions.

Anyway, To the point: ASP.NET is good. I'm loving that not only have my horizons been broadened, but that things that were once far, far out of reach are now easy (and fun) to grab ahold of. God, I love doing what I do.