.NET does boring business applications and native-ish Windows user interfaces slightly better than the next guy
August 10, 2021
.NET does boring business applications and native-ish Windows user interfaces slightly better than the next guy
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with .NET
We currently use .NET for our microservices and cloud initiatives across the enterprise, but we have a multi-decade history with .NET, using it since the first beta in year 2000, and it was the platform for all our custom in-house software development of web-based and native Windows line of business applications. We selected .NET as our preferred platform for application development and designed and deployed an n-tier architecture for delivering web-based secure internet-accessible business applications based on .NET, ASP.NET, COM+, and SQL Server.
- Provides a modern memory managed multi-language platform and framework for software development
- Supports modern web and mobile application development
- Provides performance approaching that of a compiled ahead of time language
- The .NET framework class hierarchy is incredibly large and complex
- Performance is slow on first use due to just in time compilation
- Memory use is high and non-deterministic due to garbage collection
- It's Microsoft backed, so no one gets fired for using it
- Longevity and backwards compatibility
- Steady state performance
- We could've used .NET or Java and easily achieved the same outcomes, so the impact it had is not due to .NET being different from other similar options, but rather that it is what we selected to get the job done
- We used .NET to build secure internet facing web-based applications in the early 2000s with success in that the applications were not hacked or presenting gaping vulnerabilities to the open internet, but failed in that we developed in house frameworks that aped Microsofts own "best-practices" which were to over-complicate everything to the point where we achieved poor outcomes for our development team and users
- .NET did the job it was hired to do, that is to let us build and run a line of business data entry applications
- Oracle Java SE and Node.js
.NET is equivalent to Java, a byte-code compiled, just-in-time native compiled, garbage collected language and runtime, with performance and features that are basically equivalent. .NET worked for us because it gave us a native-ish Windows user interface, as opposed to the terrible user interface toolkits provided with Java over the years such as AWT and Swing. We are now using node.js instead of .NET for building micro services, because node.js is light and easy to get started with, and .NET is heavy and complex and hard to become an expert in.
Do you think .NET delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with .NET's feature set?
Yes
Did .NET live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of .NET go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy .NET again?
Yes