Rant: Freedom vs Safety

The following explains why I regret my descent into programming over the last 12 years:

Code Craft: Freedom vs Safety Languages
Coding Horror: A Scripter at Heart

So I hate Microsoft, both because they only allow safety languages at their core, and because they are in a constant state of change. The use of safety languages in a realm where freedom languages should reign is unacceptable to me. It is a backward methodology, making client side interaction more complicated than I ever thought possible. To reverse the trend, and make my life more tolerable, I have tried to circumvent Microsoft's best practices by implementing the following:
  1. Generate a data access layer (MyGeneration was recommended to me)
  2. Define Views for the data in the code behind in an aspx/asmx that acts as an API
  3. Implement StringTemplate to render any dynamic web pages using data provided by Views.
  4. Implement Mootools and/or JQuery for the user interface.
I have spent roughly nine months working on this architecture and have nearly reached step 4, the fun part. Data access with caching, views that expose data, and virtualized pages using templates have all been completed. So now I'm almost functionally equivalent to where I was 1.5 years ago working with Django and Python. Thanks Microsoft!

2 comments:

Nick said...

It would help if you were up to date with your .NET tools. Don't generate the DAL, use NHibernate. Use ASP.NET MVC and you won't have trouble with client side code. They've baked jquery into the framework. Check out something like Sharp Architecture to see something approaching Rails/Django in terms of taking care of your plumbing.

meshealle said...

Yeah, I'm officially not smart enough to read your blog...