On Learning .NET after ColdFusion

I certainly don't claim to be a great programmer but I try. Not having an initial formal education in Computer Science can be a handicap at times but still you are given the chance to see programming from a more practical level than most with CS degrees. For one thing you are more focused on the results than on the process. I started out as a ColdFusion programmer in the mid to late 90s when the web was young and folks were beginning to come up with easy ways to add functionality to web pages. ColdFusion was very popular with this and for a time one could make some good money as a CF programmer. I had always been a computer enthusiast and caught the web bug when my friend Pete Tarnowsky introduced me to HTML. CF was easy because it used the same tag like structure as HTML so the progression was natural.

Well along came ASP for which you didn't need to buy the application server. All you needed was what was Internet Information Server or IIS and you had pretty much the basis of what you needed to get a dynamic website up and running. If you were a VB programmer, you could create objects that could interface with ASP. The expense of buying the CF app server was gone. That provided some stiff competition to CF and eventually there were more sites built with ASP. Java followed and things got even more complicated. CF's engine was eventually written with Java and evolved into the scenario where you were actually running a Java application through CF. They were trying to sell it as doing Java the easy way with ColdFusion.

As every programmer knows, one of the requirements is upgrading ones skill set. Only a fool would put all his programming eggs in one language. Unfortunately this happens no fault of the programmer as you can get stuck in one environment. Some times it takes the ultimate plunge, going it on your own, to acquire the skillset to make yourself continually marketable. This is what I did, ending up unemployed for a few months. The great thing is that I was able to use this time to get into .NET. I did work a tiny bit on .NET projects but to be honest I was just editing code, not adding major functionality.

What I found was by being just a little resourceful you could teach yourself .NET without spending an extra dime. One needs to only download the latest application IDEs from Microsoft which would include developer or Express versions of the major applications used in .NET development. You will need Visual Web Developer and MS SQL Server 2008 Express. All of this is available as a download. In addition, a good friend of mine gave me a pdf of the book Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# and VB by Christian Darie and Zak Ruvalcaba. Obviously I won't offer the pdf file but would encourage you to buy the actual book. Click on the link on this site. While you're at it just a reminder that you're actually supporting this blog when you buy from our sponsors so be sure to check out some of the goods and services being offered.

I intend to be finished with the book in 2 weeks and since many of the concepts I already know, particularly the sections on databases, I hope to move quickly. At the time of this writing, I noticed that there is an updated edition. Seems the names are switched around so that its authored by Zak Ruvalcaba and Christian Dairie instead of the other way around. Whatever it is, get the book. Like I said on Twitter, I hope to be the baddest .NET programmer around.

Beta Beta! The Browser Wars cont'd

Thinking of the introductions of 2 browser betas I can't help but thing of the robot in Buck Rogers. I don't know if that's how it sounded but it I remember it being the robot always trying to be cool and using all the latest slang. Well looking at the browsers I can't help but think the same thing. Here we have 2 browsers in beta, one brand new, the other an update to an old staple, both trying to be cool. As you may know, Microsoft has launched the beta edition of Internet Explorer 8. At the same time, Google, in an attempt to join the browser landscape has come out with their own browser, dubbed Chrome.

Now when you look at browsers today, there's not much different between all of them. There's Opera, IE7, FireFox and Sapphire. What they all have in common are the tabs. Sure there are nuances in all of them but for the most part, users would use them for the same thing. For me, I have several Yahoo, Gmail, MSN and AIM accounts. With all these browsers, I can manage all the accounts at once. In some instances I can even do instant messaging with the different accounts. I don't think I would be different from most other users who have all of the browsers installed.

Based on the reviews, there are some cool things coming out with these new browsers. Chrome has detachable tabs which can be unhinged from the main browswer and placed anywhere on screen. These tabs can also be saved to the desktop as shortcuts. I can see several uses for this. Having a site on your desktop that's only a click away is very useful and cool. No trying to look up and down your bookmarks.

On IE8's side, one of the first things promised is speed. Today, FireFox 3.0 is way faster that this slug and when I use on my Windows XP machine, my machine chokes up. Since FireFox came out, I stopped using IE7. I have a Vista laptop and use IE7 on it as its a little faster given the power of the machine. What's promised is that IE8 would be a good competitor of FireFox 3.0 in terms of speed.

The most talked about feature of IE8 is what they are calling "porn mode". Here if you want to completely cover your tracks after visiting any site, you can. You are given the choice of which cookies to delete. Incidentally, some of these features are already available in Sapphire but not to the granular level that IE8 would provide.

I guess there are more features that make these browsers special but we'll have to see. Now in terms of the browser wars, I don't see IE8 losing. Afterall, IE, both 6 and 7 and yes there are may who still insist on using this mess, have a 70% market share of the browser landscape. One has to wonder if this will continue with IE8. For one thing, GoogleTalk was supposed to challenge the IM market but did not.

Now hopefully there's not any changes to how sites have to be written to accommodate these apps. If this is the case, then we potentially have the problem of a big headache for web designers and developers. In fact, there are still some nuances that have to be addressed for IE7 and FireFox.

For me, my biggest concern is how fast these browsers will be. In the not too distant future, there should be a beta for FireFox 3.1 coming out. We'll then have a Beta Beta Beta situation to deal with. Until then, I'll use what I have and will soon begin testing of both Chrome and IE8. At that time I'll post my findings.