Comments on: Does Microsoft think developers are stupid?

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:40:53 +0000

Arni,

Thank you for your comment.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to try out the beta of ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio.NET 2005, but I’ve heard that it won’t mess up the code when switching views, and I’m really excited about it.

The problem that’s still there, however, is the code that’s automatically generated from it. Please read my How to generate valid XHTML with .NET post and also follow the links in it to Charl van Niekerkâ€™s evaluation of the produced code.

Then again, hopefully that’s something the Microsoft/WaSP task force will be able to take care of.

By: Arni Gunnar

Arni Gunnar — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 11:15:40 +0000

Just you wait for Visual Studio 2005 this fall, or early next year.

There they don’t touch your code. When you flip from design mode to source mode, the code stays the same. Even if you make changes to the source in design view, alter text or something, the code will stay the same.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:32:19 +0000

Dale,

That’s true. I have no problem with applications increasing the productivity of the programmer, but, as you say, to me it’s not worth the expense.

The problem is also that it lowers the bar too much, which ends up in web developers believing blindly in that everything generated by the Microsoft tools is correct.

By: Dale

Dale — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:56:14 +0000

Microsoft has pretty much always been about increasing productivity of the programmer, even if it is at the expense of the programmer “losing control”. The history of Visual Basic is a testament to that. And yes, it does “lower the bar” as far as a programmer’s knowledge is concerned.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 05:03:56 +0000

Michael,

Thanks for your comment.
I think there are many web developers out there that share the same grief.

aggressive code-rewriting

That was a good way of putting it!

Also, my How to generate valid XHTML with .NET might be of some help to you.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 23:14:15 +0000

Much agreed. The headaches I’ve had with Visual Studio and .NET in terms of non-standards-compliance, anti-accessibility, and aggressive code-rewriting have been magnificent. I’m hoping and expecting the next version of .NET to be much better.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:15:48 +0000

Faruk,

That I have no problem with. The other way around actually, WYSIWYG tools should alter the incorrect input code from editors that don’t have the know-how.

What bothers me is when developing tools do that, it’s not its place (unless, of course, I choose something like “validate my code” from the application’s menu).

By: Faruk AteÅŸ

Faruk AteÅŸ — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:10:57 +0000

Well, my CMS does a complete XML-parse on the content you input, and then recreates the content according to what we allow, and how. In a way, we change your code without you asking for it, but that’s different in two ways:

1) this is an end-user CMS, meant for those without technical know-how, and NOT meant for developers
2) we do this to ensure that the output is valid and well-formed