I was a die-hard classic ASP programmer and decided to dive into the .NET world.  After all, Microsoft has hyped this framework up so much and it is supposed to be so easy.  Can you see the rainbows and lollypops?

I think the biggest thing I was expecting and hoping for was faster and less laborious coding.  Being a professional programmer, time equals profit.  The faster I can code a quality application, the more money I can bring in.  And the company likes that!

So I downloaded the now free Visual Web Developer Express version from Microsoft and loaded it up.  I started going through some tutorials to get up to speed on the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and caught on pretty quickly.  I have coded many Windows applications in Visual Basic, so this was not much of a learning curve.

Well I have to say I was very disappointed.  All the so called easy controls were not so easy and didn’t get me very far toward a finished application.  I had to code almost everything by hand and I was very frustrated and didn’t see much benefit of the whole .NET framework.  I had already virtually created my classic ASP framework from the years of coding in it.  Take a bit of code here and there and tweak it to get the desired result.

Well, I was determined to finish out a project I designated as ASP.NET so I carried on.  I googled and read blogs about .NET and just couldn’t see the huge benefit.  It would be great for someone just starting to program, but for a seasoned programmer, it wasn’t much help and the time saving was just not there.  I almost scrapped .NET on the project just to get the project done in a timely manner.

Everything changed when I finally came accross Telerik and their ASP.NET controls.  They have some super nice controls that almost take any hand coding out of the picture.  I was now seeing the light and ASP.NET was being redeemed!

These guys at Telerik have it going on and their controls are very advanced, versatile, and have some super cool features such as AJAX built right in.  All you have to do is configure your dataset and set the properties of the control and bam you have an application;  AJAX, very nice looking, and very fast!

I was now very happy and have fallen in love with ASP.NET.  Granted the Telerik controls are not cheap at around $800 per developer head, but it is very worth the expense.  The sheer amount of coolness and time saved is well worth the bucks!

I am now in the process of revamping some of our old ASP applications into ASP.NET.  This will take some time, but it is a venture I am looking forward to.  I may even make a stop down Ruby on Rails street to see what that framework has to offer.  Stay tuned for more ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, and Ruby on Rails adventures!

As always, feel free to drop me a line at the office.

Chad Rainey
Senior Web Developer
Media Marketers, Inc.