Microsoft SharePoint rant

[Frank]

Well, so all us PC developers have to go and develop SharePoint applications as good MicroSerfs. And what, you might ask, do you need to run a Microsoft SharePoint application?

1. A server running Windows Server 2003, including:
2. IIS 6
3. ASP.NET
4. dotNET 3.0
5. dotNET 3.0 SDK
6. SQL Server 2005
7. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
8. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SDK
9. Windows SharePoint Services: Tools for VS 2005
10. Windows Workflow Foundations
11. Windows Workflow Foundations SDK
12. Exchange Server 2007
13. Office 2007
14. Office 2007 SDK
15. Office SharePoint Server 2007
16. Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDK
17. Office SharePoint Designer 2007
18. Visual Studio 2005
19. Visual Studio 2005 SharePoint SDK

And I probably forgot a few.

After finding, downloading and/or buying and installing all that, on your production server (no way around it), you can start developing and deploying your SharePoint applications. Which only run on servers installed like the above...

Which is obviously why Microsoft supports and highly recommends server farms. And even then it crawls...

Not to forget, that doing all the above and developing your application, you feel like a system admin instead of a developer, because you spend a lot more time setting properties everywhere than writing code. Writing code shouldn't be needed according to Microsoft, except for the "complex" stuff. But then again, on my first, extremely simple mini-project, taht only does what Microsoft states is available out of the box, I need all that and go back to school to make it actually happen.

And, of course it only works as expected when using IE6-7 as browser. If you use Firefox, every page has the message that you should use IE and turn on ActiveX support...

 

[Arwin]

I hate it too. I'm hoping to be able to avoid it at least till version 6.0, because at some point, Microsoft software can actually become bearable, nay, even pleasant to use. But it takes a while, generally. I'm very comfortable with Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET 2.0 framework. There are some weird things occasionally still (I work a lot with building controls), but usually some decent ways around it.

Which brings me to another point - I hate developing web applications. They should either work just about every browser out there and be completely resolution independent, or they can just be windows applications. The .NET Framework GUI interface is a lot more stable and useful, and integration of desktop applications can be done very well with it. It can also still easily blend in web, through the webbrowser control, if necessary. But in an office, in terms of keeping a machine and application stable, keeping a properly working .NET installation is a lot easier, and it has the advantage that their versions can run side by side properly too.

 

[Frank]

I still develop in Delphi, when possible. You just copy the executable, udl and/or ini-file to the target machine and it works. It's totally like magic, compared to something like SharePoint.

Of course, I also make web apps, when stand alone is totally not an option. And as simple as I can get away with. While everyone is sure the Microsoft Way is the Only Way, I can do it in less than a quarter of the time, and it actually works the first time around!

I also develop in .NET, of course. I have to. Like, a line control system for a factory. And it turned out, that while everyone (including the manufacturer of the Digital Aquisition Boards, to communicate with the machinery) demands .NET is the only good way to do it, (in private conversations) all the technicians admit that .NET definitely doesn't work for time-critical applications.

But, it's not as if we have much choice, do we?

 

[Humus]

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