Top 10 reasons to migrate to .Net
Published: 19 Nov 2002 12:50 GMT
6. Managed code
.Net manages your code, which is important for a variety of reasons, such as reducing bugs and building more scalable applications. .Net handles such tasks as allocating and recovering memory, creating and destroying threads and processes, and handling the access permissions of the running code.
VB developers are used to having such items as memory management and thread and process creation handled for them. For C++ developers moving to C#, having these aspects of their application handled for them greatly reduces the chance for memory leaks and other common bugs. And by having managed code, you get access to all the cross-language capabilities of .Net.
7. Platform independent
While .Net was created for Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft did release a portion of the framework and C# to the ECMA standards committee. The Mono project, an implementation of .Net for Linux, includes the Framework and a C# compiler. This means that many applications, especially Web-based applications, can be written once and then run on multiple platforms.
8. No lack of learning resources
There is a significant learning curve for .Net, and .Net has probably spawned more books than any other programming technology. In addition, a myriad of courses from Microsoft and third parties are available to get developers up to speed quickly. Finally, there are a number of Web sites that provide techniques and tutorials for developers moving to .Net.
9. Modernised languages
VB.Net and C# are both modernised languages. They are completely object-oriented and were designed to remove many of the inconsistencies found in VB and C++. The languages were built with an n-tier, component-based approach in mind.
C#, for example, removes pointers and other constructs that led to a significant number of issues for C++ developers, especially new developers. VB.Net and C# both benefit from having the Framework manage code. The Framework also includes the base objects needed to allow applications to be multithreaded, XML-aware, and so forth.
10. Standard base types across languages
One of the banes of VB developers has been that a string in VB was not the same as a string in C++, so when calling Windows API functions, there could be some problems. .Net specifies a standard definition for all types, so a string in VB.Net is the same as a string in C#, which is the same as a string in netCOBOL .Net. This means that you no longer have to worry about whether or not an integer is 32-bit in language A but only 16-bit in language B. You can be assured that any data type is the same across languages, enabling better cross-language integration.
More pros than cons
.Net provides a number of tremendous benefits that will make developers more productive, reduce the number of bugs, speed application development, and simplify deployment. IT managers are understandably wary, since .Net is a new technology that requires a moderately steep learning curve. For most organisations, however, the benefits will far outweigh the negatives. And with .Net, you'll see great productivity gains for future development projects.
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