I have been in the computer business since 1984 and I think that I can say, with complete honesty, that I am having as much fun right now, as I did way back then, when everything was new and constantly changing ( oh wait, that's every day for geeks like us ).
Anyway, I've only been working with .NET development about a year and I've still got a ton of stuff to learn, but what I am seeing is a maturation of tools and technologies that allow developers and architects to focus on the solution, not on making your tools do what you want them to do.
Case in point: AJAX and the Atlas.
Now I don't know a whole lot about this topic because I've been buried in Sharepoint and MSCRM development, but from what I have been reading lately, there is a ton of genuine functionality behind the hype. And this functionality is going to enable us to enhance the user experience of our web sites to the point that the users will see very little difference in operating a web app vs. a Windows app.
And I don't know about you, but I find that pretty darn exciting. ( I actually find it more exciting than that, but I have to keep this blog mostly "G-Rated" )
One of my fellow Sharepoint bloggers had a short post last week regarding the Atlas AJAX library. If you are interesting in enhancing your web-based applications, I would advise you to keep reading and review the information found at the various links in Mark's article.
From Mark Harrison's blog:
The latest bits of Atlas (the March Community Technology Preview) are now available to download.
Atlas is a free framework that uses AJAX techniques for building a new generation of richer, more interactive, highly personalized standards based Web applications. If you have not seen it before, take a 15 minutes out to watch Scott Guthrie create a simple Web application with ASP.NET 2.0 and then add Atlas capabilities to it.
I took Mark's advice and watched Scott's "movie." I was astounded. First of all, adding AJAX support to an ASP.NET 2.0 application using the Atlas toolkit is nothing more than adding a few controls to your pages and POOF, you're an AJAX site.
In my line of work, we call that PRETTY FREAKING COOL.
Secondly, and I don't if Scott was the one typing during the demo, but I can tell right now that my knowledge of how the code editor works in VS2005 would fit under the nail of Scott's little finger. I'm going to have to go back and watch it again just to see if I can figure out how he did some of those editing tricks.
Well, that's my two-cents worth for the day. If you develop anything cool with .NET and Atlas, drop me a line or post a comment so I can see your work.
Leave a reply