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WCF is Open Source

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Re: WCF is Open Source

#91

Post by daigoba66 »

A lot of people seem to focus on WCF has an over-engineered SOAP framework. While that's very true, it is also the powerful successor to .NET original remoting framework. So WCF represents the unification of several different libraries and frameworks into one, for better or worse.

It would not surprise me to find enterprises still using WCF for interprocess communication and/or remote method invocation. When both client and server are .NET programs, most of the time it just works in my experience.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#92

Post by bad-sector »

Gorkys wrote: post #73
SWo777 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and VB6

I'm always surprised by the people asking "bring VB6 back". I'd like to know why - is it because you're stuck maintaining VB6 applications that can't be/haven't been updated to VB.net or C#? I used VB6 extensively back in the day, and I am very glad indeed that it's now dead.

It is ridiculously easy to create simple GUI apps with it, its limitations force you to write straightforward code (otherwise it becomes too much of a hassle and you go to another language) and provides a very good debugging environment which allow you to inspect and modify a program as it is running in a graphical way.

It is basically an extremely simple scripting language attached to a GUI designer (literally, originally VB was supposed to allow different languages to be used with it, but the feature was dropped).

Also it is instant fast on modern hardware.

Most people who have a grudge against VB1-6 have it either because they have no idea what they were talking about and are just parroting others (to be honest, i did that at the past), or were exposed to it via a project that abused it in ways that it wasn't meant to be (ab)used.

A while ago i made this little sprite editor in VB5:

http://runtimelegend.com/tools/mseditor/

It isn't anything special but it is actually quite useful if you're making low-res pixelart 2D games and personally i had fun making it (the first version also took me only a weekend although i added a few features since then).

Having said that, i do not expect Microsoft to bring back VB6 nor release the source code since now they seem to focus away from the desktop and VB6 is a full 1005 desktop technology.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#93

Post by xeromal »

scuba7183 wrote: post #31
strommen wrote: post #28

WCF is great if you want to make a single data service available as JSON via REST, XML via SOAP, a custom binary protocol via raw TCP, and who-knows-what else. In practice you're almost always better off just picking a single format for your endpoint, in which case there's no reason to use WCF.

What are some other libraries and frameworks that should be used? (For C# web services)

Web API is the easiest thing you can use. I switching from desktop programming to web and creating restful services in web api allowed me to do a lot with little and also teach me a thing or two about REST. I highly recommend it.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#95

Post by WorldWideWayne »

skrebbel wrote: post #55

I love C# and .NET, but WCF is a true source of frustration. It isn't horribly bad, but there is nothing good about it either. It's too complex, too messy, and too "Microsofty" for lack of a better word. Many layers of abstraction, hidden magic in XML files (which you can of course turn off, but then you need to know how to), and so on. Nevertheless, shares of coders blindly use WCF, "because Microsoft tells us to".…

> design your messages first and then figure out what the URLs should look like.

This is exactly what WCF let me do though and I wasn't limited to using HTTP like the others you listed. I was able to use a full duplex binary tcp channel instead.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#96

Post by Gorkys »

bad-sector wrote: post #92
Gorkys wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised by the people asking "bring VB6 back". I'd like to know why - is it because you're stuck maintaining VB6 applications that can't be/haven't been updated to VB.net or C#? I used VB6 extensively back in the day, and I am very glad indeed that it's now dead.

It is ridiculously easy to create simple GUI apps with it, its limitations force you to write straightforward code (otherwise it becomes too much of a hassle and you go to another language) and provides a very good debugging environment which allow you to inspect and modify a program as it is running in a graphical way. It is basically an extremely simple scripting language attached to a GUI designer (literally, orig…

To my mind, all of the points you listed as an advantage you can also find with C#/VB.net using WinForms. I've also never found WinForms or even WPF (most of the time) to be sluggish on even reasonably modern hardware.

What specifically do you find easier in VB6 than VB.net/C# when writing desktop apps, in particular in relation to WinForms?

You say "inspect and modify a program as it is running in a graphical way" - do you mean that with VB6 you could alter the UI as the application was running? If so, that's something I don't remember but I agree it could be very handy!

Re: WCF is Open Source

#97

Post by achr2 »

ygra wrote: post #29
Vitallium wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Microsoft is not planning to make WPF and Windows Forms Open Source.

Both are probably too entangled with Windows internals. Windows Forms is essentially a wrapper around native GDI controls. WPF's rendering system is quite intertwined with the DWM It's much easier to open-source the things with fewer dependencies, such as .NET Core, ASP.NET and other networking stuff. It's also invariably what customers are likely to want to run on Azure (or elsewhere), just maybe not with Windows un…

I use WPF everyday and it has many great features. But sadly it was conceptualized before many of the 'modern' and best features of .net. The striking lack of type support (generics), and frankly broken separation between form and function, makes it feel very clunky at times. Not to mention that while data-binding is first class, the predominant MVVM pattern is sadly bolted on. My last gripe is that in most WPF applications, the only reason the application hangs is due to rendering performance - which is truly unacceptable given every other part of my application can be multi-threaded or async.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#98

Post by guiomie »

jsingleton wrote: post #70
mythz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ServiceStack.Redis client uses pooled ThreadSafe Client Managers by design: https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Redis#redis-cli... Which works very much like a DB Connection, where the Connection Factory is thread-safe (and what's used to resolve connections) whilst the DB Connection instance it returns are not.

Sorry, I know you worked hard on it but this comes from real experience. We had an absolute nightmare debugging strange issues in the cache and traced it to this. Probably an older version though.

What would be your opinion on redis on a windows machine? Is it "production" ready?

Re: WCF is Open Source

#99

Post by recursive »

bad-sector wrote: post #92
Gorkys wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised by the people asking "bring VB6 back". I'd like to know why - is it because you're stuck maintaining VB6 applications that can't be/haven't been updated to VB.net or C#? I used VB6 extensively back in the day, and I am very glad indeed that it's now dead.

It is ridiculously easy to create simple GUI apps with it, its limitations force you to write straightforward code (otherwise it becomes too much of a hassle and you go to another language) and provides a very good debugging environment which allow you to inspect and modify a program as it is running in a graphical way. It is basically an extremely simple scripting language attached to a GUI designer (literally, orig…

I've mostly had coworkers that had fond memories of VB6. Personally, compared to what we have now, I think it sucks. I'm no parroting. I suppose there's no way for me to know whether I "have any idea what I'm talking about". The language itself is terribly constraining. No try/catch. No generics. Crazy 1-based collections. No type-safe lists, just fixed size arrays. No function references. And so on.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#100

Post by recursive »

swalsh wrote: post #45
iandanforth wrote: post #17

Dear fellow nerds, please write out all acronyms the first time you use them (TFTYUT), our nerd circles may not overlap. After TFTYUT you can use the nice short version however you wish. Many thanks.

I might be alone here, but when I do code reviews I always correct guys when they use acronyms that are not "common knowledge". Things like ASN would be allowed (i can google that easily), but if you're creating something new, that's not a primary domain thing like FancyPowerControl, I don't want to see FPC all over the code. It may be persnickety, but it just really throws me off when authors create a new acronym, a…

Hilariously, I've never heard of ASN, and googling turns up a dozen potential meanings.
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