101–110 of 149 posts
As much as I applaud this move by Microsoft, WCF has a reputation for being a terrible framework to work in the areas where it is most frequently employed, and I doubt it will be given the same welcome.
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".…
It's worth remembering that the technologies you mentioned weren't around when WCF was created. As far as I can tell, Microsoft doesn't really push WCF any more simply because the use-cases are fewer and/or irrelevant in the current Web Service landscape. I also get the feeling that many people commenting here didn't need to work with WS-* and associated technologies at the time WCF didn't exist. After its release it…
Could be wrong, but you seem to be downplaying how much of a development drag WCF ended up being on .Net and how poorly it is designed.
I was around that time too, and for me WCF was like a blast from the past even back then. It was like a bad .Net 1.0 library when it was brought out. Almost everything they could design badly and enterprisey, they managed to design badly and enterprisey. It reminded me of that terrible enterprise library they had.
Still pretty useful in consuming Salesforce's terrible api though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> please write out all acronyms the first time you use them Like any other writing, it's just about knowing your audience. I mean, are you really going to write "HN (Hacker News)", "YC (Y Combinator)", "HTTP (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol)", etc. every single time you use those in a comment here?
Oh come on. WCF is pretty obscure. .NET is pretty unknown to many HN readers, and even within .NET WCF is not very widely used.
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".…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth remembering that the technologies you mentioned weren't around when WCF was created. As far as I can tell, Microsoft doesn't really push WCF any more simply because the use-cases are fewer and/or irrelevant in the current Web Service landscape. I also get the feeling that many people commenting here didn't need to work with WS-* and associated technologies at the time WCF didn't exist. After its release it…
Wasn't there web services before WCF to deal with SOAP? And I seem to remember they were easier to use than WCF. I also go the feeling that when WCF was released it killed off quite a bit of the evolving open source stuff. Could be wrong, but you seem to be downplaying how much of a development drag WCF ended up being on .Net and how poorly it is designed. I was around that time too, and for me WCF was like a blast f…
Yes, you used Web Services to deal with SOAP messages. But SOAP was never the problem. WS-* was.
> These variety of specifications are the basic web services framework established by first-generation standards represented by WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI.[1] Specifications may complement, overlap, and compete with each other. Web service specifications are occasionally referred to collectively as "WS-", though there is not a single managed set of specifications that this consistently refers to, nor a recognized owning body across them all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_service_specificati...
I also don't understand why people think that "enterprisey" is inherently a bad thing? It was designed to be used in the enterprise. This is evident in it's relationship to SOA, which is basically its raison d'etre. When you build apps in enterprise environments you have to put with all kinds of crap to appease auditors and to adhere to various acts and governance frameworks and protocols so that you can maintain your position on whatever Stock Exchange etc. That's just the nature of the beast.
Open sourcing an existing thing is never a bad thing though.
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.
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".…