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WCF is Open Source

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Re: WCF is Open Source

#111

Post by tonyedgecombe »

recursive wrote: post #99
bad-sector wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yet despite all those issues it was a very productive environment to work in. For me working with WPF/XAML has been like wading through treacle.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#112

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Vitallium wrote: post #18
omgtehlion wrote: post #11

Nice. WPF, please

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

During the talk at Build on WPF there were some slight hints that it may be open sourced at some point in the future, I'm not holding my breath though.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#113

Post by mattmanser »

ilitirit wrote: post #107
mattmanser wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Wasn't there web services before WCF to deal with SOAP? 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…

Enterprisey doesn't mean designed to work in an enterprise. It never has.

It's a pejorative term, not a descriptive one.

It means an over engineered solution to a simple problem that suffers heavily from YAGNI. It means catering to the 0.1% scenarios over the 99.9% scenarios. It means a complex generic solution where a simple one would have been better with custom code being used to handle the occasional complex scenario.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#114

Post by c0brac0bra »

option_greek wrote: post #110
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".…

+1 for Nancy. A very intuitive and mature framework.

Agreed, though it can be hard finding documentation that covers more complex use cases.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#115

Post by ilitirit »

mattmanser wrote: post #113
ilitirit wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasn't there web services before WCF to deal with SOAP? 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…

Enterprisey doesn't mean designed to work in an enterprise. It never has. It's a pejorative term, not a descriptive one. It means an over engineered solution to a simple problem that suffers heavily from YAGNI. It means catering to the 0.1% scenarios over the 99.9% scenarios. It means a complex generic solution where a simple one would have been better with custom code being used to handle the occasional complex scen…

> It means an over engineered solution to a simple problem

This is exactly my point. SOA in practice is not a simple problem, and it's the reason WCF exists so of course it's going to be complex. The whole idea of SOA means that you're inherently stuck with the problem of communicating with different different systems that talk different languages, by trying to coerce them into communicating via a standard format, which for all intents and purposes was rarely "standard". And of course these things have to be done in a secure fashion, with logging and auditing every step of the way, and with the ability to change configuration properties by editing a text file instead of having to via a Change Control Board and the entire QA process.

My feeling is that people who were using WCF for "simple" problems were probably using the wrong tool, even though in most cases it would have probably worked fine.

Re: WCF is Open Source

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

mattmanser wrote: post #113
ilitirit wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasn't there web services before WCF to deal with SOAP? 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…

Enterprisey doesn't mean designed to work in an enterprise. It never has. It's a pejorative term, not a descriptive one. It means an over engineered solution to a simple problem that suffers heavily from YAGNI. It means catering to the 0.1% scenarios over the 99.9% scenarios. It means a complex generic solution where a simple one would have been better with custom code being used to handle the occasional complex scen…

> Enterprisey doesn't mean designed to work in an enterprise.

It kind-of does, though "work in" might be more accurately stated "sell to".

Re: WCF is Open Source

#119

Post by ilitirit »

mhomde wrote: post #63
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".…

I really liked Webservices in ASP.net when they were new, really easy to set up and you just had to add an attribute to the methods you wanted to expose. With WCF they went too far in covering all enterprise scenarios. It would have been better if they kept and maintained a streamlined alternative. Forcing everyone to deal with the complexities of WCF isn't developer friendly. This is a common anti-pattern in framewo…

I agree with the gist, but I'm curious as to why you would use WCF when there were simpler existing solutions (eg. Web Services)? If you simplified WCF to decoration via attributes, what do you gain over ASP.net Web Services?
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