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ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

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Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#11

Post by edwinnathaniel »

snprbob86 wrote: post #6
stevear wrote: post #3

This is an honest question: Having been in IT and software development for over a decade, I have never encountered a problem that required me to look at the source code. As such, I've never really understood the open source movement. I can't imagine a scenario where the software I am using, the same software used by hundreds of thousands of others, would be broken to the point where I had to go into the source and fi…

I started working with Microsoft platforms professionally at age 15 or so. I worked for Microsoft as a software developer doing integration work on Visual Studio. More than ten years after I first wrote a line of Visual Basic, I wish I could never link against a closed library ever again. Using software is different than building software. When you're using most software for it's primary function, it's a well worn pa…

This is part of the reason why I really appreciate m2clipse (Maven Eclipse IDE) ability to download the source code (when available in the repository, which, in Java land, almost always) when I tried to navigate to the Class definition, method implementation, interface or whatnot.

It's very empowering to read the source code because one can learn a lot.

A few more things to add from your points:

To work-around a software, sometime I have to understand how it works internally and given the source code, I don't have to spend a lot of time to reverse-engineer it.

Having said that, sometime the customers do care if it's my fault or IBM faults if we stated clearly in the deliverable that "hey, we're using IBM WebSphere for this...". They would give IBM some time to fix it, or ask us if we can work-around it, or they would bend certain requirements (i.e.: work-around the requirements, not the code).

This is why sometimes, probably a dying trend given the quality of open source software, an outsource project chose software based on the company behind it.

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#12

Post by skrebbel »

Well, that's a first! I'm really happy to see this change. MS has some excellent dev tools out there, and really the only thing holding back .NET development is the strong "if it ain't MS, it ain't good" culture among many of its users. Moves like this might help break that strong singular dependency.

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#13

Post by richardw »

stevear wrote: post #3

This is an honest question: Having been in IT and software development for over a decade, I have never encountered a problem that required me to look at the source code. As such, I've never really understood the open source movement. I can't imagine a scenario where the software I am using, the same software used by hundreds of thousands of others, would be broken to the point where I had to go into the source and fi…

I've had about four situations in my current project (Java/GWT) where going through the source has helped me understand what the developers expect, or have TODO comments for unimplemented bits.

In a previous project (jQuery/Python) I had an issue with a Python library that I needed to patch. It worked fine on my collaborator's Mac but not on my machine.

Even .net - I created a downloadable product that happened to require a fair amount of custom UI work and being able to look under the hood (with Reflector) helped a lot. There are still a couple issues that I could never get resolved that are buried in the stack.

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#14

Post by wooUK »

stevear wrote: post #3

This is an honest question: Having been in IT and software development for over a decade, I have never encountered a problem that required me to look at the source code. As such, I've never really understood the open source movement. I can't imagine a scenario where the software I am using, the same software used by hundreds of thousands of others, would be broken to the point where I had to go into the source and fi…

My experience reflects yours. However of late I have had to crack open the source code for ASP.NET MVC & the Azure SDK. Not so much to correct a bug but to ensure functions that I am overriding follow a similar design pattern to the original.

I've never had the need to get into ASP.NET or the .NET framework itself but being able to get into components built on top of these lower level technologies has been very helpful.

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#15

Post by daliusd »

stevear wrote: post #3

This is an honest question: Having been in IT and software development for over a decade, I have never encountered a problem that required me to look at the source code. As such, I've never really understood the open source movement. I can't imagine a scenario where the software I am using, the same software used by hundreds of thousands of others, would be broken to the point where I had to go into the source and fi…

I think you either are lucky or not working on some low level problems. I had at least two cases (in last 5 years) where I had to debug code and enter Windows libraries reading assembler code using cdb/windbg. It was painful knowing that in Linux I could simply read code, understand it and potentially fix it. In some cases low level tools help avoid debugging assembler (like dependency viewer, process monitor, spyxx, wireshark and etc.).

It is really not about fixing something but understanding what behavior underlying libraries expect from software you are writing. The situations where documentation is technically correct but practically useless.

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#17

Post by grandpoobah »

skrebbel wrote: post #12

Well, that's a first! I'm really happy to see this change. MS has some excellent dev tools out there, and really the only thing holding back .NET development is the strong "if it ain't MS, it ain't good" culture among many of its users. Moves like this might help break that strong singular dependency.

And what about IronPython, IronRuby? they are mentioned in the article

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#18

Post by johnkchow »

pcore wrote: post #10

After working in a Linux/Open-source environment for several years and then switching to Microsoft a few years ago, I noticed that things seemed to be getting progressively more open and developer-friendly. I've wondered if it was just me being biased toward my current environment, but there has definitely been progress. I think that Microsoft has finally realized that the best way to build and maintain a community o…

I started my career in MS ASP.NET WebForms/MVC, and then recently switched to RoR, and it's obvious that they're mimicking the success of RoR development environment and, more importantly, the culture. Their Nuget packaging system is pretty much RubyGems + Bundler. Last year was the last time I touched MS stuff, and it was pretty raw and not ready for the masses yet. With people like Hanselman and ScottGu pushing the MS culture towards more open, I'm hopeful for the direction of MS's Web stack.

Re: ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests

#19

Post by johnkchow »

I have one thing to say: Finally.

To give some context, my first job out of college was in a small WebForms/MVC shop in LA. It was very progressive in that my managers always pushed me to question the conventional "MS" way of programming/architecting. However, what frustrated the hell out of me was all the other MS companies around us: they were so damn dependent on what MS gave them.

I've heard countless MS devs in local meetups screaming bloody murder when MVC first came out, "Microsoft, you HAVE to train us on MVC! It's a black box, we're effed!" This shocked me, because these people wanted to literally be force-fed with MVC. Microsoft (intentionally or not) encouraged this kind of behavior with their close-mindedness, and this dependency/babying was crippling to the MS dev community.

Accepting pull requests signifies a tremendous step on MS's side, because they're finally admitting that there are actually smart developers OUTSIDE OF MS BUILDING who can help out with the framework. Their closed-software drove me away from them to RoR. Now, I have some peace of mind knowing that the bleeding of good devs away from MS stack may finally slow down. I can't wait to see the next generations of Scott Hanselman and ScottGu pushing the envelope for MS.

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