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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...From DotNetNuke Connections: VB vs. C# SurveyFrom DotNetNuke Connections: VB vs. C# Survey
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11/7/2010 9:59 AM
 
NIce post Shaun, looks like you already taken a mental decison to switch based on reality so if you don't find any obstacal - go for it.

@David My figure 20% cost increase doesn't necessarily means that all programmers do 20% less in a year.
It's hard to set a cost figure on a change like switching language (VB C) in a project. Lets agree there is a cost.
It's not just to get used of the semantics , change templates, change snippets and get up to speed with the key strokes and so on.
One of the major risks is that the bugs produced increase, just a increase of 1% could increase the cost with 20% in a project.
So my point is in every project you have to take height for the cost in connection to a change. And every change have a cost in the short time.
Programmers, even senior programmers are human.
For sure you have to calculate this for every unique project and in some project the cost will end up to a reduced cost.
So in the case of DNN Corp they maybe have more C# programmers these days and the change will end up to less bugs and a lower cost who knows.

But if a programmer tells me he has the same productivity in both languages I smile and thinks he has overestimated his power, we all do we are human ;)
 
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11/7/2010 2:47 PM
 
my comments based on using DDN since v2.0.

My Vote: VB.NET

VB.NET Project
I seem to remember that DNN was the "largest and most successful" open source project based on VB.NET.  That was with v2.0.  Seems like that statement is even more true today.  This would somewhat dilute the C# arguments being discussed.

More Availability of C# Programmers
Maybe there are more unemployed C# programmers than VB.NET programmers...grin
It is also well accepted that VB.NET developers have a better sense of humor.  Hey, Google it if you don't believe me.

The Influx of C# Developers to DNN
This somewhat confuses me.  Over the years there seems to be a steady increase of C# developers writing modules for DNN and using the framework for consulting work and other projects.

1. Where are these developers coming from?
2. Since there are dozens and dozens of C# Portal/CMS projects out there why do they migrate to a VB.NET based project?
3. If C# will represent a better core, why are the other C# projects not able to recruit and keep all these developers?

VB.NET as the Core
It would seem that, at least in the early years, since DNN was the only major project written in VB.NET, that all non C# developers were drawn.  As it grew, I guess the feature set is what causes others of all platforms to continue to adopt DNN.  This then makes me wonder if the other C# based projects draw in VB.NET developers in any substantial numbers.  Hey, the only difference is the syntax.

Developing Well with VB & C#
I can somewhat read a snippet of C# code but cannot alternate productively between the two.  We use Infragistics NetAdvantage controls for our modules UI.  The learning curve for any similar product (Infragistics, Teleric, ComponentOne, etc) is huge.  If anyone can be productive in VB and C# along with using these 3rd party control suites then you are quite a valuable source.  We have standardized on VB "AND" Infragistics, iTextSharp and a few others. 

Summary
The only way to determine if migrating the core, all core modules and the forum module to C# will improve the project is to actually do it.  Since we just left Vegas, I would place a bet that in 5 years we will still be having this same argument.

Keeping DNN as the largest, most successful, most feature rich project written in VB.NET is a huge acheivement.  Becoming just another C# project will never be as significant.

Well, I could be wrong also.  That's why making the right decision is a skill only achieved by common sense, real world experience and a lot of luck.  I do not envy Shaun on this topic.  He got it more than right the first time.


mikez




 
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11/8/2010 12:41 PM
 
Salar Golestanian wrote:
Will Strohl wrote:
Just a bit of advice...  I would much rather us say something like "for a senior developer" or "a more experienced developer".  When you say something like "a real developer" it automatically causes some people to get defensive and take an emotional stance on topics like this one, rather than a logical stance.  

That being said,.....

 Will

I know Sergey very well, I am 110% sure he was not trying to be offensive. This is where knowing a knowing a language perfectly can cause you lots of problems. His first language is not ENGLISH.

The order for his language preferences goes something like this

Mother tongue Ukranian
Second Language C#
Third Language JAVA
Fourth Language VB
Recently English
 
:)

Salar

Salar/Sergey:  I did not intend to give the impression that I thought anyone was being intentionally offensive.  I was just throwing out friendly advice.  Sorry if my statements were perceived in any other way.   


Will Strohl

Upendo Ventures Upendo Ventures
DNN experts since 2003
Official provider of the Hotcakes Commerce Cloud and SLA support
 
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11/8/2010 6:16 PM
 
Shaun Walker wrote:
 

I answered the question by first explaining the background for the C# source code package which we posted earlier this year ( ie. the fact it was created by a volunteer community member from China; that it had been posted on Codeplex initially as a C# fork - which we had to shut down due to trademark issues; that we had been working with the community member to post a new version to coincide with each new core release since; and that the C# version has not been part of our standard QA process to date ).

You mean this community port: first C#-Port
Instead now this port is official: dnnc
Under people tab - is zyhfish (Ben) the same person as wso_angel?
What I think is really interesting is DNN running on mono and DNN running with postgresql - but first things first.
I had a lot of work to convince the people inside our team to use dotnetnuke. And there are still people who are not completely convinced of the choice because of the partially closed source stack. I don't know how much Microsoft is helping the DNN-team - I think enough. But with orchard project they are heading to a completely new direction. Additionally to this DNN is not really compatible with azure.

So the Cloud-Wave is rolling and DNN is missing this wave. But there are other options - not the microsoft way of cloud.
If DNN wants to be relevant inside of the "elastic cloud"-ecosystem it has to get rid of the windows-license-price burden.
I think Miguel de Icaza is giving you a hog more than once if you decide to port DNN to mono. I think DNN could be the biggest open-source-project running on the mono stack. This could bring a real kick in the open source community.

There is a new approach of doing load-balancing - google app engine is doing it like this and azure is doing it too.

The classic approach:
------http-load-balancer------
----/--------|---------\---
---/---------|----------\--
-Web1--------Web2--------Web3-

The new approach:
----------NGINX------
-------/-----|-----\--
-FastCGI----FCGI----FCGI-
---/---------|----------\--
-mono1------mono2-------mono3-

NGINX with two or more fcgi-machines
NGINX python configuration
DNN is constantly searching for ways to get attention. But in the last two years google trend of DNN is going down. I think that supporting mono will be the right direction. In the last couple of month I was searching for a good CMS for GAE or a good CMS for Azure. I tried Orchard - well very beta.
If it is possible to have a scaling stack with NGINX + some FCGI mono machines + postgresql (which is a great db with a really great license) it could be ground breaking. Developing modules with VS2010 and running it in a cost-free, open-source, scaling stack on Amazon EC2.

What about scaling the DB - really demanding jobs can be off loaded to a NoSQL-Engine - what do you think about MongoDB?
C# MongoDB-Driver
There are first modules for Drupal & MongoDB
MongoDB & Drupal Session at Drupalconf
A lot of stuff for one post  :)

Regards,
Thomas

 
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11/9/2010 3:46 AM
 
Thomas

Agreed with you about PostGre. It is very good and stable and also free ;)

We have made custom integration for one of our client between Catalook and OpenErp (used PostGre 8.4). It was real surprise how good and stable it works. But to be open and clear need to say few words about speed. When we got our tables in PostGre filled with data (about 20 main tables, 3 from them with more then 200 000 records) then we can see real difference in speed between PostGre and MS SQL. PostGre is much slower then MS SQL on sizes like this. But it was very-very good on small sizes of data and it can be a bonus for small companies.

Also need to say, PostGre is not "windows friendly" software. This is why a lot of people do not want to use it with Windows applications. Although, maybe I'm wrong.

Sergey
 
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