Re: FN-FORUM: Technology Choices

date posted 9th May 2006 13:30

When I started the main choices were either Coldfusion or ASP and I
chose ASP on the basis that I didn't need to pay anything to get the
Coldfusion server side extensions.

Since then I have followed the MS route of ASP, .Net 1.0, .Net 1.1,
Net 2.0 since they are a reasonably logical progression, although when
I moved to .Net I jumped to C# as opposed to the VB.Net route - not
exactly sure why except that most of the people I knew at the time
(early betas) we going the C# route so peer support was better.

One thing that I have found has come out of the C# route is that my
Javascript skills have come on leaps and bounds because it is
syntaxically so similar to C# and I now treat it as a second language.

On the client front I find that when it comes to the crunch they aren't
that fussed what language is used as long as it gets the job done.
Hosting can be a problem, but I have always had my own servers so it
hasn't been that much of an issue.

Occasionally I do get clients with sites that need changing that have
been developed in other languages and I generally farm it out to other
people.

The main advantage I see to sticking to a particular route is that over
time you can build a very good library of code so when it comes to
creating new sites a lot of the hard work has already been done on
other projects so the turn around time and also cost to the client are
lower.

On the database side of things I always used MS Access with ASP, but
then moved to MS SQL when I moved over to .Net and have stuck with it.

Having said all that I am now working on just the one project, a home
grown CMS system that I have been slowly building up over the last five
years. I am just finishing of re-writing it from the ground up in .Net
2.0 which is an absolute joy compared to previous versions.

I guess other 'languages' worth mentioning are (X)HTML and CSS - for a
long time now I have been producing accessible standards based sites
and with previous versions of .Net have had to work hard in order to be
able to achieve it mainly using my own server controls, but with Visual
Studio 2005 MS finally provide an editor that can handle XHTML without
messing it up and the server controls that render clean code as well.
With that side of things taken care of it is a lot easier to produce
accessible sites.

Hope the ramblings are of interest.
--
Cheers,

Julian Voelcker,
Cheltenham, Glos.
T: 01285 821 910
M: 07971 540 362
MSN: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Skype: julianvoelcker