.NET Culture Shock 19
In my transition to learning C#/.NET I’ve run into what is my biggest hurdle: culture shock. The technology behind Java and the JVM and the technology behind C# and the CLR are becoming more similar than different. However the culture behind the technologies are like night and day, oil and water. I supposed if we were going to liken it to eras gone by, the Java culture would be more like the 70s hippie culture and .NET would be like the 80s yuppie culture.
One of the things I liked about Java was the share and share alike mentality. There are thousands of open source projects in Java, many of them with free integrations into your IDE. If you needed help with anything, there was someone with a clue that could help you—and they would. Much of what I expect out of an IDE came from the Java world. The concept of refactorings included and automated in the IDE was a major breakthrough, and now no Java IDE wanting to be taken seriously can exclude that feature. Thank you JetBrains for introducing the world to the way it should be. When .NET first came on the scene I don’t think Microsoft was ready in this regard. When the MS peddler came to my company I asked about refactoring tools in Visual Studio (this was around 2003), and the guy looked at me sheepishly. “But with .NET you can design one interface and use it on the web or on a desktop…” he fumbled. When I said I don’t do that every day, and I need something that helps me do my job better every day he wrote it down. I don’t think I was the only one to raise that objection because by the next release of Visual Studio they had the beginnings of refactoring tools included.
The Java culture works well with venerable organizations like the Apache Software Foundation. In some ways the Java culture mirrored the meritocracy already ingrained at the ASF. However, the one thing that hurt Java in the long run is also the one thing that made it better as a first language to learn. It’s that just about every major infrastructure piece has been freely distributed under open source projects. Sure, you get what you pay for in terms of set up and configuration, but even that got better with time. The free aspect is what undermined the ability of companies to make money. Why spend tens of thousands of dollars on a license when the free option was there? Just put an intern on it and it will cost less than the commercial option. Of course, that meant that it was equally easy to play with these tools yourself and make yourself more valuable to the company.
The .NET culture is a pay and share alike mentality. While there are a number of open source projects, they are fewer and farther between. Even so, plugins we expect to be included with the IDE like JUnit integration or ANT/Maven/Boost integration for builds either are non-existent or require you to pay a hefty fee. There’s an NUnit for .NET projects, and by the looks of it is a bit better off than the JUnit 4 equivalent. However, unlike JUnit 4, Visual Studio doesn’t have a plugin for it. In fact, it never will because Microsoft has its own testing features it’s wanting to push. You can incorporate NUnit, but it’s a bit more involved. Or you can use TestDriven.NET, which is not cheap.
The pay and share alike culture extends to the community surrounding .NET as well. When you need help, it’s hard to find what you want online. The only people volunteering free advice shouldn’t, and I’m not convinced that I’d be getting my money’s worth if I paid someone either. While the MSDN has gotten better, it still has a long ways to go before it is truly usable. Part of the problem is that it is so big, trying to find the answer you need is quite difficult. Even when you find it, there’s rarely enough depth to be able to put it to good use. Many .NET books are well in excess of 1000 pages. Rather than focusing on one corner of the technology and bringing the user through the process of solving a problem, the books focus on comprehensively covering all of the API and assume that the reader has more knowledge than they do. Or they are written down to a third grader, and the happy medium is no where to be found. I’m sure the Head First book is good, as they usually are.
Bottom line is that there are obstacles in the .NET world that impede self learning. It’s not insurmountable, and many of the obstacles are cultural in nature. The Job market for Java still doubles .NET, but enough key customers insist on the technology you can’t completely ignore it. Additionally, any new languages you learn can open your eyes to new and better ways to solve problems. I’m still hunting for my go-to resources in the .NET space. It’s going to be an interesting ride, and I’m actually looking forward to it.
