Overcoming The Biggest Disadvantage Of The .NET Framework

Featured blog by by Chris Farmer, Cloud Sites Manager at Liquid Web

Whether you’re developing for the web, the desktop, or your business’s backend, the .NET framework is one of the best development platforms available. An open-source, general-purpose development platform created by Microsoft, it offers seamless support for the use of multiple languages, horizontal scalability, a consistent programming model, and easy application deployment/maintenance. In other words, there are plenty of reasons to love what Microsoft’s created.

That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, though – like any development framework, .NET has its weaknesses.

If an application was developed outside of .NET, migration can be difficult. It has limited object-relational support, and managed code developed through the framework tends to be slower than native code. These all pale in comparison to its greatest shortcoming, however:

Its reputation.

“Few platforms draw the same amount of ire as ASP.Net from the development community,” reads a blog post on Best Code. “While there are certainly valid criticisms of the platform, the majority of negativity comes from those who haven’t spent any time with .NET. Those developers typically rely on misconceptions or flat-out hatred to base their opinion.”

People dislike .NET because it’s made by Microsoft. They believe it’s more expensive than other development frameworks, or that it’s a terrible choice for smaller websites. They think it’s too overly-complex, or that it can’t deal with dynamic languages. They’re under the misconception that it’s still closed-source.

These opinions, though they were valid a few years ago, are no longer relevant in today’s development climate. Microsoft has made huge inroads into open-source, cross-platform development in recent days. They had to in order to compete with titans like Java.

And while it’s certainly legitimate to be a little concerned that Microsoft might make a misstep or two with .NET, you shouldn’t allow that to color your perception of the platform itself. That isn’t to say there aren’t valid reasons to espouse using a different framework, mind you – .NET isn’t the perfect option for every use case.

Maybe you’re familiar with a programming language for which .NET offers limited support. Maybe the platform seems like overkill for a simple web app. Maybe you require built-in networking functionality, or you require automatic generation of static HTML content.

At the end of the day, the lines between different frameworks are more blurred than they’ve ever been. Chances are good that you’ll use more than one when developing for your business. And that’s perfectly alright.