Scott Stewart

.Net Express Editions - general thoughts

I probably shouldn't concern myself with such thoughts or waist anytime over it, but the Express thing has been bothering me and the more I think about it the more it bothers me. First, I fully realize that it is just a marketing thing. An attempt to get more people interested in .Net by reaching a larger or new audience. I'm fine up to this point. I think expanding the overall usage of .Net is good for all of us that make a living by writing .Net code.

My problems however, begin as soon as I browse to the Express home page. The first thing you read is that “The Express products, expanding the Visual Studio product line to include lightweight, easy-to-use, easy-to-learn tools for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and novices who want to build dynamic Windows applications and Web sites.” Ok, stop, hold the press. We have reached the first problem; hobbyists, enthusiasts, and novices should want to learn to build dynamic Windows applications and Web sites. Sure, the word learn is in this paragraph but its purpose here is to state that the Express tools are easy to learn. Unfortunately, this first paragraph has taken our innocent hobbyists, enthusiast and novices directly from “go” to “building dynamic Windows applications and Web sites” without any learning involved. Very interesting.

Problem number two has to do with the products names. Did we really need to call them “Visual Basic Express”, “C# Express” , “C++ Express” (I smile a little saying this one. I wonder who the indented market for this might be. I might need to download this just to see what it is all about). Couldn't we have just named the entire thing “.Newbie” or something and then have it available in different cool flavors. Just as long as it didn't contain the words Visual Basic Express or C# Express. My reasons for this one has to do with the overall impression of “watering“ down the significance of the .Net platform framework and its awesome development languages. If you look at the technology community as a whole, and step out of the MS centric discussion, the biggest challenge .Net developers have in finding good, high profile projects to work on is the mindset by many that programmers who work in Microsoft technologies are hobbyists, enthusiasts, and novices, and the real developers, the ones that are “really“ proficient at what they do, work in Java, and develop for Linux platforms, etc. I'm afraid that by including the words Visual Basic in the package called Visual Basic Express, and the words C# in the package called C# Express, the marketing group has just helped to “tightly couple” us developers, as skilled and seasoned as we may be with all hobbyists, enthusiasts and novices.

Hey, each of us that is introduced to programing is done so in different ways and at different times in our lives. Some of us are introduced to it initially in college (or even high schools now), others come into it because they have the right mindset and experiment with ways to solve business problems at work. I love writing code for a living, and am very happy that it was introduced to me in my own particular way over the past 20 years or so (Fortran in college in the early 80's, then C, then C++, then VB, and now .Net ) I am fortunate enough to work in a career that I love. If these new Express tools can help others get introduced to something they eventually love, and can help promote and spread the overall usage of .Net then that is a good thing. If businesses think that they don't really need to spend the money on qualified developers because Microsoft offers this VB Express thing that allows anybody to build Windows and Web Applications immediately, then that would be a bad thing. If I get asked at my next job or project interview “Oh, I see that you prefer writing in VB.Net...now is that the Express version or the regular version” then that would be a very bad thing.