Re: ASP dot Net CMS -- I am astounded

At 11:18 AM 2/22/2005, John wrote:

>This is a valid concern, but I don't see how we get through the real 
>issues without just starting another religious war.  I have always been 
>skeptical of Microsoft, inventing the phrase "if you're not actively 
>against them, you're implicitly with them".  Before picking the CMS with 
>which I now work I evaluated platforms, primarily J2EE vs. .NET.  One 
>interesting point was how frank, accurate and open the .NET resources were 
>about strengths and limitations.  Many of the Java resources were bitter, 
>inaccurate and biased.  To a large extent perspective on this issue 
>depends on who one listens to.  The rumblings I hear indicate that 
>Microsoft sold more server licenses last year than all Unix vendors 
>combined, that a default Windows Server 2003 installation is more secure 
>than a typical Linux installation,

         A default Windows Server installation is more secure than a 
typical Linux installation? Apparently, the "professionals" on this list do 
not want for stupidity.

>  and that .NET is a very viable, flexible and high-performance enterprise 
> development platform.

         Currently, the .Net platform runs only on Windows (Mono is not yet 
mature), which owes its continued survival (at least in the server market) 
to the fact that most MCSE's are simply too stupid to learn Linux or *BSD.

>   One problem seems to be the lack of success stories in the market 
> compared to more established platforms.  I also prefer .NET's 
> documentation and XML "auto"-documentation features.  If you've ever had 
> to call Microsoft for support (not from a home user perspective, but from 
> an enterprise), it's a totally different and positive experience.  I 
> remember one CMS vendor telling me the machine was bluescreening because 
> of OS and hardware issue, and Microsoft telling me "if you uninstall 
> [that CMS] from that server it will stop bluescreening".  Sure enough, 
> the bug was with the CMS, but it took months for that vendor to deal with it.

         In the *nix world, the analog to a BSoD ("Blue Screen of Death") 
is called a "kernel panic," which rarely happens these days, at least on 
Linux (and I am told that it is even more rare on FreeBSD than on Linux). 
Under *nix, your X window server may crash from time to time, but the 
kernel generally does not. Furthermore, if X crashes, you can easily kill 
it and restart it (from a virtual console, of course). IOW, in the *nix 
world, applications almost never cause the operating system to crash, which 
happens all too often on M$ Windows.

>I think with .NET Microsoft really got something right and it makes sense 
>to capitalize on their huge research and development budget, especially in 
>the hopes that Mono on Linux really takes off (this should probably be a 
>backdoor strategy for all .NET CMS vendors).

         Mono on Linux is not yet mature and is receiving absolutely NO 
help from M$.

>   Like it or not, Microsoft and .NET are here to stay

         The hell they are. The only thing keeping M$ alive in the server 
market is the fact that MCSE's are too stupid to learn Linux and *BSD. 
Absolutely NOTHING else. Seven years from now, after the jobs of all of the 
MCSE's have been sent offshore, no one in the USA will be installing new M$ 
servers. It will be an exclusively *nix world, at least in the realm of 
servers.

>  and apparently picking up CMS market share as next generation CMS 
> technology goes mainstream.  I've done large CMS projects with .NET, Perl 
> and Java and I can say without a doubt that for me, .NET with Visual 
> Studio allows almost an order of magnitude greater productivity than the 
> other platforms, and more reliable systems.  For me it is easier to write 
> new code in C# than port existing C# code to Java because of simple 
> missing constructs like foreach.  I think J2EE containers tend to lead to 
> vendor lock-in much like .NET,

         How does using Jakarta Tomcat, Jetty, or JBoss lead to lock-in?

>  and I have done enough Perl to know it's not a good candidate for 
> highly-integrated enterprise solutions.  PHP and Python may be better 
> candidates, but my experience leads me to believe the open source CMS 
> products take a lot more heavy lifting and specialized skills.

         Yeah, it would be unfortunate if you had to hire any smart people. 
After all, they are expensive and they tend to know more about network 
security.

>   Not all of us are building systems managed by teams of developers - 
> many projects are actually delivering on the promise of CMS by putting 
> control in the hands of the business users.  I think the other tools are 
> less suited for achieving these goals.  Like most new CMS products, .NET 
> was built from the ground up around XML - I don't know about Python, but 
> in Java and Perl XML  [it]  is not nearly as easy.

         Maybe you should take a look at OpenCms, ver. 6, beta 1. It is 
based on J2EE and XML. See www.OpenCms.org.

>Mat Griffin wrote:
>>
>>Why are there so many blinkered people relying upon Microsoft products? 
>>Trying looking a bit further than just MS.

         It is simple, actually. There are very, very few smart people on 
this list. The participants hereon are simply  and completely stupid. They 
think that "this Open Source thing is a fad" and that network security is 
not something that they should worry about. I have been on many mailing 
lists, and I have never seen as much stupidity on a list as on this one. I 
am astounded that these morons have jobs.

-- Paul Bain