Haslett, Andrew
andrew.haslett at ilc.gov.au
Mon Jul 28 23:32:53 CDT 2003
Keep at it John!! Everything you've said is understandable and valid. >> A little explanation would go a long way towards allowing me to wrap my arms around the whys. I really think you should have a look at www.learnvisualstudio.net site. Bob takes you through every aspect of VS from beginning to end, in easy to understand examples. He also delves into the languages themselves, how they work and best practices for each. There is even a workbook with exercises to work through to get familiar with it all. I can send you a few of the videos if you like, which Bob encourages subscribers to do. I showed them to my boss -> he signed our work up for a years subscription and is now allowing me to code our new projects in .NET - if you know our boss that takes some doing!! That said, .NET is a completely new technology and one can't expect to pick it up instantaneously or even get a good understanding in a week or so. Coming from an ASP background (VBScript), VB as well as VBA in Access, I thought I would grasp it straight away, however it took me quite a while to become competent in the language and its best practices. VS.Net is the first IDE that I trust to do some of the coding for me. I've never been confident with using the MS designer tools that came with other products such as Visual Interdev or Frontpage, and they quite rightly have a bad rep in these areas. But VS.NET is a whole new ballgame and they've put in an excellent effort to save coders the trouble of repetitive tasks, and make us more productive. I know I sound like an MS rep here, but once you get the hang of it, those 20 lines of code should take you 1 or 2 minutes rather than 30. Cheers, Andrew -----Original Message----- From: jcolby at colbyconsulting.com [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Tuesday, 29 July 2003 1:30 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD] OT: ASP.Net editor One of my problems is that I have been out of the loop re M$ programming for a long time. The Access editor is self contained, the code all goes into modules in the MDB you are working in, there is nothing else. Now I am back to all the "stuff" that makes up a project. Hell, I don't even know what a project is! All I want is to open a form, write some code in it and look at it. Write a class and use that class in the form. Logically that should take TWO files. Having seen VB projects I know that isn't how it works, but ... knowing that isn't how it works isn't the same as knowing how it works. All of the books I have pretty much suck in terms of discussing the pieces, in fact they all just say "click here and go...". A "project" (what IS a project?) is generated and they ignore everything. I suppose I'm not supposed to worry about this "other stuff" but I am not stupid. A little explanation would go a long way towards allowing me to wrap my arms around the whys. Now I get to ASP.Net and sure enough you can just use a single file (which they actually do). But now I'm back to editing the stupid thing with WordPad. HELLO! I come from Access, with drag and drop controls, properties for the controls, methods, events, intellisense etc and I'm editing this stupid page with WORDPAD. Can you say caveman? I suppose that is suppose to teach me the nuts and bolts, but I don't really need (want) to know how the metal for the bolt was mined, forged, tempered, threaded and the box for shipping was made. So we either have "Here's your rocket ship, shut up and use it", or "let's go to the mines and let me show you how to find Iron ore". I just find it irritating to be spending 30 minutes typing in 20 lines of code that mainly consist of <body> / <head> / <html> crap. 20 years ago I was programming in Turbo Pascal and I had macros that typed in the begin / end etc. keywords. 20 years later I have 100 times the processor / memory, disk, etc - I work in a visual environment and the book wants me typing in <body>. Sheesh! I get the feeling that I really want to be using VS. I have created projects, used the environment and really like it. I just don't understand it, and it's so whiz-bang that it can be overwhelming to not understand it. John W. Colby www.colbyconsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Haslett, Andrew Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 9:51 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] OT: ASP.Net editor Hi Bruce. Sorry guys, I'm still confused as to the negatives you have found with VS.Net. >> Too powerful to get an understanding of the basics? You can look at the code behind any controls that you add as per normal. Or you can not use the designer at all and hand code everything if you want to learn the basics. >> creating an entire slew of directories and files for any "project" that you create.. Which folders exactly.. The BIN folder is to hold your compiled files. The _VTI folders are all related to Frontpage Extensions which (I assume) can be disabled, although they don't cause any harm - and are required if thats the type of file access you want. Apart from that, the other files that are created - are required or *should* be used for a project - otherwise its not a project! You can always choose not to create a project in VS.NET - just create a new page of your choice and save it where you like. I do see where you're coming from but it seems a pity that you have this tool available and are looking elsewhere due to a couple of occurences that can be 'worked around' PS. www.learnvisualstudio.net is the best learning tool I've come across. Actual videos of someone using VS to create applications rather than reading through pages of text. He offers free daily videos to get you interested, or you can pay a (cheap) subscription to gain access to all existing and new videos. Not only teaches VS.NET but provides examples and tutorials on the framework, VB, C# etc. Best money I've spent! Good luck! Andrew -----Original Message----- From: Bruce Bruen [mailto:bbruen at bigpond.com] Sent: Tuesday, 29 July 2003 10:45 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] OT: ASP.Net editor Within the limited look that I have had at the .NET version of ASP ( and its not to bad eh!) I have found that Dreamweaver MX gave me the best ablity to "look under the hood". I too, have both WM and VS tools and have felt exactly the same - too powerful to enable a good understanding of the basics. I have not suffered the same problem as you with the inbuilt server though? Install Problems again??? I am currently looking for alternative tools, considering Kylix ( am I raving mad?), considering other Linux based tools ( definitely stark raving mad! ) Sorry I cant give you any help on the specific problem. Bruce -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jcolby at colbyconsulting.com Sent: Tuesday, 29 July 2003 10:46 AM To: AccessD Subject: [AccessD] OT: ASP.Net editor I am looking for a reasonable wysiwyg ASP.Net programming environmelnt. I have the ASP.Net Web Matrix widget from M$ site, and I also have Visual Studio.net with ASP.Net (I guess, at least the ability to create web pages from it). My main problem with VS.net is that it doesn't do things the easy way, rather creating an entire slew of directories and files for any "project" that you create. While this may eventually be a good thing, at the moment it simply obscures what I am trying to do. OTOH it is very powerful with built in wizards to do things like help me hook up to data etc. and (for those used to it) intellisense. Web Matrix OTOH can work with a single page, creating things drag and drop. No intellisense (AFAICT) and few if any wizards but a nice drag and drop environment none the less. To be quite honest, my biggest problem with that is I haven't figured out how to get it to NOT attempt to start a new copy of it's built-in web server when one is already open. When you run a page to test it, it opens it's built in web server. If it's already open, it tells you that the server is already open. I have to go close it, then run the page again. Does anyone know how to get the Web Matrix not to remind me that the server is open and just use it (or close it for me) automatically? Are there any other recommendations for programming environments for ASP.Net? John W. Colby www.colbyconsulting.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ ******************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and may contain information protected by law from disclosure. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email from your system. 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