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I think you're about ready to release your email spam campaign, Bill. Good work!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Hi Folks,
I'm about to kick off a very interesting project for the Department of Public Works. It's interesting because I'm doing it pro bono, I've not done ASP.NET before, and I get to architect the thing any way I want, which means small baby steps in my spare time. The benefits will eventually be, besides having ASP.NET experience, putting something together that apparently lots of municipalities could use and the potentially turning "free" into something lucrative. We won't discuss the down sides.
Anyways, there's a lot of tech options out there for ASP.NET / Razor / MVC / Whatever coupled with jWhatever etc, etc. I am though seriously considering using DevExpress web controls, though possibly Telerik's which look pretty darn cool.
While I'm starting with a basic concept -- an admin screen for filling in things like equipment, labor rates, materials and costs, and putting together a form where people can create a project estimate, this will need to eventually include tracking the actual project costs, for large projects splitting them into phases, etc.
So what do you all suggest as the technology stack, staying within the boundaries of .NET and C#, for putting together a snazzy web site with the least effort?
(And no, I do NOT want to do this in Ruby on Rails, I'm feeling quite done with duck-typed languages and crappy 3rd party open source components.)
[edit] BTW, I came across this by subscribing to http://www.codeforamerica.org/[^] and responding to a request somebody made on one of the forums. [/edit]
Marc
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Salt/Lime/Tequila.
you forgot the loop sequence.
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It depends on the likely size/scope.
I would go with:-
Small proof of concept: Lightswitch
Small/medium : ASP.NET + Razor + MVC on SQL Server back end
Large: Azure + CQRS
Also - document it very well. The most important thing with any pro-bono work is that you can hand it over to someone else to maintain.
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: Small/medium : ASP.NET + Razor + MVC on SQL Server back end
We're definitely in the small/medium category, as far as I can predict. Thanks for the feedback!
Marc
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The follow on from that is make sure to make as much use of common frameworks (EF, Unity etc.) as you can - only write the code yourself that only you can write
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I would go with MCV/Razor (you may also add Web API support to enable access from different clients) - this kind of VS project already makes use of jQuery, bootstrap and modernizr...
I worked both with DevExpress and Telerik. Telerik looks cooler and easier to utilize and config (including look), but DevExpress performs slightly better...
VS will create you a basic project, with modern look and login/register pages - if you interested...
(If you think to do it public you may find others to join in...at the end you can share with them the prize )
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: If you think to do it public you may find others to join in...at the end you can share with them the prize
Indeed, that is the intention!
Marc
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I'm waiting...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: I'm waiting...
Is that an offer to participate?
Marc
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A kind of...I have to see in more details what we talking about...I may be able or unable to help...I can't know, but I always ready to help...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote: I have to see in more details what we talking about
Well, this is certainly an "on-the-fly" design, but I intend to put some initial planning documentation together. I'll send you a direct email (I have your email address) with a writeup in a day or two. I'd like to have some sort of bare-bones scaffolding in place by middle of next week, which should be interesting for me to ramp up on ASP.NET/Razor in the most efficient way possible.
Marc
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Hi Marc,
I've been doing web stuff for several years now, having moved from desktop dev (MFC, WinForms, WPF, Silverlight) to ASP.NET web stuff.
Here's my preferred web stack:
- Bootstrap. CSS framework. It's a consistent style for your whole site. Makes it easy to build responsive sites that work well across all screen sizes. It makes it easy to do things like modal dialog boxes, gives you a consistent appearance across your whole site, and gives you some nice common web components such as drop-downs and navbars[^].
- jQuery - DOM manipulation framework, helps you do HTML manipulation consistently across all browsers. It's required by Bootstrap and still quite handy when you need to manipulate HTML elements by hand.
$("#someHtmlElement").text("some new text here!"); - KnockoutJS - Databinding and MVVM pattern. It lets you do things like this:
var myViewModel = {
foo: 42
};
ko.applyBindings(myViewModel);
<label data-bind="text: foo"></label> - ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebAPI - MVC (with Razor) for server-rendering your HTML, and WebAPI for fetching data asynchronously.
I personally stay away from things like UI control frameworks. I find them to be vestiges of the desktop world that really aren't necessary in the web stack. There are some decent ones out there, such as Telerik's Kendo UI[^], but it's not really necessary.
One more thing. The hot new sexy thing everyone's worked up about is Google's AngularJS[^]. I've used this now on my last 2 web projects. Like Knockout, it provides data binding. Additionally, it's a full fledged MVC framework in JavaScript, providing client-side routing, data binding, seperation of concerns between view (HTML), presentation logic (controllers in JavaScript), and data services (data fetching AJAX calls). Use it if you're building a dynamic web app; e.g. where the UI changes often and shows live data without having to do server postback/page refreshes.
modified 22-Oct-14 14:45pm.
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Judah Himango wrote: There are some decent ones out there, such as Telerik's Kendo UI[^], but it's not really necessary.
Yes, I've been watching what's going on there.
Judah Himango wrote: The hot new sexy thing everyone's worked up about is Google's AngularJS[^]. I've used this now on my last 2 web projects.
Yup, I'm looking at that. What ever happened to node.js? I see no one has been suggesting that?
Marc
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NodeJS is JavaScript on the server, e.g. a replacement for things like ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, etc. I personally don't want JavaScript on the server.
In fact, if I can tell you a dirty little secret, when on the client, I prefer TypeScript (or even CoffeeScript[^]) over raw JS. JS is missing a lot of things to make it a nice language for large apps. Languages like TypeScript and CoffeeScript help it in that regard while still compiling to plain ol' JS that runs in everybody's browser.
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Judah Himango wrote: NodeJS is JavaScript on the server, e.g. a replacement for things like ASP.NET
Ah! That helps.
Judah Himango wrote: personally don't want JavaScript on the server.
Agreed.
Judah Himango wrote: I prefer TypeScript (or even CoffeeScript[^]) over raw JS.
I will check those out.
Thank you!
Marc
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Cool. I know you're a C# guy, so TypeScript will make you feel right at home. Try it out in your browser[^].
TypeScript is created by Anders Heijlsberg, the creator of C#. Built into Visual Studio these days, so you can just Add New Item->TypeScript file, then start writing things like:
class MyAwesomeClass {
constructor(firstArg: string, someOtherArg: number) {
}
someFunc(answer: number): string {
return "The answer is: " + answer;
}
}
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Marc Clifton wrote: What ever happened to node.js I had the feeling you are not a fan of JavaScript, so why use JavaScript on the server too...
node.js is for writing server side code (like ASP.NET code behind) in JavaScript...It has good features, but it is not for everyone and for sure not for a site you talked about...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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for jQuery and KnockoutJS
Jeremy Falcon
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Judah Himango wrote: The hot new sexy thing everyone's worked up about is Google's AngularJS[^]
This[^] (knockout vs angularjs) is an amusing read, especially the pictures at the end of the article! Thought you might enjoy it.
Marc
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Heheh. Their analogy via pictures is funny and accurate: Knockout is a tiny paddleboard (it really just does data binding!), whereas AngularJS is the big yacht that does data binding, routing, MVC, separation of concerns, dependency injection, and much more.
Great analogy.
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If you're going to build a SPA (which it doesn't sound like he is), you should seriously consider AngularJS. "Those who don't know angular are doomed to repeat it."
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I dislike MVC, because it is unnecessarily complicated, and will take (me) longer to develop and maintain.
But if you start today, MVC with Razor is the way to go. Everything else is just outdated. MVC razor is the most recent standard for working with asp.net. (at least it was two months ago, gosh things change rapidly)
Leo
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Leo Muller Rap wrote: it is unnecessarily complicated, and will take (me) longer to develop and maintain
Uhhhmm. I think this is just your opinion. I've worked many years with web forms, before moving to MVC.
MVC is not complicated, once you grasp the basic principles it is much easier to work with. No funny business trying to figure out how to make a web control generate an HTML that works. It's much less error prone.
It provides separation of concerns by separating the view from everything else. This makes it much easier to maintain as we can clearly separate logic from user interface. Which leads to a few more advantages:
- Unit test your user interface
- You can have a team specialized in UX working in the project and they do not need to know anything else but HTML/CSS, etc to contribute, while you work in the logic at the same time.
- You can control much better the HTML output to deal with some specific scenarios.
After my intial learning curve, all development I've done in ASP.NET MVC has been much faster than WebForms. I also spend time a lot less with bugs that are hard to work around in Web Forms.
Since the user interface is not bound to the framework, it integrates much better with the myriad of tools and frameworks available on the web.
And finally, thank the Lord Almighty, we don't have to deal with update panels anymore.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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