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I'm a passionate VS user and C# developer. I'm not at all one of these Microsoft is evil nerds.
But - as very much that I am doing in my everyday work is already built on Microsoft products - I avoid using them when there are suitable alternatives. Doing everything the way it was intended by one companies think tank always comes out very bad - at least in the long run. (Hello to all VB6 and LinqToSql users...  )
For me it's just a matter of keeping my toolbox healthy. I don't want to become subject to the politics of one single company. These politics are aimed to increase profit, not to increase a developers welfare...
Regards
Thomas
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software.
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What libraries and patterns do you use then? All your own from scratch?
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Paul Watson wrote: What libraries and patterns do you use then?
For large-scale projects I use a combination of DDD-style business objects and NHibernate (or some other O/R mapper if the customer insists...) that does the persistence stuff. For smaller projects I might indeed consider writing the database stuff from scratch.
That's the point: We have NHibernate - which is well designed and well supported, albeit on the edge of being overly complex. So what do we need EF for if it's not just another MS-RTW attempt (MS-RTW: re-inventing the wheel, but this time with an MS label stuck upon it...  )?
Regards
Thomas
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software.
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I've only done a preliminary comparative research and it looks like EF combined with VS 2008 gives you visual development tools unlike nHibernate.
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vlad97 wrote: looks like EF combined with VS 2008 gives you visual development tools unlike nHibernate
Maybe. I did not explore EF in-depth, because I won't use it anyway. NHibernate admittedly is much more complex to learn and it may be overkill for many projects, but I already am familiar with it.
To be explicit about that: I am not saying: Don't use EF. Use NHibernate instead. I can't say this because I don't know much about EF except that it's MS's version of an O/R mapper. I'm just saying that I won't add it to my personal toolbox for the reasons outlined above.
Regards
Thomas
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software.
modified on Monday, November 10, 2008 10:26 AM
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Thomas Weller wrote: So what do we need EF for if it's not just another MS-RTW attempt (MS-RTW: re-inventing the wheel, but this time with an MS label stuck upon it... Roll eyes )?
I have heard from Microsoft that a key motivation for doing their own thing is that they have customers who won't use non-MS originated technology, i.e., won't look at any important technique until MS provides a solution for them. I have certainly worked at places where they are suspicious of open source, even of such trivial things as the PowerCollections lbrary.
Kevin
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Kevin McFarlane wrote: they have customers who won't use non-MS originated technology
Ah I see. This is a perfectly valid business strategy that makes sense.
But someone should tell these customers that MS is not the holy grail of software development but just a company who does not care too much about their customers if it pays for them otherwise...
Regards
Thomas
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software.
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I had a go at it when 3.5 SP1 came out. It has nice features but it is not ready for production work. For example it has bugs when you try to change an existing design you have made and just refuses to change it, so many times I had to delete the whole design and start again. This was OK in the small project I've tried it but completely unacceptable for a bigger project. I will wait before using it in a bigger/production level project, probably when its next version comes out I will try again.
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I have to concur. I have been looking for a ORM suitable for winforms. I took a look at EF and decided that it complete enough for use. There are also many more mature ORM frameworks available, nHibernate being one of the more popular ones. The link below lists some of the limitations of EF:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2623082&SiteID=1
MS is continuing to develop the framework but do you really want to risk embracing a framework that could be abandoned in a couple of year for the next new thing?
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