As a systems engineer with 23 years of experience, I'm happy to answer your questions.
· Already known problems with .NET?
What problems? Name them.
· Using a 1.0 release of *anything* for mission critical work (which is considered professional incompetence in the IT industry)?
.NET has been in production systems for two years now, although it was released to the masses this past January. People complain when Microsoft doesn’t field test their products well or long enough, so for .NET they did. .Net 1.0 is a true 1.0 production version, not a BETA.
· Using a brand-new technology from MS (which clearly in the past has been a bad thing)?
That would be your personal opinion drawn from your hatred of Microsoft, not a technical evaluation of the .NET product. Visual Basic 1.0 was a great entry product. Visual C++, the same. Windows XP, another 1.0 product win. Windows NT 3.5, another first release win. Yes, many products, not just from Microsoft, suck when first released. Even Visual Studio 7 needs a service pack to fix many problems, but it still works very well, and well enough for production software. The .NET framework just had an SP.
· The problems of using IIS as your web server (which, again, is considered professional incompetence in the IT industry)?
IIS runs millions of web servers, so, again, that statement would be your personal hatred of Microsoft, and not a technical evaluation of IIS. The serious overhead of UNIX systems warrants a look at IIS. TCO is a primary reason I win sales using Microsoft products. I also enjoy the UNIX crowd giving their high-priced song-n-dance about how Microsoft cannot perform. I show the performance and the companies using IIS, and I win hands down. I love it.
· The fact that the vast majority of real servers are Unix or Linux, which won't run .NET for years?
Again, that statement is your personal opinion of Microsoft products, not a realistic evaluation. IIS and Windows 2000 server drive a large portion of the web and client/server applications. You must be ignoring the case studies proving Microsoft products and technologies work.
If Microsoft products and technologies do not work so well, how is it that Microsoft, a $55 billion company, with 40,000+ global employees, works so well using them?
I believe MS has a few problems that need addressing, but nothing that warrants dismissing their products or technologies.
XP was so wonderful that you have to download over 17MB of product fixes. NT started at v3.1, not 3.5. And the service packs to take it to a STABLE release also known as 3.51 are not small.
More LIES. IIS has had many more, and more serious, security issues than Apache or AOLserver or Zeus or Netscape's web servers.
Let's set up a 486/100 system with 32MB RAM, and install a database-backed web site on top of it. I can do it with Linux and it will work perfectly. I can't even install XP or Win2k on such a system.
I can name you couple of security holes in .NET Read the following article. If you want more, I can send more: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-898302.html
What I think about .NET:
.NET is not very different than Java system. Why should I change into C# from Java when Java has hundreds of already ready to use components, frameworks (Apache etc. Check Sourceforge and Freshmeat for thousands of open source Java libraries, programs etc.), millions of developers behind?
C# has improvements over Java (autoboxing, double checking algorithm works for singletons etc.), but not significant. With Java, I can do everything that I can do with C#. So, I see no point in shifting to C#.
VB.NET is a limited C#. They are same languages with different syntax since they were built on top of common language. VB.NET is closer to C# than it is to VB. Why is it supported? :
1. MS had to support VB. Lots of legacy developers.
2. But, MS also knows that having two languages which are functionally same but different in syntax does not make sense, so it did not include all the features included in C#. They are marketing it as C# is "the" language, you should start .NET with C#. But, VB users!! We do not forget you. You can use VB.NET for some time. Bullocks. VB.NET is not VB. Clasical Billy lies.
On how many platforms .NET code is running now? Java code is running on Mac OS 9, OSX, Beos, FreeBSD, Linux, Unix, All Windows Clones etc NOW.
Surprise, surprise!!!! Performance tests show that .NET and Java are not very different in speed. Java even beats .NET in many categories. Here is the one from the Queens University: http://www2.fit.qut.edu.au/CompSci/PLAS/ComponentPascal/virtual_machines.pdf
This is from the .net security holes article. I provided the link at the beginning:
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The hacker presented the results of his analysis of ASP.Net, the Web services portion of the .Net Framework, at the conference Thursday. While he found several vulnerabilities in some components of the framework, his main criticisms fell on the heads of Microsoft's documentation writers.
"Most developer resources are wrong!" he wrote in a slide, adding that each of the five most popular ASP.Net books fails to mention at least one of several common .Net security problems.
In addition, the primary example that programmers will look to in developing .Net Web applications--Microsoft's IBuySpy store Web application--has a Unicode vulnerability and leaves two project files configured so as to be accessible by anyone on the Web, Moore said.
Finally, he added, the Microsoft Developer Network documentation instructs developers to create a file containing people's passwords and places it in a directory accessible from the Web--a definite security no-no.
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