Should I be learning .NET at this point?

[rh71]

I've been a ColdFusion web app developer for well over 15 years. I like it because it allows us to do a lot (touch everything incl. db management) without having to really dive into complex code - a sort of excuse for me to avoid Java/C# all these years - I have no experience with them. But time has come for end of support life with CF and the direction is to move to .NET (a few years for sunset with self-training upcoming). I've dabbled in PHP and some js/jquery and thought that's where I would eventually go, even if it meant leaving this job. I'm questioning whether doing .NET as a beginner would still be marketable in say, 5 years. I'm not a hardcore-at-heart programmer (exclusively writing code) - it has paid the bills - and going forward for another 20 years, I wouldn't mind staying at this level of involvement if I could.

So the fork in the road is do I venture off and away or go into .NET and stay here without reservations as far as languages go?

 

[PricklyPete]

You honestly don't sound like you want to be a programmer. If not, why don't you start thinking about what you really want to do. As a programming environment, .NET is fine...but why go in that direction if you really have no interest?

 

[rh71]

^ as mentioned, I have been here quite a while and I don't mind the programming if it's not head-down, lock myself in a room for days kind of work. I'd like to hear the honest truth.

Making it more palatable for me - CF has allowed me to create/re-write web applications in short time. They simply don't want to pay for CF Server anymore. Will I be miserable with .NET especially with the learning curve? Just as I have no experience with .NET, some may not know enough about CF in comparison to answer this, but I'm asking here hopeful that someone who went through the same sort of jump can also advise.

Maybe someone can tell me PHP is a lot more fun than .NET (even if less capable) and also just as marketable...

 

[Cogman]

Define fun.

I would find ColdFusion miserable to work with. Why? Because I like back end development work. I like writing data transformers, analyzers, and business logic. ColdFusion is not designed for that, it is designed to make web pages connected to databases.

So will you enjoy .Net? Depends. Do you like problem solving? Do you like thinking about program structure? If so, you'll probably be fine learning a new tool.

PHP will be coldfusion esq. However, from my vantage point, PHP looks to be on the way out in terms of popularity.

If you want to do primarily frontend work, I would suggest going down the javascript/node route. Learn React, Angular, or some other marketable web framework and move from there.

But ultimately, you aren't going to find a lot of server rendering going on. the world is moving away from server side rendering towards client side rendering. That means techs like MVC, ColdFusion, PHP, and a whole host of other things like RoR and Grails are on their way out. HTML + Javascript is pretty much the defacto standard for UI now-a-day.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I agree that JavaScript and layers on top of it like jQuery client side, node.js server side is where a lot of new / modern web development is moving. Many people use phones and pads as their primary computer or at least a major secondary computer, and "responsive" JavaScript apps are the write-once run-everywhere way to develop for them.

Back-end heavy lifting will still often be Java/Tomcat, C++, and even PHP as a front-end to the database or libraries written in C++.

There will be C# / .NET work for decades though, since there are millions of business applications written with them. Maintenance work could keep you busy for the rest of your life.

There will also be C++, Android's Java, Objective-C / iOS work forever too.

If you're good at most any living platform you'll be able to find work. I haven't heard ColdFusion mentioned in years so it's possibly an ex-parrot and pinin' for the fjords.

 

[sao123]

^ as mentioned, I have been here quite a while and I don't mind the programming if it's not head-down, lock myself in a room for days kind of work. I'd like to hear the honest truth.

Making it more palatable for me - CF has allowed me to create/re-write web applications in short time. They simply don't want to pay for CF Server anymore. Will I be miserable with .NET especially with the learning curve? Just as I have no experience with .NET, some may not know enough about CF in comparison to answer this, but I'm asking here hopeful that someone who went through the same sort of jump can also advise.

Maybe someone can tell me PHP is a lot more fun than .NET (even if less capable) and also just as marketable...

Marketable is not always easy to answer... depends on the target industry...

I rather enjoy ASP.net Webforms coding, and it seems that there is going to be work for years to come where I am... but working for State Government, isnt the same as working in fortune 500 companies, startups, and other places of business.
ASP.net w SQL Server is a fairly low learning curve, IMO, but depends on your level of expertise with Object Oriented Programming.
I have several previous java developers go from 0 .Net experience to independently making full fledged intranet database applications within a few weeks. (I specify internal, because they are firewalled off from the outside world)
Having the expertise to make a hardened web application which is secure enough to expose to general web traffic, is another matter entirely, that we dont let people do until they have at least 2 years of experience, and appropriate secure development training.

 

[urvile]

Yeah you probably should. One of the advantages of languages like .NET are they are general purposes and have a much better implementation of the OO paradigm than languages like javascript. Which is one of the reasons node is not suitable for enterprise work. :-O Granted there will be specific cases ;-P. I have worked on everything from distributed systems, SOA, web apps (MVC, webforms), windows services etc. all in C#.

I have spent the last couple of years specialising in MVC and javascript/jquery. Learning patterns like MVC is useful as well so is learning javascript. Basically though all of my experience is enterprise level. So I probably see things differently but there is so much code written in C# and new projects being written in C# that it is going to be around forever. Technologies like node aren't going to change how enterprise operates very much at all. Although once again there will be specific cases. ;-P

People tend to have a very web centric view when it comes to development but for the bulk of my career I didn't do any client side stuff at all and that's not that uncommon. So it potentially gives you other options.

 

[Merad]

Maybe someone can tell me PHP is a lot more fun than .NET (even if less capable) and also just as marketable...

PHP has gotten a lot of hate in the past, but supposedly recent version have improved on many of the pain points and it's not that bad now. C# is an almost universally well liked language, and IMO it has great future with open source and .NET Core. C# is more popular, but both are widely used languages that will probably be around for decades or longer. I'd hazard a guess that most people prefer C#.

If you don't really like programming that much I'm not sure the choice is all that important. Both will require a lot of learning before you're truly proficient.

But ultimately, you aren't going to find a lot of server rendering going on. the world is moving away from server side rendering towards client side rendering. That means techs like MVC, ColdFusion, PHP, and a whole host of other things like RoR and Grails are on their way out. HTML + Javascript is pretty much the defacto standard for UI now-a-day.

Eh, at the risk of a thread derail, I wouldn't bet on that. Enormous amounts of sites use server side rendering, especially if you count all the enterprise intranet sites out there. In many situations (arguably most) client side rendering is massive overkill. Yeah, you're always going to need client side rendering to power dynamic content, but I'm pretty sure the SPA "do everything on the client" fad will die off just like RoR before it.

 

[purbeast0]

Don't learn ".NET" per say, rather learn how to code backend systems in OO languages. That way you can language agnostic and can use any tools necessary to get the job done.

EDIT:

I was assuming you meant backend and not full stack in .NET technologies, but if that is the case, the same thing kind of applies. Learn concepts so that you are language agnostic and can use any technology to get the job done.

 

[Cogman]

PHP has gotten a lot of hate in the past, but supposedly recent version have improved on many of the pain points and it's not that bad now. C# is an almost universally well liked language, and IMO it has great future with open source and .NET Core. C# is more popular, but both are widely used languages that will probably be around for decades or longer. I'd hazard a guess that most people prefer C#.

If you don't really like programming that much I'm not sure the choice is all that important. Both will require a lot of learning before you're truly proficient.



Eh, at the risk of a thread derail, I wouldn't bet on that. Enormous amounts of sites use server side rendering, especially if you count all the enterprise intranet sites out there. In many situations (arguably most) client side rendering is massive overkill. Yeah, you're always going to need client side rendering to power dynamic content, but I'm pretty sure the SPA "do everything on the client" fad will die off just like RoR before it.

We've been steadily moving towards "everything on the client" if anything it is picking up steam IMO. Angular, react, vue, even Jquery are all different and thriving communities for "everything on the client".

That isn't to say server side rendering will die off, I think it will stay around for a long time. But I think it will stay around in the form of "React on the server" and "angular on the server" In other words, prerendering to save round trips and client time. What I think will die, though, is specifically server side only rendering techs, such as ASP.net, PHP, CF, JSP,, etc (and RoR, Flask, Django, Play, Grails, etc).

The Javascript community has finally embraced what it is really good at, UI interaction. And I think it is only going to gain steam going forward.

But yeah, derailed .

For OP, this is why I would say that if you want to still do UI/UX work, you're best bet is learning Javascript + a marketable JS framework.

 

[DaveSimmons]

PHP by isn't really a rendering tech though. It's more like loosely typed C++ and shell scripting that can return anything to a client -- JSON, XML, text, binary. People use the feature of embedding HTML into PHP since that's easy to do, but PHP can just be a thin wrapper around mySQL and C++ apps.

For example, we use a PHP script as a service to make customized and code-signed Windows EXE downloads with embedded license keys. The response is a binary file.

 

[razel]

If you want to continue a career in web development you have to learn .NET and PHP. It seems that JSON/REST and XML are the popular ones with in the cloud web services.

When I 1st got into my current company their primary sites were ColdFusion on offsite servers. We transitioned them internally, then over the years migrated off ColdFusion into classic asp. That overtime became .NET and we're primarily a Microsoft shop, but there's no getting around seeing PHP on other servers. There are plenty of Wordpress Blogs setup by other departments here, mostly intern millennials setting up web projects and you got to know PHP to assist them.

Most recently we've been using Alexa APIs which is primarily likes data in the JSON format, but Alexa itself is terribly documented and Amazon has a different goal from what our local government wants. No surprise, local government is non-profit, Amazon is the profit poster boy.

Regardless... CF is ancient, evolve if you want to continue a career in web development. Your competition is fast and agile. With 15 years under the belt, you may not be as fast, but you can be agile and experienced.

 

[purbeast0]

If you want to continue a career in web development you have to learn .NET and PHP.

That is 100% false just FYI.

 

[urvile]

We've been steadily moving towards "everything on the client" if anything it is picking up steam IMO. Angular, react, vue, even Jquery are all different and thriving communities for "everything on the client".

That isn't to say server side rendering will die off, I think it will stay around for a long time. But I think it will stay around in the form of "React on the server" and "angular on the server" In other words, prerendering to save round trips and client time. What I think will die, though, is specifically server side only rendering techs, such as ASP.net, PHP, CF, JSP,, etc (and RoR, Flask, Django, Play, Grails, etc).

The Javascript community has finally embraced what it is really good at, UI interaction. And I think it is only going to gain steam going forward.

But yeah, derailed .

For OP, this is why I would say that if you want to still do UI/UX work, you're best bet is learning Javascript + a marketable JS framework.

Interesting. I tend to agree. The MVC work I have been doing involves ajax calls to controller methods....the controllers are stateless. With all of the state being stored client side. It's not just angular etc. I have used third party javascript/html5 controls from telerik for example. Which allow for RAD of simple web sites. I interviewed for a job last week actually. Which if I get will involve learning and using react and it will also get me back on developing services. Which is good because javascript is the direction UIs have been going in for years but in my experience full stack is the way to go if you want a lot of career options.

Anyway...derailed? Um should I learn PHP?

 

[razel]

That is 100% false just FYI.

No... that is 100% false.

 

[purbeast0]

No... that is 100% false.

Except that you can do web development in many many technologies other than .NET and php.

 

[DaveSimmons]

No... that is 100% false.

Did you mean to say "If you want to continue a career in web development you [ DON'T ] have to learn .NET and PHP." ?

Our Amazon web services use Tomcat + Java, not .Net or PHP.

 

[urvile]

Did you mean to say "If you want to continue a career in web development you [ DON'T ] have to learn .NET and PHP." ?

Our Amazon web services use Tomcat + Java, not .Net or PHP.

Java is another good option. That was the main language we used at uni. I supect it was because the tools are open source and therefore free amongst other things. I know that linkedin also use java but it's not seen as an issue to switch between C# and java. As in they will hire people proficient in either amazon is the same.

Anyways. You cannot go wrong with either Java or C#.

EDIT: As an anecdote one of the things the company I used to work for sold. Was an air traffic control system. That was implemented in Java. Apparently it was the largest project ever undertaken using the Java programming language.

Personally I think that is pure hyperbole but it sounds good.

 

[mxnerd]

A lot of people do web development on Mac or Linux, even Windows using languages / technologies other than .NET.

Why on earth do they need to learn .NET?

 

[beginner99]

But ultimately, you aren't going to find a lot of server rendering going on. the world is moving away from server side rendering towards client side rendering. That means techs like MVC, ColdFusion, PHP, and a whole host of other things like RoR and Grails are on their way out. HTML + Javascript is pretty much the defacto standard for UI now-a-day.

Fully agree, As a good UI developer there is a lot of money to be made. But getting good, that is the hard part as competition is also big, a lot bigger than CF.

 

[Staples]

.NET Core or ASP.NET Core is fine but the learning curve is pretty high (partially because it is newish and there are not a whole lot of learning resources and also that is it designed for huge MVC projects). There is a market but a lot of other technologies are probably bigger because they are cheaper. The trade off is that ASP.NET Core will be around for a while and supported forever (this is Microsoft after all).

I've studied many of the "big" modern technologies. You can do everything with ASP.NET that you can with Ruby on Rails, Django, Node, etc. Javascript with a few big name frameworks is the big thing nowadays. People spend a lot more resources on that than back end programming.

 

[rh71]

^ I just read more about ASP.NET Core and how it's so different than ASP.NET and has its own VS Code IDE.

Does the server environment need to be any different (than ASP.NET) to support it? If yes, I suppose I'd have to start old school.

As I mentioned, I'm going to re-write web apps (starting with simpler ones) anyway - so thought this would be a better/wiser starting point.

 

[PricklyPete]

Personally, I’d start boning up on Angular 2/Typescript. Maybe even extend that to Ionic framework and Firebase as your backend. You can even use VS Code as your IDE if you want.

 

[Staples]

I can't comment on the server configuration. Visual Studio has their own integrated server so when you hit F5, it runs in the IDE. I've only run stuff off Azure and of course they support Microsoft's latest. I've only tinkered with ASP.NET web forms (well actually more than tinkered), MFC and .NET Core so I am far from a regular everyday "user." I am a big fan of Razor web pages. If you need to build something simple on just about any modern Microsoft server, Razor web pages is a neat crafty language implementation.

https://www.asp.net/web-pages

It was made for an old IDE called WebMatrix but works just as well in Visual Studio.

 

[mxnerd]

Razar syntax really looks neat!

Embedding C# code in a webpage is so easy.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/mvc/views/razor