The target market for ASP.NET is programmers. But
Microsoft believes that in the near future, the balance
of tasks in Web development will shift to programming. In
essence, they believe the days of the .htm file are
numbered.
If you look at today's most popular Web sites, you can
sense the mechanical precision and underlying databases.
e-Commerce sites like Amazon and e-Bay are clearly front-
ends to databases. Sites like CNN, MSNBC, and ESPN are
clearly pulling stories and pictures from content
management databases and plugging them into programmed
templates. Sites like these *don't* have office buildings
full of people hand-crafting Web pages.
Fat-client distributed applications are dead or dying.
Almost no one writes business systems as Windows
applications anymore. For ease of deployment, for e-
Commerce, and for many other reasons, organizations want
their business systems to be Web-based.
ASP was a great technology but its not up to the task of
developing these large systems. It's a hodgepodge of
scripting languages, ActiveX controls, and code
interspersed with HTML. It's enough to drive a real
programmer screaming from the room.
So, with the rise in Web programming and the weakness of
ASP for large applications, Microsoft invented ASP.NET.
And I must tell you, professional programmers who
previously wrote ASP or VB Windows apps have stampeded
toward ASP.NET.
So, what's a Web designer to do? In large organizations,
Web designers and Web programmers will probably remain
separate groups. The designers will do the page layouts
and the programmers will do the databases and program
code. Over time, there will probably be fewer designers,
more programmers, and more content developers, but how
that plays with ever-increasing volumes remains to be
seen.
For private consultants and small shops, the picture is
less clear. I suspect most small clients would balk at
the expense of custom programming, and would therefore be
willing to accept off-the shelf solutions even if the fit
isn't perfect. So perhaps custom programming is less
important in that segment.
I believe that eventually, though, ASP.NET will become
pervasive, if for no other reason than Microsoft dropping
support for ASP (which Microsoft has announced they will
do, but not anytime soon.)
Right now, Visual Studio is a great tool for programming
but it's very weak for Web design. Contrarily, Web design
tools like FrontPage are weak for ASP.NET coding. It
would help a lot if these tools moved closer together.
As to learning resources, I usually recommend my book Web
Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition, even
though it's a couple of years old now.
Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*----------------------------------------------------
|\---------------------------------------------------
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out
||---------------------------------------------------
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming
|| (All from Microsoft Press)
|/---------------------------------------------------
*----------------------------------------------------
