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Monday, June 24, 2002 |
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Tony and I were discussing our .Net direction last week. There are a couple of things I need to share that explain why there has not been much visible progress on our use of .Net on this team. First off, Anson Liu, the Product Steward for Visual Studio .Net, has set some pretty demanding machine requirements for the installation of .Net. More so than what .Net requires. This is good in that, for the first time, the company is acknowledging that software developers generally need a better grade of machine than those they are developing applications for. The downside is that our group has only three machines that meet these new standards. Tony and I are working with John Speciale on a plan for upgrading machines to meet the .Net requirements. Our leases start coming up this September and will continue coming up through August 2003. Those machines whose leases expire late in 2003 are probably the ones we will focus on upgrading. However, we also need to take into account who uses the machine and the likliehood they will be doing .Net development. That brings me to the next point. We made a big investment in training Don and Rene by sending them to Geurilla .Net. It was also a big investment in time and effort on their part. It is only right that we direct the first .Net projects their way. We also have a comittment to developing employees. Following Don and Rene, .Net elgible projects will be directed to employees before contractors. There is a third consideration here. Before we can deploy any .Net projects on our servers we need to do some regression testing to ensure that existing applications will not be harmed. I know, they really shouldn't be, but we are all going to look pretty silly if something goes wrong. It pays to do the due diligence work. The testing is not a big effort, but budgeting the time for it is. It just is not a priority at the moment (relative to the other projects we are all working on). One final, personal observation. .Net is not a panacea. It is not right for every project. While .Net could certainly be used on any number of small projects as a learning exercise, most of those could be done just as easily using the current toolset. It is fun stuff, but we also need to keep in mind that it is just a tool. |
