Comments on: Identifying a bias against Windows and .NET.

By: Bias does not arise from pointing out technological flaws.

Bias does not arise from pointing out technological flaws. — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 12:49:02 +0000

[…] accusations of bias when the flaws of a particular technology are pointed out. This is something I wrote about fairly recently, after I was accused of having a “bias” against Windows and .NET […]

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 03:11:21 +0000

Dr.Dichotomous: Re wrong tool, suboptimal results.

Agreed. I wish the post had made that more clear. The lessons learned seemed, to me, to blame the tool rather than the developer. Without knowing the full picture, it’s hard to make a judgment about how the requirements were gathered or the time/budget constrains the developers were under. But in general, if you have a problem with an application not meeting the users needs, the problem lies with the developer.

By: Joshua Volz

Joshua Volz — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:04:52 +0000

While AJAX is likely too limited for their needs, the failure isn’t really in AJAX. It’s in the people who decided to use AJAX. I would argue the same for .NET and SQL Server. Because the programmers who chose the technologies didn’t choose well for their problem doesn’t mean that those technologies couldn’t be made to create a good solution, even in that problem space if the technologies chosen were correctly applied.

By: Dr.Dichotomous

Dr.Dichotomous — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:27:47 +0000

Scott, you fail to see the point entirely. This isn’t about the quality of the programmers. AJAX is too limited because using a web interface itself is too limited for the type of use case they were designing for.

It also isn’t about two hammers either. Honestly, it’s like giving someone a brand new car when their old jeep was what they really needed. They both get you from point A to point B, but the jeep could go places the cat was never designed to go.

It’s obviously not just just the use of AJAX, because the team that implemented the new system obviously had no idea what the users needed. But therein lies the problem: the wrong tools chosen by the wrong people yield suboptimal results.

Regardless of whether it was CGI/C or Ruby on Rails, you’ll still get a suboptimal system with a web front-end for many use cases. You don’t change an expert’s tools for them - you let them choose new tools when they must.

I have helped develop web applications that use AJAX, and I love the technology. But it’s only a good solution in a few situations; the way the web preaches about it you’d think it was the solution to everything.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:42:19 +0000

Saying “don’t use AJAX” or “All it indicates is that the software in question was not capable of performing what needed to be done.” is like blaming your hammer because your nail didn’t drive straight into the wood. The proper tools, in the proper hands can produce the desired result.

Do you think a web based front end using CGI and C on the backend would have produced the desired results?

By: Javier Posada

Javier Posada — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 15:36:42 +0000

After I read your post, before I read the reddit comments, I too got twinge of anti-Windows/.NET sentiment from you. I didn’t post in the reddit comments though

I think the reason your blog posting came off as anti-Windows/.NET/AJAX is primarily because of a couple of the “major lessons” bullet points at the end.

The two in particular are:

# Use mature, well-tested, effective software (eg. Solaris, Oracle, FreeBSD).
# Avoid immature fad