Confessions of a Desktop developer….

I must confess.  I have not always been a fan of Web development.  I have been a developer for over 12 years and most of that time I have been developing Desktop applications.  I always found JavaScript to be more painful than useful. I’ve always been a big fan of WinForms/WPF and C# .NET. I viewed HTML and JavaScript as a limited technology, not suitable for building LOB (line of business) applications.

At my last company we developed a large WPF application that was rolled out to over  1,000 users.  This application had 14 real-time integration points and on average we had 500+ concurrent users worldwide.  WPF allowed us to make a really stylish UIs and I fell in love with Data Templates.

Just 4 months ago I received a phone call from a friend. He explained to me how his company was planning to rewrite one of their core strategic applications.  I thought “awesome!”  After all, what geeky developer doesn’t want the opportunity to “completely” rewrite an application from the ground up?  So, I changed jobs.

At the new job, step1 – choose a technology platform. My first thought was of Silverlight.  It runs on Windows and Mac (and we could say Linux too). For me, going from WPF to Silverlight was a no-brainer.  But, as we researched our customers’ needs and talked to them about technologies they are adapting we kept hearing the same story, “Silverlight is dead or dying, Microsoft is moving away from it”.  My heart sunk. HTML 5 and JavaScript, do I have to go there? L.

Now, I’m not going to argue the merits of Silverlight versus HTML 5.  You can find those arguments all over the web.  And I’m sure they will go on for years.  

With our need to support multiple platforms (Windows, MAC,  and Mobile devices and the current view of Silverlight’s future,  the decision was made to use HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript for the UI. Yes, my heart sunk.

Well what to do? Being a professional (I cried at home and did research at work) I started to look at what people had been doing with JavaScript and frameworks.  I was very surprised; I found a lot of good stuff.  JavaScript frameworks have come a long way and there are a lot of them.

It’s been 4 months now and I’ve learned a lot. In the coming weeks and months, I plan to post about my experiences good and bad.  I still like Silverlight but my perception of HTML and JavaScript is starting to change.  It’s not that subpar technology that I hated to work with years ago.  It will be interesting to see what happens to Silverlight in the future but for my current future it’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Join us for our first MeetUp:

So many technologies, so little time

Choosing technologies and Tools

Are you thinking of migrating an application from the desktop to the web?  Are you wondering if you can reuse most of your existing code?  Are you not sure what technologies and vendor tools to use?  Well you’re not alone.  We are in the beginning stages of doing it ourselves. We have a goal to migrate one of our strategic applications from the desktop to the web over the next 2+ years and we want to share our highs and lows (and maybe some anxiety along the way) with you as we travel this journey.  Come join us in our technology Therapy sessions. 

Our first (therapy) session: “So many technologies, so little time”. 

• HTML 5 (what happened to 4, 3, 2, and 1? ) 
• AJAX (are we cleaning Windows?) 
• Compass,CSS (be stylish, modern, have 3.) 
• JavaScript/Coffee Script (I can’t start my day without coffee) 
• Ruby on Rails, PHP/Python (I hate snakes) 
• Java (isn’t that an island in the South Pacific?) 
• .NET MVC (Most Valuable Customer?) 
• Backbone.js, KnockoutJS (knock out? Are we boxing during this session?) 
• ExtJS, YUI, Dojo, KendoUI (is this a martial arts demo?) 
• JQuery, Node.js (I’m running out of things to say) 
• JSON (are we missing an “a” in Jason name?) 
• RESTful (I’m getting tired, can I rest now?) 
• Mobile (I have an app for that) 
• FLASH (Really? Aren’t we done flexing our Air Muscles?) 
• And more

We can’t decide for you but we can share our thoughts on what we decided.

Join us on September 13 @ 6pm as we start our journey to migrate a desktop application to the web.  RSVP on MeetUp: http://www.meetup.com/Desktop-to-Web

Desktop to Web

Travel with us as we migrate one of our strategic business applications from Windows Desktop to the Web.  During this journey, we’ve decided to share our story as it happens.  Each week we will post our experiences (the good and the bad).  We will detail both the technologies we’ve chosen and why we chose them.   Our postings will likely range from what ORM we decide to use, to our struggles with JavaScript OO patterns. Additionally, like all technology groups, we will probably have some disagreements and we hope to be able to share them for your benefit.

We’re also looking forward to sharing our triumphs and challenges face-to-face.  Once each quarter we will schedule a get-together (with food and drinks J ) in the Boston area.  During these get-togethers, one of our developers will present on a topic of their choosing.  After the presentation, we will have a round table discussion to talk about the topic.  Our goal is to share our experience as well as draw on the experiences of other people.

This journey is scheduled to take us about 2 years.  In that time we hope to provide some useful learning experiences as we travel down this road.

Here are some of the presentations topics we plan to cover:

• Determining what technologies and tools to use
• Design patterns for the web 
• RESTFUL services 
• Security 
• Hosting challenges
• And more….