THEORY AND PRACTICE

.NET Unites Development

by Lowell Rapaport

Whether .NET is successful or not at competing with Java for server-side applications, it is probably here to stay and Windows programmers will have to learn to deal with it. That's because the .NET tools will give Microsoft's application development tools some uniformity.

Prior to .NET, Microsoft offered a number of development tools including Visual C, Visual Basic, C++, Visual FoxPro, and Visual Basic for Applications such as Access, Excel and FoxPro. Each of these development tools came with integrated development environments (IDEs) that were incompatible with each other. The result was that if you had some programmers working in Visual Basic and some working in Visual C, their work had to be integrated using distributed common objects or dynamically linked libraries.

"Visual Studio .NET brings all development tools, even those from third-party suppliers, into a single IDE," says Mike Iem, Microsoft's Visual Basic .NET product manager. "This lets programmers working in different languages develop in that same space." Unifying all IDEs under the .NET banner removes much of the complexity in making different software components work together. One instance where this is valuable to enterprise users is when two large organizations merge their software development operations.

Another application of the unified .NET IDE is to enable developers to use application-specific programming languages. "Some languages are better for some purposes than others," said Iem. "Perl, for example, is good at handling text, while languages like Fortran are good for advanced math. The .NET IDE will let developers use these different languages side by side."

The ability to use application-specific programming languages could be a boon to the integration of content management systems with other types of software. The unified .Net IDE fits with the effort of leading vendors to offer "content infrastructure" that serves content needs within any application. .NET will enable different software vendors to partner more easily because they will be able to combine their source-code libraries in a single environment rather than tying together semi-independent application objects.

The .NET IDE will encourage developers to use software components written in different languages like Java and Perl for Web programming and Cobol and Visual Basic for applications such as document management. Using different programming languages will let programmers work from their strengths rather than force them into proprietary and perhaps unfamiliar programming environments. Corporate development departments, meanwhile, will hire programmers based on their application expertise rather than their experience with a particular language.