The Future Of ASP.NET
I've noted Darren's posts on ASP.NET v2 lately and it's got me thinking.
ASP.NET was a major step up from ASP and ASP.NET v2 is another great step up. For what it's designed to do, it's really really good.
BUT, I'm wondering what you all think the future of ASP.NET is in say 5 years.
My take on it is this:
ASP apps appeared mostly to deal with deployment issues. ASP.NET apps are much better apps than the original. But, in every discussion I ever see on them, the benefits are always targeted at the IT deparment and deployment issues, never on customer or end-user desires. I can't imagine a customer or end-user choosing a web app over a richer alternative from a functionality or usability point of view.
If the deployment issues of things like smart client apps (or some other form of rich app) are satisfactorily dealt with, where does that leave ASP.NET?
The only remaining territory seems to be cross-browser, cross-platform support but almost every ASP.NET app I see, ends up being limited to IE6 (or at least IE5+) and doesn't seem to really deal with cross-platform effectively because of a need to do a whole bunch of client-side (often client-specific) java stuff.
So, I'm wondering what you think that means for architectural decisions for new projects today.
Love to hear your thoughts.
Regards,
Greg (now ducking)