You'd be surprised, since the company I work for uses Microsoft for nearly everything, they'll gladly jump onto anything Microsoft technology-wise. Heck I had to convince most of my colleagues that an open-source library wasn't the end of the world.
What one person calls free online courses, others call marketing materials. The knowledge obtained in most of them is not easily transferable to other technology stacks.
What one person calls free online courses, others call marketing material
These are both. Not just one, nor just the other
The knowledge obtained in most of them is not easily transferable to other technology stack.
that is questionable at least. For example for programming laguages they teach both the language and the tools. The language is easily transferable. Well it's not even a transfer, it's just the language [1]. And the tools might be pretty similar depending on which stask you transfer to.
[1] apart from possible minor differences of course, like in the C++ compiler. Not sure if there is a difference for things like JavaScript?
A bit of the JS stuff seems to be geared towards writing Windows 8 UI apps... so that's not really transferable, but I think it is at least interesting... Also, some of it can apply to say GTK apps.
It might have been a different training program, but Microsoft used to award points for completing these kinds of training exercises, which you could redeem for physical goods like keyboard, mice, xbox controllers, games etc. So it was pretty clearly a marketing device back then.
> The knowledge obtained in most of them is not easily transferable to other technology stacks
That's not really a problem when you are interested in learning this specific technology stack.
This is complaining that learning Windows Server administration didn't prepare you for managing a Linux server. At some point in time, you learn specifics.
As much as I understand what you're saying in here (and I'm not defending Microsoft, because it's not my favourite tech company), would you expect them giving courses about J2EE and how to use Erlang?
I can say I was at least a little surprised they didn't have anything for node.js, considering how much they're starting to use it internally, and how much they've invested into getting node.js working as a first class citizen in Windows.
I don't know about Erlang, but a lot of J2EE deployments are on Windows servers. It would make some sense even if the goal was to sell Windows servers.
You're right about deployments of J2EE on Windows servers, my point here was that they might have guides on how to tie some knots together to make Java <> Windows play nicely, but I wouldn't expect too much. After all, Microsofts target is providing you with full solution to your business needs.
They need to start giving free guides, giving software (BizSpark) might not be enough if people don't know how to use it. And as much as I dislike some of the policies which Microsoft has, I would be lying when telling, that I didn't found pleasure while working with tools like SQLServer or the.
Also, as tracker1 said below - I'm also surprised with node. They know that getting some other languages (ruby, python) to work on Windows can be a bit "hard", especially in production deployments (try using some tools written in ruby, like veewee + vagrant + virtualbox combo), you would expect that they would at least advertise nodejs more.
These are actually courses on how to order food at French McDonald's stores. They are absolutely useless if you want to go to any other restaurant in France.
They are not even complaints, just a mild general annoyance with the whole Microsoft thing, happens often on HN. Nothing wrong with it, except:
Since I happened to have subscribed to some of MS's tech stack, I would find it interesting to read about specific problem with MS tech. For example, RoR's security and performance issues are discussed in great detail here, may I assume that Microsoft MVC 5 (as a direct competitor to RoR) is scalable, secure and well designed?
I'm writing a multitenant (serving different domains)hosted CMS with mvc 4 (will update dlls to mvc5 and code to async soon ). if your architecture is good and you know how to do caching you will be good to go for many users to come :) (asuming you have nginx in front iis is simply not designed for that purpose)
I have to disagree here... IIS does extremely well with static resources, and tends to tie well into the file system caching. If you don't need to go through so much as say HAProxy or Varnish in front of IIS, I wouldn't really bother with nginx, unless you use nginx as a reverse proxy to several IIS servers.
.Net as an application stack has some weight to it, so fronting several .Net servers with nginx makes sense. Just wanting to point out that putting a reverse proxy in front of your application before, or unless you need to and already have the infrastructure in place, don't do it. And, again IIS does very well with static resources, and Application Request Routing (ARR, which is an IIS reverse proxy system) does really well also. I've used ARR a number of times to front node.js based apps (API services) with IIS.
Don't get me wrong, if you have nginx servers, and want to reverse-proxy for load balancing reasons, go for it. If you are simply wanting to improve serving static resources, IIS does very well here. Mixed loads are what tends to drag things down.
That little sub-thread was...ok. Informative, but a bit low on the drama.
Still no dark clouds over that Visual Studio icon. Microsoft might be "dead", but the "Developers Developers Developers" warcry echoes on, and the cushy jobs and well-paid freelancing gigs will be there for many years to come!
That's funny... where I work now, most new development is being done in node.js, with a migration strategy to get most of our backend (for the apps I work with) onto node.js by the end of the year (from .Net) ...
I've been pushing for node.js (as a JS, and node fan) for the better part of the past 5 years now (since node started)... So, definitely not tied to MS, but do make my living on supporting their tech stack, for the time being.
I just wanted to point out that simply fronting IIS with nginx is a flawed idea, unless you have reason to do so, and/or already have the nginx infrastructure in place.
Same goes for PHP and Ruby on Rails. Hater's gonna hate.
I ignore 90% of negativity on HN unless there is constructive criticism.
I do what I like and there is no one out there that will change my opinion of it. Because if I was to follow everyone's opinion, nothing would get done and I would not be as successful as I currently am :)
Seems decent enough to me.
If I can park a non-tech staffer on an Excel course for an hour instead of having to hold his/hers hand and explain how a spreadsheet works I call that a win.
I was thinking the JavaScript for absolute beginners also looked like a good one for getting non-programmers into.
I don't think that JS is necessarily the best learning language, but it's definitely about as wide spread as it gets (being out of the box for every modern OS that comes with a browser).
They were already giving their products to schools for free (or very cheap), and encouraging classes to be specific to Microsoft products. This is merely the logical next step.
I would think this would probably have come before some of the school deals. I don't feel that this is a bad thing in general, and honestly far better than some of the backroom deals they've done.
Okay, I watched the first Visual Web Developer (VWD)
video. Questions for anyone out of the first grade
with this stuff; four questions:
(1) I'm building a Web site where the server side
code is in Visual Basic .NET with use of classes
from the .NET Framework and also from ASP.NET and
ADO.NET, but as far as I know I'm not using the
'framework' of 'model, view, controller' (MVC) and,
so far, see no such need. What's the big deal of
MVC?
That is, the code for one of my Web pages has
standard, 'reserved named', ASP.NET 'event handlers'
Sub Page_Init
Sub Page_Load
Sub Page_PreRender
Sub Page_Unload
So, when I need to do something, say, with SQL
Server database or communicate with a server in my
'server farm', e.g., my session state server and two
more I have, I just write a function in the code of
the Web page and call it from an appropriate one of
those standard ASP.NET event handlers.
Question 1: I see nothing wrong with this approach
to 'code organization' and, thus, am missing the
big deal of MVC. What the heck am I missing about
the value of MVC?
(2) [Long question] What am I missing on The video
explained how the VWD 'integrated development
environment' (IDE) is easier to use as something to
type into than Microsoft's Notepad. It's also
easier to use than a sharp stick on a wet clay
tablet!
But I don't type into Notepad and, instead, use my
favorite programmable editor I've used for
essentially all my typing for some decades, KEdit.
That editor is a PC version of IBM's mainframe
editor XEDIT, and the macro language is Mike
Cowlishaw's elegant Rexx.
From all I can see writing code, KEdit looks much
better than Visual Studio, especially since my
project 'folder' is really simple and easy to
understand and since I get to write macros to
automate some work whenever helpful. The times I
looked at all the files Visual Studio creates for a
'project'; they were a lot to understand; I didn't
understand them; and I fear that in case there were
problems I would have to understand them. Bummer.
E.g., here's a variable: What is its type, that is,
where is its Visual Basic (VB) Dim statement, and
what is the scope of the variable, i.g., where the
heck was it declared? Where else have I used this
variable?
My guess would be that any good, programmable editor
could be as powerful as KEdit or better -- Emacs
anyone?
E.g., some of my comments are really 'code section
delimiters' recognized by some of my KEdit macros
and, this way, I can get some easy views of the
overall organization of my code, e.g., for scope of
names.
E.g., my most recent nice KEdit macro is BEIDC for
'begin, end insert dated comment'. So, I get, say
' BEGIN Modified at 11:31:29 on Monday, February 17th, 2014.
' END Modified at 11:31:29 on Monday, February 17th, 2014.
and then type code and comments between these two.
Another macro lets me see all lines with, say, the
fourth token on one of those two lines, and that
operation is sufficient for me, given one of those
two comments, to move to just where the other one
is.
And I have macros that make use of KEdit's 'point'
facility that lets me give names to 'pointers' to
particular lines. One macros shows me all such
'pointers' and saves them to a file for loading,
say, the next day. So, with these pointers, I can
jump around in a file quickly. So, maybe the code I
am writing needs to draw from three other places in
my file; so have four such 'line pointers'. Works
well, and a dozen more lines of macro code can make
it work better.
For 'Intellisense', from all I can see and saw in
the VWD video, no thanks: For the classes in the
.NET Framework, there are some thousands, my guess,
20,000+, Web pages of documentation at Microsoft's
MSDN Web site. So, before I ...
At some points I guessed that it was
easier for me to develop what I wanted
using KEdit and its macro language
than just to find how to do the same
things from the Visual Studio documentation.
You can right click any file in Solution Explorer and choose Open With KEdit. Visual studio will recognize the change and if the file is open ask you to reload.
Assuming these are genuine and not the world's longest rhetorical questions:
1) There is nothing wrong with your approach. There is nothing that can be done using ASP.NET MVC that cannot be done with the ASP.NET Webforms pattern (I'm not sure if there is a generic term for the single-file pattern that classic ASP, JSP, AOLServer, etc use). You are smart and working alone, and quite likely the innovations in your application will not be made in the way in which you concatenate strings to generate HTML.
2) Again, you are not missing anything by using your years of experience with KEdit and Rexx, except possibly a job working on internal HR applications at an insurance company. Intellisense and VWD are tools designed for programmers with a range of experience to be productive enough so as not to be a net loss for their team. I make websites with ASP.NET MVC and use Visual Studio to do it. Would I consider KEdit? Probably not--I lack your experience with KEdit, and when I want to deal exclusively with text I use Emacs. And why use intellisense? Your method of creating abstracts for the .NET class library is a great one, and one that a lot of people could learn from. But that is not reality in the everyday .NET development world. Intellisense allows those developers to navigate both the .NET libraries and their teammates' ad-hoc classes.
3) I'll pass--I didn't watch the video.
4) Almost certainly the text box was generated as an example. It's possible that most sites using javascript nowadays do so only because yet other sites use javascript. But where javascript is used well it is indispensable. Part of the original appeal of both Google Maps and Gmail was the pleasant user interface enabled with javascript. If your site is a means to an end and the users are willing to put a lot of effort into the result--say, as an extreme example, a form that takes some account information and literally gives the user money--there is little you could gain from javascript. But if you want to do what you can to make a user's experience a pleasant or even delightful one, javascript is frequently the best way to achieve that.
No, the questions are not just rhetorical
and, instead, are fully real for me.
Yes, so far, at least for my version 1.0
live site (soon, soon, soon!), it seems
to me that my simple HTML and CSS without
any JavaScript from me will provide a good
enough 'user interface' with a good enough
'user experience'. One advantage of my
approach: It's dirt simple for the user.
Yes, the user interface of Google Maps
is astounding, but I did have to download
and enable a Firefox plug-in. I recently
used Google Maps to find the house I
grew up in, the house of my high school
girlfriend, the house of my wife's family,
my current house, etc. Amazing work.
My Web site needs nothing like that.
So, my site has nothing that pops up,
pulls down, or jumps around.
The Google home page was long very simple --
just type into a 'text box' and hit enter
and get back some pages of links with
some short descriptions. Now, of course,
apparently each keystroke into the text
box goes back to a Google server which
does amazing things and updates the screen,
sometimes once for each keystroke --
nice programming, timing, etc., but it
will be a long time until my Web site
needs such nice refinement.
46 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadhttp://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/Content/ViewContent.a...
Really, is like bashing a company just because it is called Microsoft. What if I tell you there are hackers who love it?
Not credible. It's a contradiction in terms.
These are both. Not just one, nor just the other
The knowledge obtained in most of them is not easily transferable to other technology stack.
that is questionable at least. For example for programming laguages they teach both the language and the tools. The language is easily transferable. Well it's not even a transfer, it's just the language [1]. And the tools might be pretty similar depending on which stask you transfer to.
[1] apart from possible minor differences of course, like in the C++ compiler. Not sure if there is a difference for things like JavaScript?
That's not really a problem when you are interested in learning this specific technology stack.
This is complaining that learning Windows Server administration didn't prepare you for managing a Linux server. At some point in time, you learn specifics.
You're right about deployments of J2EE on Windows servers, my point here was that they might have guides on how to tie some knots together to make Java <> Windows play nicely, but I wouldn't expect too much. After all, Microsofts target is providing you with full solution to your business needs.
They need to start giving free guides, giving software (BizSpark) might not be enough if people don't know how to use it. And as much as I dislike some of the policies which Microsoft has, I would be lying when telling, that I didn't found pleasure while working with tools like SQLServer or the.
Also, as tracker1 said below - I'm also surprised with node. They know that getting some other languages (ruby, python) to work on Windows can be a bit "hard", especially in production deployments (try using some tools written in ruby, like veewee + vagrant + virtualbox combo), you would expect that they would at least advertise nodejs more.
Unfortunately, this is much more a tool for extending their lock-in than one to educate professionals about the current state of the art.
I guess Microsoft can't even give away free training materials without criticism.
Since I happened to have subscribed to some of MS's tech stack, I would find it interesting to read about specific problem with MS tech. For example, RoR's security and performance issues are discussed in great detail here, may I assume that Microsoft MVC 5 (as a direct competitor to RoR) is scalable, secure and well designed?
.Net as an application stack has some weight to it, so fronting several .Net servers with nginx makes sense. Just wanting to point out that putting a reverse proxy in front of your application before, or unless you need to and already have the infrastructure in place, don't do it. And, again IIS does very well with static resources, and Application Request Routing (ARR, which is an IIS reverse proxy system) does really well also. I've used ARR a number of times to front node.js based apps (API services) with IIS.
Don't get me wrong, if you have nginx servers, and want to reverse-proxy for load balancing reasons, go for it. If you are simply wanting to improve serving static resources, IIS does very well here. Mixed loads are what tends to drag things down.
Still no dark clouds over that Visual Studio icon. Microsoft might be "dead", but the "Developers Developers Developers" warcry echoes on, and the cushy jobs and well-paid freelancing gigs will be there for many years to come!
I've been pushing for node.js (as a JS, and node fan) for the better part of the past 5 years now (since node started)... So, definitely not tied to MS, but do make my living on supporting their tech stack, for the time being.
I just wanted to point out that simply fronting IIS with nginx is a flawed idea, unless you have reason to do so, and/or already have the nginx infrastructure in place.
I ignore 90% of negativity on HN unless there is constructive criticism.
I do what I like and there is no one out there that will change my opinion of it. Because if I was to follow everyone's opinion, nothing would get done and I would not be as successful as I currently am :)
I'm also always looking for HTML/CSS/JavaScript classes that might reach non-Programmers. I might sit someone down in front of: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/html...
... and see what happens.
I don't think that JS is necessarily the best learning language, but it's definitely about as wide spread as it gets (being out of the box for every modern OS that comes with a browser).
Tried to sign up and got a "Federation error"! Excellent
(1) I'm building a Web site where the server side code is in Visual Basic .NET with use of classes from the .NET Framework and also from ASP.NET and ADO.NET, but as far as I know I'm not using the 'framework' of 'model, view, controller' (MVC) and, so far, see no such need. What's the big deal of MVC?
That is, the code for one of my Web pages has standard, 'reserved named', ASP.NET 'event handlers'
So, when I need to do something, say, with SQL Server database or communicate with a server in my 'server farm', e.g., my session state server and two more I have, I just write a function in the code of the Web page and call it from an appropriate one of those standard ASP.NET event handlers.Question 1: I see nothing wrong with this approach to 'code organization' and, thus, am missing the big deal of MVC. What the heck am I missing about the value of MVC?
(2) [Long question] What am I missing on The video explained how the VWD 'integrated development environment' (IDE) is easier to use as something to type into than Microsoft's Notepad. It's also easier to use than a sharp stick on a wet clay tablet!
But I don't type into Notepad and, instead, use my favorite programmable editor I've used for essentially all my typing for some decades, KEdit. That editor is a PC version of IBM's mainframe editor XEDIT, and the macro language is Mike Cowlishaw's elegant Rexx.
From all I can see writing code, KEdit looks much better than Visual Studio, especially since my project 'folder' is really simple and easy to understand and since I get to write macros to automate some work whenever helpful. The times I looked at all the files Visual Studio creates for a 'project'; they were a lot to understand; I didn't understand them; and I fear that in case there were problems I would have to understand them. Bummer.
E.g., here's a variable: What is its type, that is, where is its Visual Basic (VB) Dim statement, and what is the scope of the variable, i.g., where the heck was it declared? Where else have I used this variable?
My guess would be that any good, programmable editor could be as powerful as KEdit or better -- Emacs anyone?
E.g., some of my comments are really 'code section delimiters' recognized by some of my KEdit macros and, this way, I can get some easy views of the overall organization of my code, e.g., for scope of names.
E.g., my most recent nice KEdit macro is BEIDC for 'begin, end insert dated comment'. So, I get, say
and then type code and comments between these two. Another macro lets me see all lines with, say, the fourth token on one of those two lines, and that operation is sufficient for me, given one of those two comments, to move to just where the other one is.And I have macros that make use of KEdit's 'point' facility that lets me give names to 'pointers' to particular lines. One macros shows me all such 'pointers' and saves them to a file for loading, say, the next day. So, with these pointers, I can jump around in a file quickly. So, maybe the code I am writing needs to draw from three other places in my file; so have four such 'line pointers'. Works well, and a dozen more lines of macro code can make it work better.
For 'Intellisense', from all I can see and saw in the VWD video, no thanks: For the classes in the .NET Framework, there are some thousands, my guess, 20,000+, Web pages of documentation at Microsoft's MSDN Web site. So, before I ...
Right click a variable and choose Find All References.
At some points I guessed that it was easier for me to develop what I wanted using KEdit and its macro language than just to find how to do the same things from the Visual Studio documentation.
1) There is nothing wrong with your approach. There is nothing that can be done using ASP.NET MVC that cannot be done with the ASP.NET Webforms pattern (I'm not sure if there is a generic term for the single-file pattern that classic ASP, JSP, AOLServer, etc use). You are smart and working alone, and quite likely the innovations in your application will not be made in the way in which you concatenate strings to generate HTML.
2) Again, you are not missing anything by using your years of experience with KEdit and Rexx, except possibly a job working on internal HR applications at an insurance company. Intellisense and VWD are tools designed for programmers with a range of experience to be productive enough so as not to be a net loss for their team. I make websites with ASP.NET MVC and use Visual Studio to do it. Would I consider KEdit? Probably not--I lack your experience with KEdit, and when I want to deal exclusively with text I use Emacs. And why use intellisense? Your method of creating abstracts for the .NET class library is a great one, and one that a lot of people could learn from. But that is not reality in the everyday .NET development world. Intellisense allows those developers to navigate both the .NET libraries and their teammates' ad-hoc classes.
3) I'll pass--I didn't watch the video.
4) Almost certainly the text box was generated as an example. It's possible that most sites using javascript nowadays do so only because yet other sites use javascript. But where javascript is used well it is indispensable. Part of the original appeal of both Google Maps and Gmail was the pleasant user interface enabled with javascript. If your site is a means to an end and the users are willing to put a lot of effort into the result--say, as an extreme example, a form that takes some account information and literally gives the user money--there is little you could gain from javascript. But if you want to do what you can to make a user's experience a pleasant or even delightful one, javascript is frequently the best way to achieve that.
No, the questions are not just rhetorical and, instead, are fully real for me.
Yes, so far, at least for my version 1.0 live site (soon, soon, soon!), it seems to me that my simple HTML and CSS without any JavaScript from me will provide a good enough 'user interface' with a good enough 'user experience'. One advantage of my approach: It's dirt simple for the user.
Yes, the user interface of Google Maps is astounding, but I did have to download and enable a Firefox plug-in. I recently used Google Maps to find the house I grew up in, the house of my high school girlfriend, the house of my wife's family, my current house, etc. Amazing work. My Web site needs nothing like that.
So, my site has nothing that pops up, pulls down, or jumps around.
The Google home page was long very simple -- just type into a 'text box' and hit enter and get back some pages of links with some short descriptions. Now, of course, apparently each keystroke into the text box goes back to a Google server which does amazing things and updates the screen, sometimes once for each keystroke -- nice programming, timing, etc., but it will be a long time until my Web site needs such nice refinement.