Let me see if I can clarify what you said Brock.
OOP is "simpler" in a sense than procedural programming, because of things
like Encapsulation (which hides complexity), and Inheritance (which gives
you the ability to develop new classes from existing classes without having
to duplicate code). Procedural programming is fine for small projects, but
when one has a large, complex project, it can get very complicated to follow
the single thread of execution through the whole app. OOP allows things to
be "compartmentalized" so that you can deal only with those aspects of
things which you need to, and can ignore those aspects which you need to
ignore.
Big things are made up of lots of little things. In OOP, once you get one
little thing tested and right, you can ignore it, as its functionality is
encapsulated. Procedural programming has some aspects of this, with
functions, structures, etc, but lacks true encapsulation, and is, in
essence, one big thing, rather than true components.
You also have the advantage of being able to work at whatever level of
programming you need to, from massive classes that you can drag and drop in
the designer, all the way down to OS-level and even lower if you need it.
Due to its power, and the sheer immensity of the CLR, it seems more complex.
But in the long run, it means more development in less time, for someone who
knows how to take advantage of its features.
--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
What You Seek Is What You Get.
Brock Allen said:
Well, putting on my marketing hat.
Skeptisism I have do have towards all this. Because, to be perfectly
honest, Classic ASP actually covers 90% of my needs without any
problems plus another 5% with some fiddling, so .NET really has to be
really tasty for me to want to unlearn everything I know to gain an
extra 5% functionality. But I am willing to try.
ASP.NET makes that 90% happen faster, meaning you're much more productive.
Also, ASP covers 90% of your current needs, but having the .NET runtime
under you gives you so much more functionality. Once I started working
with .NET I never wanted to go back to either C++ or ASP.
Ok, I'll take off my marketing hat now.
I not really a drag-and-drop person although I am firm believer in
code recycling. So I will not, as you suggest yourself, rewrite the
datagrid for each project.
I am with you on this one. I have a personal dislike for the designer and
I do 95% of all my web development in the HTML view (not the designer).
BTW, you are the first person I have seen, claiming that .NET
development is "simple". Mostly what I hear is that "ASP.NET is a lot
more complicated but it is worth the pain because of [blah, blah]".
Yes and no. Once you are comfortable with the abstractions affored to you
a developer then yes it does become simpler, in a sense. But to provide
those abstractions there is a lot of stuff under there, so it is more
complex.