Random .NET Ramblings

I was talking with a customer last week about ColdFusion & ASP.NET and they contended that ColdFusion was just like ASP.NET and while in 1.1 that was somewhat true as far as the front end development goes but once you look you miss a lot if the things that make .NET development so nice in that you can separate code in to layers (UI, Biz & Dal) and now with ASP.NET 2.0 and the provider model flexibility, Master Pages, Web Parts and so much more I don't think the argument can be made now.

For some back ground on ColdFusion & ASP.NET check out the MSDN article Migrating from ColdFusion to ASP.NET is has an interesting comparison of features.

Yes we now have some releases of the Patterns & Practices for VS 2005 way cool stuff that now takes advantage of the new APIs in .NET 2.0.

I have been quite busy of late with lot’s of little trips a tone of local community events customer meetings and the normal never ending email but it’s all good! There is a ton of great people out there really interested in .NET and that is what I am all about. I recently got to do a presentation on Team Systems to the new group Santa Barbara . NET User Group, it was a good interactive group and it looks to be a great group. I have also been doing a bunch of work for the upcoming SoCal Code Camp where we are now taking requests to speak so if you want to talk to geeks go sing-up!

The biggest surprise was that I was contact by a guy up close to Fresno about starting a .NET user group up there he has a web site up at centralcaldotnet.com so if you know anyone in the central vally let them know and look back for details here and on there site.

Yep if you have not head yet the Express products are FREE for down-load see the Express FAQ on pricing for all the good news. If you want to down load any of the Express products go to the main Express page and pick your flavor.

If you don’t know what the Express products are then read on… Microsoft has traditionally made developer tools quite easy (read affordable) in the past but in my opinion since .NET came out Visual Studio has not be quite as easy to get but now that all has changed! The Express editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server are additions that even after the 1 year of free downloding will be less then $50 this is quite affordable and will make it quite east for anyone who wants to start working with .NET to use a first class tool.

Enjoy!