Sunday, April 24, 2005

ASP.NET 2.0 ~ A Winner

Week 1
Well, week one developing with ASP.NET 2.0 Beta 2 is in the books. So far, I am extremely impressed. It is finally possible to separate code from content; to develop in an object oriented manner on a web application.

Let's face it, developing web applications thus far has looked as much like developing an application, as developing in Apple Basic resembles developing in C#. Up until now, despite the best efforts of ASP, ASP.NET 1.1 and PHP, it has had more to do with scripting that objects.

With the aforementioned languages, it was most definitely possible to create robust web applications and even to do it in an object oriented manner, but when you got down to the brass tax it was still a scripted language.

I have been coding for 15+ years and I can tell you it has been exciting to watch the emergence of each one of the languages I have learned. I like many developers enjoy learning new languages, especially languages that allow you write elegant code. Of course, elegance is in the eye of the beholder but the language must still allow it.

ASP.NET has all but bridged that gap between writing a Windows Forms application and a Web Application. Extensive event handling, rich UI elements, a strong security model, great database connectivity, Master Pages for consistency, and the new adaptive rendering model guarantee ASP.NET's opponents will reconsider using this formidable platform.

I should mention, that the .NET Framework 2.0 (Whidbey) in generally is as vastly improved as ASP.NET is in this release. I am impressed with the changes made to this wonderful language. I know that many developers are not happy with some of the new coding semantics introduced by generics and some of the other changes. To those persons, obviously more C# developers thought the benefits outweighed any akwardness related to familiarizing oneself with these new constructs.

To the C# team, great job!

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Arena Wars || Official Website

C# Game Development

There has been continual debate as to whether or not C# could be used effectively and efficiently to develop a AAA game on top of the .NET platform. The C/C++ die-hards are convinced that it is not possible because of the fact that C# is a managed language.



Well, C/C++ eat your hearts out. A consortium of German developers has created a game called ArenaWars. It is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game and it totally kicks ass. Below is the link to the official web site, where you can download a fully playable demo. The demo features on-line multiplayer gameplay, as well as tutorials, and single player missions.



Good job guys!

Arena Wars || Official Website

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Uggh! Major Computer Issues!

So today started out like any other day. My computer, which is by no means new, starts freezing up intermittently. The old mouse stops moving scenario. At first, it's just a few seconds. A few minutes later its 20 seconds... An hour passes it's 30 seconds. By 3:00pm the computer decided that it had had enough hours of Tribes 2, Visual Studo, MX Studio, and of course DVD movies. It made a sound unlike any I've ever heard one of my computers make. Kind of a woosh mixed with a buzz. I have tried demonstrating the sound for some of my friends and either they aren't impressed or I am just not doing it right.

With the work-load on my plate right now, I couldn't just sit there. I called my business partner Aaron, and we talked it over. First was to repair the computer. Was it worth it? It's been on the path of slow demise for awhile, and it's 2 or 3 years old. With the price of computers these days, we decided to get a new one.

I found myself an open-box (bought and returned) Sony Vaio Widescreen. 3.06GHz. This thing kicks ass. 802.11b/g built in. I am sitting on my couch writing this blog entry. How cool is that?







Wednesday, April 06, 2005

I speak! Yet again...

Web site updates
I am currenly migrating my entire I/T Infrastructure for Webglimmer to a Windows 2003 Server. As such, my entire Seth Webster web site is down since I host my web site on the business box.

I will be using this blog as my soap box for the next month or so, until I have time to put the site back up. I've had this blog for awhile, but haven't really used it.

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Seth