Long time lurker... New project!

[rts]

First, thanks to everyone I've shamelessly ripped code off over the years on this board; I'm sure it's saved me hundreds of hours and more than a few keyboard scars on my forehead.

I've been in and around programming since the mid 80s, but never really learned the "right" way to do things. In the late 90s, we built a tracking application with ASP that is still going strong today (handles scheduling, payroll, billing, etc.) for our company. I've got to build another one that will be a little more complicated, and am probably going to write it in ASP again.

I tried the "new" ASP.NET, I really did. Guess I'm too old and dense to get my arms around it. The thing I love about ASP is that I can understand almost every line of code. The new stuff? Not so much...

So, thanks to all of you that have answered my questions without ever knowing you were doing so. Deeply grateful for this community and the knowledge I've gained here. Please keep fingers crossed as I venture forth with my dated skills in this 15 year old language!

[Bill Wilkinson]

Good luck. I would only comment that if this is truly going to be a new project, from the ground up, you might want to consider PHP. I don't really like PHP, but it would appear that it is going to be around a lot longer than ASP will. It is nearly as simple to use as ASP and is considerably faster.

Note that I say this despite that fact that I'm writing new ASP code every day. BUt for a site that already has hundreds of thousands of lines of ASP code.

[rts]

Thanks, Bill. Considered PHP; might look at again it if I can't get ASP to do what I want.

[PCO]

Bill, why do you chase people away from classic ASP? It's about now or never for classic ASP developers. MS has shown some goodwill by adding it to IIS8, and in their newest IDE Webmatrix, classic ASP is fully supported. There is no reason to believe classic ASP will ever disappear as long as MS is around.

It's time to get rid of this identity crisis. Classic ASP rocks, always has, always will. We just need new developers, new developments, with high coding standards. And we need a framework!

Some months ago I posted a topic over here about a classic ASP CMS:

http://www.aspmessageboard.com/showthread.php?t=234845

This topic was viewed over 4600 times by now, one of the most clicked topics in the last year. There is a high demand for such a CMS/Framework.

Do not hesitate to contact me in case you want to participate in this development.

[Bill Wilkinson]

I will cheerfully grant that having a great framework would drastically extend the life of ASP. But let's fact it, we have to balance that with the many many good frameworks that are available for other platforms.

Don't get me wrong: I love classic ASP. To me, it's the easiest of the server-side development environments. But I also used to love Atari BASIC as the easiest of BASICs for beginners to learn (couldn't have anything to do with the fact that I helped develop it <grin/>). If you tried to make a living writing with Atari BASIC today, you'd be in sorry shape.

So... how long will classic ASP live? I dunno, but I would bet not as long as ASP.NET or, unfortunately, PHP.

p.s.: I *am* interested in a classic ASP CMS. And I might have time to contribute to it later this year. But that doesn't alter my view of the long term prospects for ASP.

[PCO]

Bill, the point is: Who are WE, who are YOU, who am I to even question the life time of Classic ASP?

Talking about facts: MS is including it in IIS8, and I'm sure they will add it to IIS9, 10, 11 and 20.

This means that it's lifetime is not something to worry about. Makes no sense. And I'm sure that if EVER MS would be so stupid to kill it, there would be workarounds, alternate methods to keep serving asp pages. Do you know there are still 9.000.000.000 web pages using classic asp? Back in 2010, VWD shipped without support for classic ASP. Storm of protest. Service pack 1 of VWD restored syntax highlighting for classic ASP.

Do you know that in Belgium, there are still a lot of job openings for COBOL/JCL developers? You know better than anyone else over here how old that technology is

[classicaspordeath2]

RTS,

I'm making the same transition myself. here are some pointers I've used successfully: I've since gone ahead and used more .net elements but this got me started and confident.

Some of this may be elementary, it worked for me.

*these will annoy the purist programmers

1 Use C#, its almost the same as VB.net and much more widely used. If you can code javascript, it won't be foreign to you
2 Make cheat sheet for these items:
a reading from a database table
b updating/appending/deleting in database table
3 Declare all your variables ( you have to do this in .net anyways)
4 Write it just like Classic to start
a *all code in 1 file
b *use includes (aaaah!)
5 Don't use repeaters just yet, they'll drive you nuts.
6 *Write it in a text editor or use VS like one
7 *Don't use the solution explorer, treat every page like an independent file
8 If you're not using web.config in classic, don't use it here (not yet)

You can make fully functioning .net just like classic, once you've done that, start adding elements as you understand them.

[classicaspordeath2]

learning asp.net when your head is still in classic asp - followup

at first, don't use <script>page_load for your code
stick it in <&#37;%> just like you do for classic asp. It's tricky to get data out of the <script> tags for a newcomer to .net.