Widely used apps written in .Net?

I'm trying to help someone justify the use of .Net in a project.  As part of the justification, we are trying to find out what other applications are using .Net, partially or in total.

Mainly, I'm looking for apps that are quite wide spread that these folks may have heard of.  Basically, we need to prove that, even though its 5 years old, .Net is actually worthwhile.

And VS.Net doesn't count.

Anyone know how much of Vista / Office 12 is built on top of the .Net framework?

Thanks

Er what else are they gonna use seriously?

I would focus more on trying to weigh up .net against its competitors and show how you would reap benefits but using the .net framework.

"They used it successfully so we should do the same!"

....

If that's your best justification for using .Net then I suggest you call it quits right now. Its a weak argument.

I suggest you find real benefits to the platform and languages when compared to what your using now. If you are struggling to find the benefits then perhaps moving is not the right answer for this project.

wrote:

Basically, we need to prove that, even though its 5 years old, .Net is actually worthwhile.

I hope you are joking... I really do...

nanite wrote:

Don't use it - it's slow and bloated and WinForms often causes bizarre full-desktop invalidations that really screw everything up.

 [...]still to C++/WTL/MFC/etc.

Because none of those frameworks contain any bloat or bizarre behaviour.... 8-)

Not to mention production times cut in less than half and maintenance times cut by 1/4^th.

Stick to C++/MFC and see you budget and development time treble!

i dont know how anyone could justify writing an application from scratch in MFC

nanite wrote:

Manip wrote: Because none of those frameworks contain any bloat or bizarre behaviour.... Not to mention production times cut in less than half and maintenance times cut by a 4th.

Oh yeah - like the week you'll spend figuring out why your .NET WinForms app causes refresh havoc with all the other windows on your desktop and realize that you can't fix it.

Or is it when you realize that the remoting calls are leaking sockets all over the place and you can't fix it?

Or is it when you try to position controls on a dialog and VS.NET destroys the form you've been working on?  Or maybe when you are playing with docking and your controls end up being entirely inaccessible?

Or how about the times when you are debugging your .NET application and VS.NET refuses to attach, locks up randomly or takes >1 sec to step over every line.

Yeah - a real perf boost. 

Are you using VS 2005 or VS.NET?

Manip wrote:

If that's your best justification for using .Net then I suggest you call it quits right now. Its a weak argument.

Give me a little credit.  No, we're not just basing our decision on other products.  But we aren't talking to programmers here either.  Often when you are talking to non-IT execs about projects you have to play this game.  Especially when you get someone who hasn't a clue about the technology and works purely off of buzzwords and flashy ads or what they had for lunch that day.

Its helpful sometimes to prove that others have built similar scale apps and succeeded in a commercial market with that technology.  Thats what I'm looking for.  Sometimes just saying "X is using this and is making craploads of money with it" is enough to help your technical arguments over the hump.

I think the ATI control panel is on .NET.

Anyone have anything else besides off-topic arguments?

nanite wrote:

vulgrin wrote: Manip wrote: If that's your best justification for using .Net then I suggest you call it quits right now. Its a weak argument. Give me a little credit.  No, we're not just basing our decision on other products.  But we aren't talking to programmers here either.  Often when you are talking to non-IT execs about projects you have to play this game.  Especially when you get someone who hasn't a clue about the technology and works purely off of buzzwords and flashy ads or what they had for lunch that day. Its helpful sometimes to prove that others have built similar scale apps and succeeded in a commercial market with that technology.  Thats what I'm looking for.  Sometimes just saying "X is using this and is making craploads of money with it" is enough to help your technical arguments over the hump.

Look at using the eclipse/java/swt stack.  It's better supporting in the long run - and you can deploy your own JDK with your application (no relying on windows update or non-embeddable installers).

You can even patch your runtime as you need!

Eclipse/Java/SWT?  *puke*

And don't get me wrong, I'm a Java guy, but Eclipse and SWT????

vulgrin wrote:

Its helpful sometimes to prove that others have built similar scale apps and succeeded in a commercial market with that technology.  Thats what I'm looking for.  Sometimes just saying "X is using this and is making craploads of money with it" is enough to help your technical arguments over the hump.

I think that's quite a weak argument - there's no such thing as a development technology which is guaranteed to make you money.

One area which you can suceed with is to think about what application you are doing and consider where the technology allows you to go easier in terms of strategy.

For example, the biggest map maker firm in the UK uses .Net in its system, and gives their surveyors Tablet PCs to work with the system.  As they are in the field (sometimes literally!), using a slate Tablet and a pen driven interface is much more natural.  That is something you couldn't really do very easily without .Net.  Also, see mobile devices, etc etc etc

nanite wrote:

Cider wrote: I think that's quite a weak argument - there's no such thing as a development technology which is guaranteed to make you money.

Yeah - you should be looking at the trouble you'll go through just to write a .NET application and get it working everywhere, as well as the pain you'll be looking at to debug and build it.

Don't forget that .NET is very weak for creating "repeatable builds" and "continuous integration".  Both of these items will require a man-month or more just to get right - and they will require upgrading for each .NET framework release!  Other platforms have this stuff taken care of.

In the end, you'll end up spending big bucks for .NET: The IDE ($$), the endless debugging ($$$$) and working around all the problems you encounter ($$$$$$$$).

... upgrading for each .NET framework release: you know that you can compile an app to a certain framework version and NOT upgrade it, right? You can have multiple versions of the .NET framework intalled at the same time.

The IDE: Free (Express products)

The debugging: Write good code. I've never had any problem with the debugger.

Problems you encounter: How hard can it be? You build the solution and you get an executable. Adding a Setup product is simple and creates an MSI installer for you.

As for "Widely used apps", you can take a look at some high profile ASP.net web applications. Community Server, a lot of Microsoft's website, etc... I'm sure there are plenty of smaller .NET apps. The problem is that the .NET framework was never included in a default Windows installation, making the 20MB framework a hard sell.

You may want to use .NET for some smaller projects to start out and see how it works for your team.

nanite wrote:

Oh yeah...  but try compiling your .NET 1.1 application for the .NET 1.1 framework in VS.NET 2005.  If you want to use the latest bugfixes, you need to upgrade the framework you target.  If your clients won't deploy .NET 2.0, you are proper f*cked.

You don't build out applications for 1.1 in the new visual studio. You can however, have both frameworks installed  and run your 1.1 compiled application. Do you understand this? I guess not. If you want to use the latest framework and your clients won't deploy, than that is a business problem.

nanite wrote:

You can also try to target your .NET 2.x executable against a 1.x framwork in your config file, but the VS.NET IDE won't tell you that you've used a 2.x-only method (String.Contains, for example) and you'll find many silent bugfixes from 1.x to 2.x that will bite you later (ie: SortedList fails when constructing with an empty hashtable).

VS 2005 wasn't designed for 1.1 applications. Here is the breakdown for you:

version 1.0: VS 2002
version 1.1: VS 2003
version 2.0: VS 2005

Understand it now?

nanite wrote:

Basically, it doesn't work unless you target the same framework you'll be deploying against as the one you are building against.  That requires tons of upgrade work for each VS.NET upgrade (ie: upgrading all your build and deploy scripts to use msbuild, upgrading them again next time...)

Take the time and make sure your application will benifit from the upgrade. MSBuild was introduced in 2.0. Obviously this is going to be a step in upgrading.

nanite wrote:

Yeah - it's my fault that my code compiles, but doesn't work in VS.NET.  If they created AppDomains and dynamic delegates, I expect that the debugger should handle those without crashing.  Oh - are you just writing simple code?

Who knows which environment you are trying to work under here.. Move along please.

nanite wrote:

Yeah - and you can only add one screen with one textbox to the installer, one screen with two textboxes, etc.  The MSI files generated by the setup program are utter crap for anything but simple winforms applications./quote]

You are using the standard edition. I am not sure if it is different from the enterprise. MSI is pretty standard for windows builds though...

[quote user="nanite"]

jmacdonagh wrote: You may want to use .NET for some smaller projects to start out and see how it works for your team.

Yeah - that's the problem.  It works fine on a small project, but fails once you reach the level of real development.

Nice you of to try and belittle them by saying small development isn't real development. Try using NAnt if building your solution is such a problem for you. Maybe you should get a book on MSBuild if you want to use 2.0.

It's funny you referenced the projects anyways. Use post build events to copy the output to a common reference folder. VS will build each project that is referenced to it. Have fun building out 100 projects for minor changes, idiot. Learn to use a tool before you bash it.

um, how about Myspace?? They just did a presentation at Mix06, and their entire backend system is running on .NET 2.0 and SQL 2005! Oh, and they just became the 2nd most trafficed site on the internet....with only 150 servers!

Trying doing that with PHP! lol

blatzcoder wrote:

elixir wrote: um, how about Myspace?? They just did a presentation at Mix06, and their entire backend system is running on .NET 2.0 and SQL 2005! Oh, and they just became the 2nd most trafficed site on the internet....with only 150 servers! Trying doing that with PHP! lol

That's nice and all, but how much longer will it be before they get legally shut down due to all the predators and stalkers over there?

Quite a change of topic there. Are you saying that .NET draws in stalkers?

I found these facts about Myspace impressive.  From what I've read, they were using Coldfusion before switching to .NET.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2006/03/20/440649.aspx

Notes from the MIX conference:

Aber Whitcomb, CTO, MySpace.com
• 65m registered members (#2 trafficed site on net, passing google, ebay, MSN)
• using SQL Server 2005 and ASP 2.0
• next-gen portal, social networking platform
• 9m members - converted to ASP.NET
• saw significant perf gains
• tool advantage of full OO
• 17M members - launched middle tier cache with ASP.NET
• 64bit asp.net, used huge amounts of ram, reduced server count
• 26M Members - SQL Server 2005 64Bit
• MySpace Home Profile page .NET 2.0 perf gains
• Reduced CPU usage from 85% to 27%
• Reduced web farm from 246 servers to 150

Back to the orginal topic:

QuickBooks 2005 (and presumably 2006) require the .Net framework 1.1. I don't know what it uses it for.

The PrintShop 20 hosts a CLR in a MFC app. Here's a whitepaper:

http://members.microsoft.com/CustomerEvidence/Search/EvidenceDetails.aspx?EvidenceID=2857&LanguageID=1

Beyond Media from SnapStream is a WinForms .Net app. It comes with their Firefly remote.