WHY I AM ABANDONING VB.NET AFTER SIX MONTHS OF DEVELOPMENT:

I am a software developer for a company that I own. I have spent half a year migrating from Visual Basic 6.0 to VB.NET. I completed a project for release in VB.NET a month ago. That is when my .NET nightmare began.

The installation and deployment project in Visual Studio does not, and cannot, install the .NET framework. This oversight can be worked around by a setup program published on the MSDN site, but this results in a tiny non-descript dialog box being displayed for LONG time while the .NET framework SLOWLY infiltrates the operating system. Alot of end-users would think the installation was STUCK. WHY does it take so LONG for just 20MB to load from a CD? The hard drive bangs around like every system file in the computer is being rewritten.

There are third-party products, such as InstallShield, that try to approach this problem. However when InstallShield runs dotnetfx.exe, the progress bar on the dialog box runs over and over, and again, giving the end-user the impression that the installation is STUCK.

Secondly, dotnetfx.exe has MULTIPLE depdendicies. NOT everyone has wide-band internet access. Leaving out Win 95 users hurts the potential market in a product, but the .NET framework goes way beyond that. The computer must have Internet Explorer version 5.1 or higher, MDAC, etc. What if a user deleted IE and is using another web browser? Again, InstallShield helps here partially, but the installation STOPS if IE 5.1 or higher isn't there. <sigh>

Also, in the limited beta testing I did, some systems that did have all of the many dependencies present would CHOKE during the .NET framework infiltration and it would then ABORT after giving out a cryptic error message. Not what you want an end-user to see or deal with.

I would suggest that Microsoft develops just ONE LARGE FILE that contains ALL OF THE MANY DEPENDENCIES for a NET application, and that during installation, any dependency (IE 5.01, etc.) will automatically install, but only IF approved by the end-user. Also, the progress bar in the install dialog should really represent what is going on. ALso, it would be nice if they installation could be speeded up so it doesn't feel like you are loading in a new operating system.

For me, and I imagine many others, I've abandoned what is otherwise a really wonderful new language and programming environment. However I would go BROKE with technical support phone calls regarding installation issues if I tried to send out a .NET Windows application now.

I'm back to VB 6.0 for my next project. <sigh>

Robert Reynolds
First Solo Software
[email protected]