Comment Articles

Clarifying the .Net message

John Carroll ZDNet US

Published: 16 Sep 2002 15:59 BST

.Net is a difficult technology to explain to non-programmers because .Net is developer-oriented technology. Many of the features of .Net don't make sense unless you know a lot about software development. From a marketing standpoint, however, understanding the essentials of .Net shouldn't require expertise in software engineering any more than buying a car requires a degree in mechanical engineering. What is needed is a consideration of other markets where technically abstract concepts are communicated to a non-technical audience.

.Net is, in a nutshell, a set of technologies designed to enhance developer productivity, with special emphasis given to the needs of programs in a networked environment (i.e. the Internet). Developers build their programs using building blocks found in .Net. .Net also acts as a controlled environment within which programs can run. This controlled environment makes certain common programming errors that have security implications, such as buffer overruns, impossible, while greatly expanding the number of security options available. In short, a "development framework" like .Net leads to code that has fewer bugs, is more secure, has more features, and is easier to build.

That's the view of .Net from the moon. Getting deeper into it involves a keen understanding of software development. Automatic memory management, mandatory object orientation, streamlined APIs for everything from windowing to back end web development, a portable intermediate format in the form of MSIL, self-describing code, code metadata (essential to .Net code access security), XML usage in every aspect of the .Net library (configuration files, serialization formats, remoting), simplified native code interoperability through P/Invoke, versioned assemblies, etc. are meaningless if you don't know anything about software development.

That isn't a problem, however, if one considers that people aren't experts in many domains in which they are called upon to make purchasing decisions. I know a bit about cars. I can change my own oil (well, my car's, not my own), and even replaced the spark plugs and wires on a '66 Ford Fairlane I used to own back in high school (a pox on any town that still uses salt on their roads). However, I am FAR from an expert in automobile engines, particularly the sort that fill up modern cars like some bio-engineered nightmare from the brain of H.R. Giger (of "Alien" fame, who has a museum in quaint little Gruyères, Switzerland).