Welcome, beautiful new world…
…which I get to know for more than 3 years with JavaScript. After more than 10 years as a .NET expert, it was definitely not an easy step to change my focus. I started as a developer in the business by using PHP. Back then, JavaScript was just a means to an end. I was glad, the lesser I had to use it.
As excited and ideal platform I got attracted to .NET and C#. I have to admit, in between I gave Visual Basic a try, but it didn’t really made me happy. I was thrilled by Microsoft and .NET, so I organized a great community in my hometown Ingolstadt. I visited communities and conferences around the world and talked about my experiences. I initiated the biggest community roadshows with thousands of attendees. I also wrote books and articles for technical magazines. To make a long story short: I worked hard on my carrier and to be known in the Microsoft developer world.
Moving in a new direction
Time changes everything, also the customer requirements. At numerous meetings with customers the most recent topic was „bring your own device“. There were Managers in front of me using their Windows, Mac or Linux computers. Everyone wants to know the true promise of the new software and at the end, the final winner always was the browser. A .NET solution couldn’t pay that much attention anymore. I realized, the focus of .NET changed to the back-end and cloud development. Of course there still is Xamarin, which brings .NET to mobile devices. But it had a lot of disadvantages compared to Apache Cordova while we worked out our proof of concepts.
When I concentrated on JavaScript and LISP, I could understand Douglas Crockfords statement: „The World’s Most Misunderstood Programming Language“. Because of our customer Intel, we approached to Node.js more and more. Projects like Adobe Brackets (where I took part of) are completely developed in Node.js and JavaScript. We completely rewrote our software of CleverSocial from ASP.NET MVC4/Entity Framework/SQL Server to Node.js, Angular 2 and MongoDB. We learned and felt the power of the new JavaScript World. My conclusion has been, that the JavaScript development is way more efficient and faster. At the end you will have a high-speed Cross Platform solution. In this interview of Entwickler.de, I explained in details why I changed my technical focus. I’m afraid, the interview is in German. It’s called “Was .NET-Entwickler über Node.js wissen sollten” which means: „What .NET developers should know about Node.js“
Give up everything?
Not at all! Just a week ago, I had a workshop about the .NET development with Microsoft Azure. At the same night I had a speech at my home community, called INdotNET, about XAML. We’re working intensive with a Microservices architecture. If we need a specific strength of .NET, the solution will be exhausted. The data communication of the Entity Framework to the SQL server for example. Then we are using an ASP.NET Core Web-API with Entity Framework Core or even an elderly fully developed Entity Framework 6. Also I will continue on writing my XAML Expertise column for the Windows.Developer-Magazine. Finally I still have a lot of customers who are using WPF.
Conclusion
I worked with JavaScript for about 70% of my time and just 30% with .NET in the past 3 years. I got to know all the benefits of JavaScript and I would love to share them with you here on my new blog. You will see how simple the JavaScript development is, to this I will write generally about JavaScript/TypeScript, Tooling, Angular, Node.js, Electron, Cordova, MongoDB and many more.
Have you changed your focus to JavaScript as well? If so, I would love to hear about your story in the comments below. Apart from that, I’m looking forward to share my new knowledge with you. I’m also available for workshops, trainings or consulting. Just send me an E-Mail.
And now, have a lot of fun on my new blog.
Gregor
