Our primary use is for development purposes, to cater to the company's business requirements and needs. We have our own team where we get exactly what they want through the business analysts. Then according to that, we design and cater to the requirements and implement it.
In terms of the features that I have found most valuable, I'd compare it to Java and competent technology. We can do the same thing within Java, as well. But the thing with Java is that you need to write end-to-end, and with Microsoft, it is much easier for the developer and the intra-system because everything is very simple. It is not complex to maintain, to design, and to create. In simple terms, we can say that we choose Microsoft technologies most often because of their simplicity.
Any developer, even me, can read, understand, support and maintain. For Java, it's open-source and each fellow has his own style. Of course, .NET has its own so-called design patterns, we can call it Framework, and this Framework is direct for most of the developers. When we know which Framework this software design uses, the developer is easily able to understand it.
Whenever I don't know how to fix some critical issues, the Microsoft support team always gives us some good guidance and we follow it. When it comes to the application simulation and whether we think it should be added into the latest Microsoft released technology or not, we get everything we need. The only thing is they need to up their new technology and to revamp or migrate our current or existing applications into the latest version, and it should fix the current issues. But it's not me as a developer who can simply buy or implement the tool. Its edition should come from the management, which is not that easy. We only can propose that we get better features in the latest ASP.NET technology, and our higher reporting managers were keen to emphasize that it might take some time. We use the latest technologies that will be implemented with my current applications. We just sample it.
With ASP.NET there are pros and cons. The main pro is that it's very easy and we have Microsoft helping to stabilize the product which is coming with the all new features every year. It does improve the product. But the con is that every year they are launching a new technology, and for a company like us, we get confused about which version should be used.
Let's say we started using the next version, then the next year the version is no longer supported or it got upgraded to the new one. It's not that easy to migrate that entire software to that new version so they have a challenge here. I would hope when Microsoft releases any new products, they would release at least once in five years, and they need to give all the features for that version together. Not like now, when every edition they launch is a new product with the next version and entirely change that Framework. This is not advisable, because when we deal with the project, the size matters and the application usually also matters. Because if all projects are in one year, and you started working on the next version and we were going to launch that software the next year, that version has changed. It's very tough to migrate the entire one year project to the next version. So this is the challenge.
I have been using ASP.NET for eight+ years.
Because I'm working in the insurance domain, we normally don't simply upgrade just like that, and the version I started using was ASP.NET 3 and Framework 3.5. Nearly two years back we migrated to 4.0.
It is stable.
It is scalable because of the intra-, we can scale it but we cannot compare this with new cloud technologies because the cloud is a newcomer, a new revolution where you can simply change it in-cloud. But when it comes to my company, we have our own private intra-. If you want to increase the scale to a higher level, to raise the scale, we need to put a new server or increase the memory RAM in terms of hardware and intra-. Regarding capacity, from day to day, the company is growing and its customers are also growing, and it needs to cater to their needs, so we normally do the server checkups to see whether that number of incoming requests is able to cater within that existing hardware. If not, we will redirect the request to the intra- team, then they'll proceed with that, making the applications to be supplied so that we are able to execute the performance.
I know it's 100 plus people using the solution but I don't the exact count.
As I said, ASP.NET already got a better version in the current market. 1% actually use that same version, which was released in 2011. Now, Microsoft announced that they are going to recall that support. I mean recall ASP.NET completely until 3.5. Luckily, we migrated to 4.0. I realize that even the 4.0 Framework was also slow and going to be recalled, as well. There are already discussions with my team and my management and because of this, we got a request from IT. We have our own IT R&D team and we got some guidelines where we have to come up with a new design with the current versions of ASP.NET to be migrated.
Regarding the initial setup, this question is a completely different story. It's not a simple setup question. Since I started learning ASP.NET, there are now many more versions. So many versions have been released and this Framework is so common that now people that used to call it ASP.NET now see it as a subset of Framework. So the Framework we saw then is different from what we see now. So I cannot easily answer because the story has changed since then. We have gotten many APIs released in between so that ASP.NET has become part of Framework and people more often use the Framework that is going to design an application.
For example, NBC is a model where we control the Framework. It's an architecture standard that has become very common since 2016. Recently, Microsoft also launched a new technology product called Core, the latest version of that is 2.0. Unfortunately, we were unable to use any of these latest technologies because of the banking insurance policies. We cannot simply implement the latest technologies just like that. We need to get the banking approvals and the country's regulations and guidelines. Microsoft is trying to improve its technology products, and somehow they made that product as open source. You can even re-direct your task to Framework in your own customized manner, which is more suitable for your company's needs.
Regarding the pricing, I don't know much because as a developer, I don't deal with the procurement, buying software. But I can say it does come with some good packages called corporate licenses. So when we buy a corporate license, I think multiple developers have access, can publish code and can develop from his own development machine. For instance, we can get Visual Studio where we use that as an IT tool, to develop the code and to buy the codes so we don't need to buy other products. I know that our company bought us a corporate license where we need to pay as a service for a year. We also have Microsoft support where we found some difficulty using so many of the application technologies. We can easily get support from that particular Microsoft team.
Cost-wise, choose Microsoft technology. Regarding availability, check the supply of developers in the current market, because most of the developers, entrepreneurs, who start a new job, are going to learn this technology because it's simple and easy to learn. There is nothing difficult to learn and to work on. So I can say yes, ASP.NET is easy and is low cost when compared to other technologies. And in the current market, we have plenty of developers available and people like to learn it because it's so easy.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate ASP.Net an eight.
