Cay Horstmann's Blog

The grass isn't greener on the other side

Today, I am in beautiful San Diego, at a NSF workshop on active learning and UCSD's Ubiquitous Presenter software. Ubiquitous Presenter lets instructors and students add pen-based markup to slides and share them with each other. It is a nifty tool to engage students in the classroom instead of just lecturing. The student part of the software uses Java, and students can use the mouse or a tablet pen (which just acts as a mouse) to add their notes. The instructor part of the software uses .NET because instructors need to be able to write nicely, and Java doesn't have any support for pens (pressure, erasing, etc.).

So, I install the software. I get this far:

Hmm, this is Windows Vista. It doesn't have .NET??? Whatever, I'll install it. Click "Yes".

Oh, .NET 2 is not backwards compatible with .NET 1.1.4322. Let's install .NET 1 then. That's easier said than done. Googling gets me this link: Get the .NET framework 1.1

General users are advised to install through Windows Update. A fine suggestion, but it doesn't work since Windows Update senses that I already have .NET 2 and therefore couldn't possibly want 1.1.

How about the The Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Software Development Kit? It includes "the .NET Framework 1.1, as well as everything you need to write, build, test, and deploy applications using the .NET Framework 1.1, including documentation, samples, and command-line tools and compilers." That sounds good. But it isn't.

Oh, it doesn't actually include the .NET framework. I finally find that I can install the "Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Redistributable" ("If you are developing applications using the .NET Framework 1.1 Software Development Kit (SDK) you can provide the .NET Framework 1.1 to your customers using the .NET Framework 1.1 Redistributable, subject to the conditions you agreed to in the .NET Framework 1.1 SDK End User License Agreement.") It still doesn't work, because that doesn't get me to 1.1.4322. However, installing .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 gets me tantalizingly close. Now I get this error:

Rebooting the machine takes care of that, and now I get

I am told that the best way to overcome this issue is to repartition my hard disk and install Windows XP instead of Vista. Fortunately, installing an older version of Ubiquitous Presenter finally proved successful.

I was quite amazed. When I get emails from users of my software, I occasionally curse Sun for not auto-updating the JRE (as Flash does without skipping a beat or [gasp] presenting a EULA), but never once did I have to install Java version x next to Java version x-1 and a service pack.

By the way, can someone fill me in on why the gotdotnet.com site is being "phased out"? I thought that's .NET's equivalent to the java.net site that we all love.

I don't want to say that Sun should be complacent. Consumer Java is a mess, and it needs to be fixed. Keeping these platform installations up to date is a daunting task, apparently beyond the capabilities of the world's largest software company.

Comments

• You downloaded the .NET 1.1 SDK, which is 106MB, and that doesnt even include the runtime, which is an additional 23MB! Owch. Still, could be worse, you could have downloaded the .NET 2.0 SDK, which clocks in at a whopping 354MB!!! And no, that doesnt include Visual Studio, or the MSDN documentation.

  Posted by: benloud on June 15, 2007 at 01:43 AM

• oh and of course it gets even better with the .NET 3.0 SDK, 1,185MB!!! I dread to think how big the 4.0 SDK will be...

  Posted by: benloud on June 15, 2007 at 01:51 AM

• A friend of mine is a dead hard .NET friend as opposite to me who is a Java fan. This is the conversation I had with him:

  Sunny: Hey Steve, I have got Vista Ultimate on my desktop
  Steve: Really? any good?
  Sunny: Yeah not too bad, a tat slow.
  Steve: Well I can't upgrade to Vista anyway, my .net application won't work
  Sunny: Oh why not? I thought Vista is MS's latest and greatest, and yet your .net app doesn't work. You know my Swing application works great.
  Steve: I don't know...
  Sunny: Maybe it's time for you to try Java
  Steve. Java is s**t

  And then the usual talk... it started to feel like a religion here - it is what you believe rather then the facts....
  

  Posted by: sunnychan on June 15, 2007 at 02:56 AM

• Reviewing the Ubiquitous Presenter web site, the Getting Started guide says:

  Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1.4322 SP1 and Windows XP SP2 required

  You were trying to install the program on Windows Vista?

  All of this sounds more like a problem with the Ubiquitous Presenter application and installer rather than an inherent problem with Microsoft .NET.
  

  Posted by: mcnga1 on June 15, 2007 at 03:26 AM

• .NET 2 is backwards compatible with .NET 1.1, so I'm guessing this was an installer problem here (looking for the version string 1.1.X, finding 2.0 and deciding that it didn't know anything about it so directing you to a new version). Probably increased with a Vista compatibility issue. A properly written .NET application should be able to be deployed to Vista without any issue because the .NET runtime is shipped out the box. Because .NET ships as part of the OS now, updates to it should be handled by windows update (hence the confusing message) - however windows update does not automatically install an older version of the framework (the logic being .NET 2.0 can run .NET 1.1 applications faster than .NET 1.1 can, so why should they need to)

  All this doesn't mean that your install experience did not suck though ;-)

  Also - GotDotNet is being phased out in favour of CodePlex (www.codeplex.com). GotDotNet was more Microsoft's answer to sourceforge than Java.net, however it sucked quite a bit and there was not a decent story with integration of source control into Visual Studio IDE.

  CodePlex is an altogether better beast, and the team behind it (ran by the TDD guru James Newkrik) seem to be improving it all the time. CodePlex uses Microsoft's Team Foundation Server for source control and work item tracking so the integration into Visual Studio is first rate. There is a third party (who I work for) that provides TFS integration into Eclipse as well as Linux / Mac stand-alone clients. They charge enterprise users for this software, but give complimentary licenses to CodePlex users.

  Hope this helps. Like you say, the grass is not always greener and all deployment platforms present issues, even now.

  Posted by: martinwoodward on June 15, 2007 at 05:07 AM

• I agree with you. I hate .NET framework I consider it too heavy and I already had such experiences. Java is not perfect but I think, for the moment, it is easier for end user. Why? Just type "java" on Google and you will arrive on java.com. Then, it will detect your brower and start installation.
  Ok...ok... someone will say : "flash is very easy" and I'll answer 'yes'. Flash is 'green' but Java applications are more powerfull.
  Sorry, there's still no perfect world!

  Posted by: alexdp on June 21, 2007 at 01:38 AM

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