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The other day I was reading an article
discussing Beyond.com's chapter 11 bankruptcy application
and the potential sale of some of their assets and not surprisingly
the last paragraph was a disclaimer of the sort - "this
is a forward looking perspective and makes no guarantee
that the events or ideas discussed here will actually ever
occur". The reason this comes to mind is that it was
not too long ago that I was waxing lyrical about the potential
of the eMbedded Visual Toolset (ver 3.0) to change the face
of the handheld development arena. I, for one, was very
happy that the eMbedded Visual Tool suite provided a one
stop development solution for Windows CE instead of using
the Windows CE Toolkit that integrated with Visual Basic
6 - something that veteran CE developers will remember.
Well change is a constant force in a developer's life and
it all to often involves examining the tradeoff between
the benefits of a new technology and the cost of the time
associated with embracing a new development methodology.
Well - not to put too fine a point on
it but I'm here to do that again - wax lyrical - and the
reason I touch on the aforementioned disclaimer is that
I'm writing this in February and who knows what changes
will take place over the next few months. I'll do my best
to facilitate discussion on the .NET
Compact Framework and SDE forum. The hardware and feature
set of embedded systems seems to change on a monthly basis
as the new Windows CE devices are released. Subsequently
the SDK's and their underlying development methodologies
are either being altered or reinvented at an alarming rate.
In addition how do you architect a sound development methodology
for devices that don't adhere to any particular specification.
You guessed it - I'm referring to the Casio BE-300 Cassiopeia,
although this device runs the Windows CE 3.0 OS, it does
not conform to the Pocket PC specification (plus it's a
lot cheaper).
Perhaps there is some light on the horizon
for developers in the form of Microsoft's .NET vision
which will provide us with a managed code development environment.
As I have embarked upon this journey of untangling all the
acronyms I have come to a better educated perspective of
the components in .NET and the true benefit the environment
will provide to developers. I hope to explain as concisely
as possible how the .NET Compact Framework will inevitably
become the development solution for the Pocket PC.
As a professional developer I have found
that one of the biggest hurdles I faced in adapting to the
.NET paradigm was sorting out road map of what it all meant
for desktop development and subsequently how it translated
into the mobile device arena.
The most common .NET terms you will
be exposed to by someone evangelizing the vision are:
- .NET Platform
- .NET Framework
- .NET Compact Framework (CF)
- Visual Studio .NET
- Visual Studio .NET Smart Device Extensions
(SDE)
- Common Language Runtime (CLR)
- Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL)
- Just-In-Time Compiler (JIT)
The .NET platform is Microsoft's
soup-to-nuts OS and application environment. This encompasses
the hardware; from Windows PC's to Pocket PC's and tablets;
the XML web services which consist of reusable modular components
consumed as services (i.e. the building blocks of the language)
and the development environments such as Visual Studio .NET.
Basically it's the new stable of Microsoft tools and software
you would use to build distributed applications.
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