Please Help Me..

Thanks

I first jumped on the WCSF bandwagon because of all the cool things I heard it did. They were all things I wanted to know more about. But I was overwhemled and ultimately disapointed.

WCSF works great and DOES do all these cool things… but for the most part they’re done for you with all this code generation. It’s not the best learning experience. They tell you how to use the wizards and what they do for you BUT I WANTED TO WRITE CODE!

I was very interested in understanding IoC and dependency injection, but with the Factory there’s so much code generation I didn’t even realize how I (or the generators) were using ObjectBuilder to achieve what I wanted to know.

With WCSF, it comes down to trying to deconstruct all the generated stuff to see whats actually going on. There’s nice things like the SiteMapProvider and I do like the way it organizes your project. But it’s sooooo much. Even when they started “bundling” it… I gradually realized I was better off just using the bits of Enterprise Library I liked.

But MonoRail… when I first started with that this year… I fell in love. You can get your hands much dirtier, and you have so much more responsibility… which is what it’s all about!! That’s how you learn and I very quickly realized it was exactly what I was looking for.

I don’t want to put down WCSF or WSSF… the Service Factory especially has some nice things you can use without dragging in the whole works… I’m not anti-Microsoft and I appreciate what the P&P team is doing on CodePlex.

I wouldn’t kick and scream at having to do a WCSF project, but it’s not fun, and that’s why I do coding… I love it. And MonoRail is FUN… because you write code! It’s taught me so much about architecture and development in general that I consider it heaven on earth for me and any devs looking to ramp up their skills. You never stop learning. I want to eventually start contributing – and getting up to that level is my goal for 2009.

I love absolutely everything about the Castle Project.

Something I noticed while doing a little reading on WCSF. From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264518.aspx:

>> Note The software factory is optimized to create online business transaction processing Web sites. It is not optimized for Web content sites or collaboration sites.

Not sure what “optimized” means in this context, but it seems WCSF’s documentation authors are hinting at not suggesting WCSF for some (vague) uses.

Generally, the Microsoft solutions are chock-full of wizards and helpers to generate code for you. MonoRail doesn’t have these. I consider this a blessing in disguise. If you like wizards and tools to help you generate code, WCSF is worth looking in to. I’d prefer using MonoRail or ASP.Net MVC.