Who's using .Net?

I am just starting using VB.Net and loving it. But can anyone point to an example of an application created using .Net It seems as if Microsoft doesn't make many apps with it. I am trying to show coworkers some examples.

Thanks,

Chris

.NET Development15

Our company is building a humongous Web appliation that when deployed will be used around the world. I'v eseen several bank financial institutions use .NET
There are thousands upon thousands of Internal tools that are used by companies internally. These applications use .NET and this right now seems to be .NETs strongest niche market in regards to applications and not User Controls or Web Appliations/Services

Our company is using it to create Excel VSTO C# .Net 2 addins which allow our employees to access the differing databases and have the data supplied in Excel which is what the non developers use for the most part around here. A good example of a VSTO application can be found here in the Capital Expenditures example.

Microsoft make ALOT of apps in .NET - most of them aren't noticed for alot of reasons as they may not be a public product but perhaps customer products and so on but they do make apps in .NET

some features of Vista I believe are in .NET, the Microsoft scoreboard for the WC2006 I believe was created in .NET (unsure, dont quote me)

I seem to be finding that a lot of companies are creating small apps internally that I wouldn't be able to look at. Just having a very hard time finding anything that is somewhat widely used that is created with .Net.

ASP.NET is pretty much ready for prime-time, providing genuinely useful functionality, stablility, and real productivity enhancing features.

imho, Windows forms isn't suitable for anything but internal and small application development. 2.0 makes some big improvements, but, without a 3rd party UI library, you're really not going to get too far. That's why you haven't seen large apps delivered on a Windows Forms platform yet (and probably never will).

An example of a significant limition in windows forms: lack of command routing support for menus. Great if you're doing single form applications, or very simple user interfaces; totally unworkable if your UI is remotely complex. Windows forms is laced with similar problems throughout it's archtitecture. And that reflects what it was meant to be: a .net replacement for Visual Basic.

Visual Basic wasn't a serious large application development patform 10 years ago. Windows Forms isn't either.

WinFX... now that's a different issue. WinFx definitely seems to be bound for prime-time usage. But, for the meantime, we're on permanent suspend mode until all this comes to pass. I guess we've watched the windows platform stagnate for going on 5 years now waiting for .net to catch up, functionally, to where we were 10 years ago on the native platform.

Current status today: you can do almost everything you could do with Visual basic 10 years ago (except for huge regressions in multimedia support between 1.1 and 2.0).

Memory doesn't leak anymore, but everything else does, and everything else is now dramatically more difficult to clean up, because of lack of deterministic destructors. So you leak a few hundred megabytes of memory. Big deal. But leak a couple of file handles into the garbage collector.... A dubious advance.

A shame, I think, because the stealth rearchitecting of the core OS platform that the .net runtime will eventually become is brillant.

But that's what you get when you let architects for second-class languages like Delphi rule the world, I guess.

imho, Windows forms isn't suitable for anything but internal and small application development. 2.0 makes some big improvements, but, without a 3rd party UI library, you're really not going to get too far. That's why you haven't seen large apps delivered on a Windows Forms platform yet (and probably never will)
An example of a significant limition in windows forms: lack of command routing support for menus. Great if you're doing single form applications, or very simple user interfaces; totally unworkable if your UI is remotely complex. Windows forms is laced with similar problems throughout it's archtitecture. And that reflects what it was meant to be: a .net replacement for Visual Basic.

I don't necessarily agree with the idea about complex applications, I designed an internal winform application which was quite complex visually and what it did internally...but I think your point is off base. Winform applications have to be installed and that is the Achelle's heal. Very few large companies want you to install software, except **** sites, then have to update the user as things change...

Such client server interaction is better addressed with thin clients of the web which can change dynamically. IMHO <g>

Sql Reporting Services for SQl Server is written in .Net. Sharepoint is .net. Some Microsoft products are written in .Net, but its true they don't advertise it.

Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on that too. Especially software coming from Microsoft that is "main stream". Two products I know of: SQL server 2005 Management Studio and Visual Studio 2005. Unfortunately, both are resource hogs and not stable. But pretty. Are you waiting for version 3 too

I think Starter Kits are good samples.
go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/starterkits/

JJ.

I have seen a lot of dotnet applications ( with source too) on www.sourceforge.net. These include Project Management, Defect Management , some modules of ERP ,Shoping Carts......etc the list is endless.'

However you won't find system applications because they are developed for some companies and can't be released on net.For example , Sam***g has been developing Graphics application , Honey**ll's HMI is developed using dotnet, ......

Parts of Visual Studio are/is written in C#.

Its a good question and one that I've thought about. If you were to look at the top 50 big apps (servers, office suites, cad, 3d etc) I would imagine it would be very low percentage if at all. This is not a demerit to .Net since that list was very similar 10 years ago and you do not port your multi-milllion line code base in the face of anything other than total obscolescence.

Its also important to regard the changing structure of the software market towards web development and service orientation rather than as a product. The hides much of any new work as internal apps behind consultancy front ends. This means a potentially more revealling gauge is in the job demand and in the Uk this is very high percentage due to the high uptake of .Net within the financial sector. I forget the numbers but computerweekly often posts market breakdowns by language.

I can't really share Robin's opinion re:limitations as I have created very complicated forms gui applications. It certainly requires 3rd party controls, experience and your own design patterns to cope with the complexity but compared to Mfc or Vb its a pretty and productive. Perhaps Robin has something else in mind but no problem here with leaking file handles - deterministic collection with:

using (TextReader t = new ...)
{
}

I'm not sure what the regressions in multimedia are but I thought managed directx was going from strength to strength. I personally have little objection to dropping in c++\cli for low level stuff anyway.

In terms of my company and products, a new 95% .Net tool which has complex gui, hardware interfaces and stringent performance targets has been used internally as a consultancy tool for about 2 years. Only now is it mature enough to sell as a ￡6000 module to an existing suite. To tie it up to what I was saying to begin with, the existing suite (￡60,000) consists in a large part fortran and vb (!) and despite finding .Net productive and generally pleasant to use, its a cold day hell before anyone imagines porting that to .Net!

A good list is mentioned over on Dan Fernandez's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2004/11/02/251254.aspx.

However, be aware that this was written over a year and half ago, and a lot more code has been written using .NET within Microsoft.

Its true that a lot of companies use .NET internally. But why doesnt MS use .NET for public apps All ms apps are native code with managed wrappers (if any). I think the real question is why should we use .NET for comercial apps when microsoft wont Does .NET training cost them a lot