Entity Framework vote of no confidence


As was announced initially (as far as I can tell) on Bil Simser's blog, some concerned citizens of the .NET world put out an online vote-of-no-confidence concerning the Entity Framework:

Somewhere on the list you'll find my name.  I agree with the letter, and I encourage you to read the letter and sign if you also agree.  I also have two additional reasons I signed:

  • I got totally hosed by the initial MSDN documentation on data access, when I was getting started on programming
  • The overall direction and strategy towards data access hasn't seemed to change since then

Using DataSets and typed DataSets, complete with all my logic inside stored procedures, seemed bad, but I didn't know any better.  Why should I?  The articles from the folks who created the framework described in great detail the correct way to use their framework.

But people who write articles aren't always the same as the people who develop real-world applications.  Now, I don't pretend to know how the design process works, they can't be completely in a vacuum, but I'm not sure how much opportunity people developing frameworks get to build applications built on top of those frameworks.

When you don't live in the house you built, you have to rely on the current inhabitants to tell you the house works.  Unless said inhabitants have only known houses where the toilet sits inside the kitchen, they'll probably ask for a closer fridge.

There have already been quite a few reactions from bloggers (thank you Google):

One article:

A thread, the original announcement:

Some MS responses:

The goal of this letter is to inform customers, as well as create more dialog.  I believe this letter will be successful on both points.


Posted Jun 24 2008, 10:20 PM by bogardj
Filed under:

Comments

Bil Simser wrote re: Entity Framework vote of no confidence
on 06-24-2008 11:00 PM

I think the "inform customers" tactic is there but it will probably fall on deaf ears. Customers have already bought into the MS machine and whatever it serves up a technology de jour (my French is non-existant). As for the dialog, I think it's happening. There's responses everywhere I turn right now. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. The point of people talking about it is part of the message and lets the talkers dig deeper into its meaning. MS is interested in the vote of no confidence from an observation point, what we're waiting for is to see how they respond (if at all) on it.

Colin Jack wrote re: Entity Framework vote of no confidence
on 06-25-2008 2:15 AM

One thing, the formatting of the lostechies blogs seems to have gone a bit funny when you use the new version of firefox (checked from 2 different machines). Fine from IE though.

Jason Meridth wrote re: Entity Framework vote of no confidence
on 06-25-2008 8:54 AM

@Colin

You are one of a few breed (being up at 2 AM CST).  I was adding "The Lounge" section to the right around 2 this morning.

I will verify the layout to make sure I didn't mess anything up.

I appreciate the heads-up.

@Jimmy, sorry to use your comments for this response.  Good post.

Colin Jack wrote re: Entity Framework vote of no confidence
on 06-25-2008 12:13 PM

@Jason

2am, na I'm in bed by 10 (with a hot chocolate)...I just live in the UK :)

Bryan Reynolds wrote re: Entity Framework vote of no confidence
on 06-26-2008 10:39 AM

I agree with Bil, there are so many that follow without any of their sense whatever Microsoft does.  Very sad!

You should question and analyze it all on your own.  Including TDD, DDD, etc.

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