Choosing the Best .NET Platform

Telerik recently released its "Platform Guidance for Microsoft.NET", and it's worth a read. It's a short-form, condensed guide to the six types of applications that most .NET developers build, and advice on which .NET technologies are the best fits for each type of app.

What I like about it is that it's an easy read (always appreciated for those of us with lots to do), and there's very little "...and here's how Telerik's award-winning products can help you" markitecture in it. In fact, there are only a few references to the company in the document itself, so it doesn't read like a product brochure. The advice is spot-on, and although somewhat basic, still worth your time.

A few nuggets of interest that I pulled out of it:

• The guide lists Silverlight as the top choice for building line-of-business apps, but adds a warning:

"Microsoft has slowed its investment in evolving the Silverlight platform. When evaluating Silverlight, extra care should be made to ensure the platform as it exists today meets the requirements of a project." 

It's comforting to hear that Silverlight is still a recommended technology, even if it does come with a caveat.

• WPF is still the choice for rich, beefy, custom Windows apps. But it wasn't recommended for any of the other five scenarios.
• For mobile sites, Telerik recommends ASP.NET MVC and HTML5. In other words, HTML5 has you surrounded; assimilate or die.

Note that Windows 8, still in pre-beta when the document was published, didn't get any recommendations; Telerik said it will update the document in time to reflect that.

Posted by Keith Ward on 02/21/2012 at 12:45 PM