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The LightSwitch Hits Keep Coming

I have to admit, Andrew Brust called it. When I got the first draft of Andrew's take on the new LightSwitch visual development tool for his Redmond Review column in the September issue of Visual Studio Magazine, I scoffed at the notion that LightSwitch would kick off a huge ideological debate over who is, and who is not, a "real" programmer.

But after a few minutes watching VSLive! presenter Billy Hollis tear it up during his spirited Devopalooza routine Wednesday evening, I realized I was sorely mistaken. Billy got started ribbing Microsoft over the increasing complexity of its development tooling, before broaching the subject of LightSwitch, which of course is intended to make .NET development easy. So easy, in fact, that it invites all sorts of people to build .NET applications. It was when Billy started displaying the reaction from the twitterverse that I realized that, whoa, there might be an ideological clash afoot.

Billy read through a dozen or so tweets, each as scathing as the last. One tweet said LightSwitch should be called what it really is, "Visual Studio for Dummies." Another bemoaned the coming flood of amateur apps and the inevitable cries for support their authors would create. The theme, as Billy observed, was clear: A lot of people really, really don't like LightSwitch.

But why? I mean, it's not like the people who will be cranking out LightSwitch apps aren't already producing business logic in Access, SharePoint and Excel. Heck, if LightSwitch manages to lure corporate holdouts away from Visual Basic for Applications, can't we all agree that is a good thing?

As Andrew Brust so adroitly observed in the first cut of his column manuscript, maybe not. Fortunately, you can check out Andrew's blog post on LightSwitch, which includes his observations on the reception the announcement got among developers.

What's your take? Is LightSwitch a welcome return to the productivity-minded tooling that helped make Microsoft the giant that it is, or is LightSwitch a gimmick that opens the field to reckless development?

Posted by Michael Desmond on 08/04/2010 at 9:08 PM


Reader Comments:

Wed, Oct 12, 2011 jaime weise Vancouver

Lightswitch is great but it is finicky to deploy currently and seems to break often when mixed with some visual studio addins.

Thu, Feb 24, 2011 Hollerith Dallas

I remember when Visual Basic was the new "thing" for writing productivity apps. All the "real" developers said it was a toy language etc.. I did not have a problem with the language but I did have one with the departmental sad sacks corporate managers turned into "developers" with some three day programming course. They did not know what their users needed or how to give it to them but they did know how to churn out a lot of apps that did not work very well if at all. The good thing about all of this is: I made excellent money fixing or rewriting those apps. This kind of thing will be around as long as management wants something cheap. They never learn that they pay more in the long run than if they just did the right thing to begin with.

Mon, Nov 22, 2010

I have spent just as much time fixing apps created by those calling themselves 'hard core engineer' as those created by 'departmental hacks'. Try hiding your insecurity in some other way, it doesn't play well.

Tue, Nov 9, 2010 SW Monkey

As a hard core engineer for over 20+ years my take is this. Tools that takes away redundant code is good. Tools that invite people who are not skilled engineers into the field invites chaos. There is a lot more to developing product that writing code. I've spent countless amounts of time cleaning up after people trying to short work with cheap labor. I will evaluate this though as I said, tools that reduce redundant work in the hands of a skilled engineer increases productivity. I am just concerned that if you get outside MSFT boundaries of what their tools support what happens (can you say MFC). I find .NET simple as it is, so not sure what a tool like this is going to make it more so. Anyway, should be interesting either way. I'll be happy to evaluate it, but I am fairly sure I'm not the target audience though.

Thu, Aug 12, 2010 SkepticalbutReceptive

I'll reserve judgement until I see it in action (webcast, usergroup, conference). Many easy Microsoft dev innovations do turn out to be deadends that deflate from their initial hyped promises... But no reason yet to rush to a negative judgement IMO.

Tue, Aug 10, 2010

LightSwitch a concern for IT purists? Seriously? What about all the "not-so-efficient" code already being written and continuing to be written in Visual Studio.

Fri, Aug 6, 2010 ZappedOne

@Unimpressed: Point well taken.

Fri, Aug 6, 2010 Unimpressed

@ZappedOne: There is a lot of childish snobbery, but at least one valid concern is the amount of tedious investigation/adaptation/destruction that professionals have to add to their workloads when presented with the shortsighted meddlings of amateurs to 'improve' or integrate. On the other hand, its an earner.

Fri, Aug 6, 2010 Unimpressed

Looks like a weak clone of Iron Speed Designer.

Thu, Aug 5, 2010 Steve Australia

As the owner of an ISV I love the sound of LightSwitch, maybe LightSpeed was taken. I came originally from a Peoplesoft background, some 12 years ago and seriously to write a great LOB app in PeopleTools was so easy compared to .net today and that was 12 years ago. This kinda of gives us some of that out of the box and I think this is terrific. I just hope they make it usable by Developers and not just departmental hackers.

Thu, Aug 5, 2010 John mcfetridge

There always has been a division between RAD development and programming for the long term. By the long term I mean apps that will be around for years and needto be extended and maintained. here we architecture comes first (MVVM,MEF,DI, etc). then there is RAD and it sounds like LightSwitch is a great tool so I haveno problem with it

Thu, Aug 5, 2010 Burt Pittsburgh

I started as an Access/VBA programmer when Access came out. I created lots of productive applications, some of which are still running good small companies. I migrated to .Net and VB.Net then to C#. I bememoaned that Access became a dead-end for many beginning and part-time programmers when .Net arrived. Hopefully that changes with Lightswitch. Hooray!

Thu, Aug 5, 2010 ws

That reminds me of a long time ago, when dbase came out, and cobol/mainframe programmers kept saying that it was impossible to build an application in a pc with a tool that made things look so simple. And from the little I've seen about Lightswitch, it may not be the case that it's building 'bad' apps, just 'simple' ones. I'd use it as a prototyping tool at least.

Thu, Aug 5, 2010 j357

Just like the smart phone phenomenon, it's about the consumer, not IT. I agree with Michael that this will hopefully get us away from Access and VB but... The problem that I see is - how do we define the 'production' system when folks are using these other tools to get their jobs done? How do we plan for DR if we don't know they exist? I think a key is to give the customer what they want but in a place where we can recover it and monitor it for suspicious activity. Give them a cloud and make it easier for them to use the cloud than their own PC.

Thu, Aug 5, 2010 ZappedOne

I don't get these violent and puritan reactions to LightSwitch. Visual Studio for Dummies? Serious? Why are some people so "concerned" about what tool somebody else might use? I say to them: we know you're smart but please worry about *your* work and the quality *you* produce. Be happy.

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