Last week Shaun Walker the founder of DotnetNuke CMS discussed in his blog here that the core team is in the process of converting DotNetNuke from its original VB.net code base to C#. He also eluded to something I was not aware of that the original decision to use VB.NET was one of the key reasons for the early success of the open source project, as it provided Classic ASP developers with a simpler migration path to ASP.NET.

Whilst the original assamptions were entierly correct, he follows on with the notion that seven years later the landscape has changed. It was around About 1 year ago, when a Chinese developer, Ben Zhong, personally went through the effort of converting the core framework to C# and posted the results of his work on Codeplex.

Shaun reached out to the developer to determine if he would be interested in collaborating with core team to provide an “official” C# source code distribution. It turned out that he was willing, and over the past year the C# source code package, which he independently maintained, and resulted in thousands of additional downloads that proved that there is a real demand for C# Version and therefore Shaun annouced the formal decision to switch the development language from VB.net to C# for the upcomming DNN version 6.

I personally dont have much reservations with this change as most of developers in the team are much more comfortable with C#. And any modules they build is always done in C#. So the move as Shaun says will bring some new blood in the echo system. Shaun gives a list that I fully undrestand.

First Class Citizen: where recently Microsoft develops the majority of its products in C# and therefore, there is a lot more emphasis on C# and therefore inovations around this language.

Availability of Source Code Examples: where long ago in early 2001 - 2003 I used to remember there were plenty of examples in VB.net to bring in the old vb developer into .net platform. However now days I agree that I dont see much VB examples.

Developer Attitude: Sure, C# Developers are far less flexible in accepting c# solutions.

Precived Performance Benefit: I take Shaun's word for the performance metrics which validate that C# runs faster than VB.net

Enterprise Acceptance: Again no doubt, I agree with Shaun here.

Competitive Landscape: Considering most other cms systems around are developed in C# - it is natural for organizations adapting these solutions would want any new additional solutions entering their environment to be simmilar so they can use their existing developers to manage the solution. With DNN being in VB.net, there has been natural resistance in recent years.

Shaun also talks about general Strategic direction or the Language conversion tools where it is much easier to convert code from C# to VB.NET than vice versa. But probably my own reservations is on Compatibility Factors where this is what Shaun said:

"Because both C# and VB.NET share common characteristics, they are highly compatible with one another. This means that the DotNetNuke API will be able to preserve compatibility through the transition - which is obviously a highly important benefit in terms of serving the needs of our ecosystem."

And this really worries me. The code base has gone huge. As much as above is true, it has been very difficult to get the bugs under control in recent releases. I sincerely hope Shaun is right in this and we don't get lot more introduced as the result of the switch. I completely appreciate that users like us need to test and review and report what we find in beta testing. But just because of the size of the application, it is a huge task none the less.

Additionally although i completely understand the business reasons for this move. Yet in the last two weeks, I have had one potential customer in UK chaning their mind with DNN for this very reason. When I enquired why - He said well there is 4 of us here and it has taken us 6 years to build the app that runs our site in VB.net - the only reason we were considering adding DNN as the bolt on CMS was because it was in VB.net - now that there is a move to C# - well we might as well spend a little more time and do the extra in the language we all undrestand.

I know that this is the only real world negative responce I have seen. But it does highlight the fact that those that embraced the application becuase it was VB.net and they felt good about it, they may want to drop it because it no longer is.

The only problem for these customers there are no other solutions available in VB.net that they can embrace! So my final judgment is to say that this is a huge undertaking with equally massive risks for the platform. The gains are obvious yet the short term chaos it will cause is extremely worrying. Initially there will be more defecting than embracing. And if the diehard believers stay on course there will be pastures very green the other side.

Comments

ByDNN Developers @ Wednesday, March 16, 2011 11:22 AM

I hope DNN will keep its vb version aslo.. for vb.net users.

By Salar Golestanian @ Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:01 PM

Hi, IMHO keeping the VB version along the C# version seems to be unlikely since the main reason for the change was to accelerate the improvements to the core - at least that is one main reason for the proposal. So to keep both languages alive would be a very big task indeed. I would suspect that there will be a lot of Hard Core VB developers that may want to independently keep a VB version alive. The Community version is indeed Open Source.However, this would be purely on voluntary basis and I am not sure if it is practical in the long run.

Salar

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