Did you hear the news? ASP.NET 5 is dead it is now called ASP.NET Core 1.0. The name for this next generation of ASP.net(that’s the capitalization I’m using because this isn’t your grandmother typing in YAHOO.COM) has been up in the air for a while. We first heard the real details about ASP.net vNext at the MVP summit in 2014 and the first question on everybody’s mind was “what it was going to be called?”. At the time there wasn’t a decision on that. The perception at Microsoft seemed to be that the ASP.net moniker has a long and illustrious history. There is a lot of marketing behind the name and most developers, whether they work in the technology or not, have heard of ASP.net. Thus no matter what the final name was going to be it was pretty much a certainty that it would contain “ASP.net” in some form or another.
And that’s the problem.
See ASP.net covers a boat load of technologies: not only does it cover ASP.net MVC but also all the garbage that is webforms. Yes the name ASP.net has a long history but it isn’t one tenth as illustrious as the marketing drones at Microsoft seem to think. Let’s take a second and look at the market for ASP.net. From what I can tell there are basically two types of developers who might use it
- 9-5 developers these folks who punch the clock and aren’t going to waste a whole lot of their time on new technologies unless pushed by some reason at work.
- Magpies the developers who try out the new thing and, if worthy, move to it. These folk are the reason that we have such high turnover in web frameworks and even in web languages (Elixr anybody?)
ASP.net Core is meant to give a sense of assurance to the 9-5 developers “don’t worry this is still ASP.net, you’ll be fine it isn’t any different”. Problem is that’s nonsense. It is different. It is a big jump and we’re just being dishonest to these folks if we say otherwise. People shouldn’t be moving to your framework because of subterfuge they should be moving because it is legitimately better. ASP.net Core is legitimately better.
The 9-5 developers aren’t going to be moving to Core any time soon. ASP.net 4.6 is still the path they’re going to take. Let’s be honest, for a lot of people, ASP.net 2 is the path they’re going to take.
The rename should have been larger and should have offered the clean break that the ASP.net team have been working so hard to give us. I want to be able to go into the nodejs community, the java community whatever community and pitch them something new. Instead I’m going to be explaining why, in 2016, we’re still talking about Active Server Pages and how this isn’t webforms.
I guess that boat has sailed now so we’re stuck with a terrible name. Welcome to 2003.