Open source

Our readership survey is in!

The vast majority of SearchWinDevelopment.com readers are using modern tools, but a significant number of them are also interested in maintaining legacy applications, according to a readership survey conducted by the site.

A preliminary look at the survey reveals that 87% are using Visual Studio 2008 or 2005. About 65% of respondents use one of those versions as their primary IDE.

.NET languages are very popular; legacy code also important

Three quarters of all respondents reported using one of the two main .NET languages, C# and VB.NET; for half of respondents, one of those languages is what they do most of their coding in. C# is the more popular language by a significant (but not overwhelming) margin of 48% to 38%. Legacy code is still important, though. One fifth of readers use C++ and almost a third use VB6 or earlier, although only 15% of all respondents use those older languages as their main programming language.

Interestingly, the “use at all” to “use as primary” stats aren’t symmetric within .NET. As I noted above, 48% of readers use C# and 38% use VB.NET. But while 36% of readers use C# as their primary coding language, only 17% use VB.NET as their primary. That means that 75% of respondents who use C# do so for most of their programming (36 / 48 = .75), but only 45% of VB.NET coders use that language as their primary.

Web development is huge, but not quite cutting edge

Unsurprisingly, Web development is very popular. Just over half of all SearchWinDevelopment.com readers work with ASP.NET. For most of those, Web development is their main responsibility. But despite the Web 2.0 craze, Silverlight isn’t nearly as popular.

Ajax development is strong, but relatively diverse. That is probably due in part to Microsoft changing strategies: although it has its own Ajax framework, the company recently decided to officially back the popular library jQuery and incorporate it into IntelliSense. About 30% of ASP.NET developers use ASP.NET AJAX, 23% use jQuery and 15% use another framework.

What you’re doing, and how you’re doing it

In case you’re wondering how other Windows developers get things done, the top four most popular programming methodologies are waterfall, extreme programming (XP), Agile and Scrum. But about a quarter of you aren’t employing any methodology at all! That could be because almost a third of respondents work in an environment with fewer than five programmers, but it’s still a bit surprising.

And as for what you’re doing, the majority of our survey respondents said that improving performance one of their architectural challenges. That’s to be expected, but what stands out is that that’s the only architectural challenge that a majority of our readers are facing. Almost 60% of our readers listed performance as a challenge their company is facing; the next popular choice, implementing a workflow, weighed in at about 42%.

Those are topics we haven’t covered extremely closely, so that feedback is great to have.

Lastly, it’s clear that many of you are interested in learning new tools and technologies. We asked readers to rank their interest in nine topics, including software-as-a-service and open source software, which Microsoft is warming up to. Most of the topics trended toward “highly interested,” with only scripting languages and grid computing technology trending toward disinterest. That might not bode well for Microsoft’s latest push to promote PHP on Azure.

Look for a more in-depth analysis of the survey in the coming weeks. In the meanwhile, to all of our readers who took the survey, our deep thanks!

Open source cataloger adds CodePlex to its knowledgebase

A company that helps developers find, track and manage open source components has partnered with Microsoft to include projects from CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source portal.

Black Duck Software helps companies find reliable open source projects and comply with their various licenses. Although the source code for open source software (OSS) is free, various licenses have different restrictions, ranging from simple attribution to obliging developers to publish any improvements they make back to the OSS community.

It’s not easy to manage those licenses, and companies will sometimes try to find an alternative OSS project if the one they currently draw from has a relatively restrictive license, said Peter Vescuso, executive vice president of marketing and business development at Black Duck. Black Duck can also help companies gauge OSS projects’ quality by providing information about their developer community and version history, he said.

By bringing CodePlex projects into its KnowledgeBase, which catalogs open source projects, Black Duck is underscoring Microsoft’s relatively new push to embrace open source. Microsoft has made several overtures toward open source: it recently released ASP.NET MVC as open source; several of its Silverlight components are open source; it’s making sure its Azure cloud OS will work with PHP; and its CodePlex site provides a repository for open source projects. Most projects on CodePlex are Windows applications written in .NET, although that isn’t a requirement for putting a project on the site.

The partnership with Microsoft will give Black Duck access to projects’ metadata, letting it automate its information gathering process, Vescuso said. For Microsoft, the deal will help it get out the message that it’s a true, committed player in the open source world, he said.

Open source is often associated with Linux, but most developers in the last decade — including Windows developers — look to open source to help them as they write applications, Vescuso said. Those uses range from just copying a few lines to using whole components or tools.