Is it just me or does there seem to be an awful amount of messages that are getting unanswered? Or if they are unresolved, they are automatically resolved by someone else and not the originator?

Is this a sign that ASP.NET as a technology is failing from a stability and usability point of view?  I certainly think it could be, I would have thought as the technology stabilizes, there would be less problems coming in?

You've busted us!

Haha yeah there are a lot of unresolved threads but there are a lot more resolved ones.

If you look back a few days ago you will see page and pages with them mostly ticked as resolved.

Some of the questions that people ask are so specific to a complex case that nobody has any way to help them.

Some of them

On the flip side I see threads that I reply to and the author never comes back to check them out.

swaino:

Is this a sign that ASP.NET as a technology is failing from a stability and usability point of view?  I certainly think it could be, I would have thought as the technology stabilizes, there would be less problems coming in?

I dont think you thought this one through. If it was the same developers that had been using it from the start then yes you would see it stablizing but theres lots of new developers and they are all starting from scratch and asking the same questions over and over again.

A chunk of the questions I answer are just not being aware of the features that asp.net has built in.

anyway.. you're just trying to wind us all up aren't you? this is a joke right?

The problem stems from a lot of things. I'll list a few of them:

- Incomplete answers with not enough detail. People not asking the right question due to lack of knowledge.

- Programmers that were taught to use plug and play controls such as SQLDataSource. These controls give the user no insight as to how anything works, and subsequently, when something goes wrong they're in the dark.

- People with ESL, which makes it very hard to understand what they're talking about.

rtpHarry:

If you look back a few days ago you will see page and pages with them mostly ticked as resolved

I have had my posts marked as resolved when they were not.

In some cases, this has happen within hours of posting and before I even got to see the answer.

ergo, it's not the tick, it's the quality of the tick that counts

1994 - 1995, on contract to Microsoft Canada PSS (Product Support Services), there was a lot of pressure to mark issues as resovled in order to make the statistics look good.  I am not saying that that practice is happening here; I am saying that only truly resolved questions deserved to be marked as such.

There are too few of the 100 000 + members who actually post answers (at least it seems that way).  Those that do not post may have good reasons for not posting. 

The reality is that not every post will get an answer.  Reality sucks.  Especially if the ship that is sinking is yours and the person who knows your answer is tied up elsewhere for whatever reason.  What is sadest is when a member could answer a post, does have the time, but can not be bothered.

Regards,
Gerry

Pak514:

The problem stems from a lot of things. I'll list a few of them:

- Incomplete answers with not enough detail. People not asking the right question due to lack of knowledge.

- Programmers that were taught to use plug and play controls such as SQLDataSource. These controls give the user no insight as to how anything works, and subsequently, when something goes wrong they're in the dark.

- People with ESL, which makes it very hard to understand what they're talking about.

Sometimes it is fair to blame the victiim imho ... sometimes the questions are so vague, even from people for whom English is ther mother tongue, that it is difficult to even get the question.

There are just not enough hours in the hour (sic) for those relative few who do contribute to answer every question.

On the brighter side, it appears to me that I am more likely to get an answer at forums.asp.net than I am at its sister site forums.iis.net.  FWIW

g.

gerrylowry:

On the brighter side, it appears to me that I am more likely to get an answer at forums.asp.net than I am at its sister site forums.iis.net.  FWIW

Woop!

rtpHarry:

anyway.. you're just trying to wind us all up aren't you? this is a joke right?

Haha, no I'm not trying to wind you up, and I'm not trying to criticize all the great help & support on the forum.  I understand there are more and more new starters who are coming up with the same problems, but people like me have been developing in ASP.NET for 3+ years now.  However my role in the forums is always as someone questioning rather than providing solutions & help.  I would rather be the latter, but I'm always as the former role.  I guess there are alot of people also in this situation.  So my question was is ASP.NET too difficult to learn & maybe at times maybe not unstable (as I said earlier) but rather unpredicatable?  Unpredicatable behaviour from the abstraction layer can be just as hard to deal with by the developer as unstability from the platform.

I've been a C++, ATL/COM, VB developer in the past so its not like I'm a 'toy asp scripting' developer who has to suddenly learn OO techniques etc.  However ASP.NET does have a steep learning curve and in my opinion is difficult to learn.

I also understand the nature of web applications in which browser compatibility and the nuances of JavaScript throw other spanners into the works, & this doesn't help ASP.NET's cause.  Yesterday I spent a whole day trying to resolve a simple problem.  It was fustrating to say the least because to do the same thing in VB6 & WinForms would be a non-issue.  So I believe ASP.NET's abstraction doesn't work very well, its also been described as a very 'leaky' abstraction ; often the abstraction layer fails and the developer has to spend more time investigating & writing code which has nothing to do with business processes of the application. 

Anyway, just a chance of airing my opinions!:)

Just an update to this post, today I was getting a 'Sys' undefined error from the AJAX library.

Now this should be as simple as adding a ScriptManager to the page, ensuring the AJAX library is setup in the web.config.  So I've spent half a day googling what this error is, and what causes it.  However, still no answer to this problem which is now eating into my development time.

I can't work out what the problem is, but if I search for this problem within this forum, guess how many posts come up?  15962!  So 15962 posts for this error have been raised by people, and doesn't even include those who didn't ask on the forum.

If I was head of the ASP.NET/AJAX team, I'd be getting all the top problems raised in these forums and then go fix them!!  ASP.NET/AJAX is flakey, there I've said it, I've had my rant!

I assume you've looked at this thread?

http://forums.asp.net/t/1040236.aspx?PageIndex=1

Also, is it just your project that's getting the error or does a fresh ajax enabled site produce the error when a script manager is on the page? If it's your site then you're most likely at fault.

swaino:

Is it just me or does there seem to be an awful amount of messages that are getting unanswered?

There are a lot of questions being asked because ASP.NET technology is expanding in so many directions!

swaino:

Or if they are unresolved, they are automatically resolved by someone else and not the originator?

Regrettably the originator often forgets to click the Mark as Answer!

swaino:

Is this a sign that ASP.NET as a technology is failing from a stability and usability point of view?

No way!

rtpHarry:

Haha yeah there are a lot of unresolved threads but there are a lot more resolved ones.

Well said!

rtpHarry:

If you look back a few days ago you will see page and pages with them mostly ticked as resolved.

Exactly!

swaino:

So my question was is ASP.NET too difficult to learn & maybe at times maybe not unstable (as I said earlier) but rather unpredicatable?

It is not too difficult to learn, there is just so much to learn!

TATWORTH:

swaino:

So my question was is ASP.NET too difficult to learn & maybe at times maybe not unstable (as I said earlier) but rather unpredicatable?

It is not too difficult to learn, there is just so much to learn!

Yeah I guess in contrast with PHP all of the people with problems are on a million little forums for whatever library they decided to use.

With asp.net there are a lot of features which are included so it all goes wrong here! :)

Sometimes questions get asked on this forum should have been asked elsewhere. There have been so many that I maintain an FAQ on other forums http://forums.asp.net/p/1337412/2699239.aspx#2699239

Some questions can be answered very quickly.

Some questions leave out essential details, so questions have to be asked of the original poster - this introduces a delay.

Some questions require many hours of work.

Some questions whilst having been answered correctly, the answer needs to be tested over days or even weeks, so it could be some weeks before the original poster can mark the question as answered.

Some original posters do not know how to mark the question as answered!

There is also a major problem in that the subject of a question frequently lacks clarity (even posts by experianced members can have an inadequete title); as a consequence people who could answer a particular question may miss it.

Now is it any surprise that you are seeing unanswered questions?