June 01, 2003
The 13th Annual Software Development Jolt & Productivity Awards
LIBRARIES, FRAMEWORKS AND COMPONENTS
.NET Compact Framework
Programmer walks into a doctor’s office and says, “Hey, Doc, it hurts whenever I program cell phones and PDAs.” Doc says, “Don’t program cell phones and PDAs. That’ll be $100.” Thank you, thank you—I’m here every night in the main lounge. But with the release of the .NET Compact Framework 1.0, it looks like I’ll have to retire this particular gem. The .NET CF is a subset of the .NET Base Class Library that makes programming PDAs (well, Pocket PCs) and cell phones (well, next year’s generation of the Microsoft Smartphone) as straightforward as programming a desktop application. You can program the .NET Compact Framework without using Visual Studio .NET 2003, but VS .NET 2003’s wizards, visual designer and easy debugging in both emulator and attached device play a major role in making it trivial to write smart mobile clients.
The Compact Framework isn’t quite as easy to use as the .NET Base Class
Library, and interop with low-level functions causes a lot of questions on the
developer boards, but, in general, .NET CF makes programming mobile projects
fun and easy. Last year I prototyped an application that was being developed
simultaneously on J2ME, native Palm OS and .NET CF, and I can attest to the
dramatically easier time I had compared to my colleagues. Which reminds me of
a story: A J2ME programmer, a C++ programmer and a .NET CF programmer walk into
a bar … 2001 Jolt Award winner. —Larry O’Brien
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