Please include a little blurb as to what your opinions are.
Maybe you think C/Side does the job and that’s there no need to fix something that’s not broken, or maybe you think its bringing Navision more into the main stream, and makes development more articulate.
What ever your opinion please feel free to discuss it here.
I decided that I think both would be good.
It would allow better integration with Components already in exisistance. Which is a main aim of .Net.
But I also think that C/Side has its benefit, and allows rapid development. I think it would be quickier to develop in C/Side than C#.
Things like Events and Delgates appeal to me, and also the possibility of using Regular Expressions on imports of data, or validating things likes Email, Phone No. fields, or fields where a “format” is expected, but not enforced at the moment.
I voted C# is the way ahead. They will have to find a way though to make C# syntax as simple as C/AL is now, with a clearly defined namespace. I am thinking along the lines of LINQ, where you have qualified data manipulation methods that can be checked against actual database fields, instead of typing a SQL statement that you hope is correct.
Having both is not a practical situation, there has to be a clear choice. Either one or the other.
Until that can be accomplished I will be against C# in NAV development. However I do think they should integrate C/AL into Visual Studio, and have a separate C/AL editor that sits on top of the code editor in Visual Studio. They should also use the Visual Studio debugging tools. My god it would be so awesome to have an immediate window in the debugger.
Imagine some programmer adds some .Net in the code.
After some time, ANOTHER programmer has to add some other code to the code and he uses C#.
Again some time later, a third programmer has to change some things in the standard and in both blocks of added code. That programmer needs to know 3 languages quite good to do that.
And sometimes it is also difficult for a programmer to just knowing well C/AL…
I think it would be a bad move for the quality of the changes.
Exactly my point it must be one language only. There has to be a clear choice, and I would prefer C#.
Has anyone seen 5.1? It converts C/AL to C# for the Middle tier. And then V6 is going to be fully Visual Studio .NET.
Not sure who told you that, but if you belive it, then let me tell you about my client in Nigeria Dr. Mundabi that died in an airplance crash, and left the sum of TWENTYFIVEMILLIONUSDOLLARSONLY that we can share if you send me all your bank details. [:D]
Oh, oh, oh, Can I have some of this Cash as well? 
No, hes nearly right, it converts Codeunits to C#, but if you modify them in C# and use them then there is no going back to the old C/Side version, so be warned. And that’s not what I have heard, that’s what I have seen :-). Not that that means much, it was before the 5.0 5.1 decision.
/TH
he he, well it’s how rumours begin. I heard it from one of the microsoft guys who demoes the latest version of 5.1 to me 2 weeks ago. But, I must admit, I don’t expect it. [:D].
PS: Dr. Mundabi has still not replied to me [;)]
I was refering to this bit.
I suppose Fully Visual Studio .NET is a bit bold. I don’t know for sure.
Don’t get your hopes up, we will not be able to actually see the C# in 5.1. Translating C/AL to C# and compiling it into managed assemblies will be in memory only, there will not be any .cs files stored on your computer.
Also quite clearly accessing these files will be defined as “reverse engineering” aka hacking, so I really don’t think this is what you imagine it to be.
C/SIDE is here to stay.
Hey DenSter,
Are you sure? If you are they have taken a back step because, as I say, its not some rumour from a friend of a friend, I actually saw it all working with my own eyes, and the resulting cs file.
/TH
Just thinking back to the Convergence conference, I got the idea that the main NAV developer (Can’t remember his name) had no intentions of changing the development (CAL) environment as it is simple and effective. However, one of the technical guys at Microsoft hinted that it may be VS.NET in V6.
I saw the same thing, which is a development build, in which they have a step to save the CS file, so they can check syntax in Visual Studio. We were told that in the actual release they are not going to save cs files, translating and compiling into managed code wil all be done in memory. It’s not a step back, as far as I understand it they never intended it to work that way. Either the person that showed it to you was misinformed or you misunderstood them. I asked the question specifically just last week, and they said no.
Hey Daniel, that’s NDA by the way [;)] and if I wasn’t under an NDA also, then I would confirm that what you are saying is 100% correct.
By the way Nic, you were at Convergence, you should have dropped into the stand and said Hi. (Or did you and I was so busy I missed you [:$] ). Also at Tech Ed we got confrimation that C/SIDE will be the core language for NAV 7.0 and that was at a public session, so its no secret. Actually I was more shocked to hear them mention that they had plans as far as 7.0 than I was to hear that C/SIDE would still be around.
Actually the part about not storing cs files was from a webcast that I saw on the public Microsoft site, so that is not under NDA. The question I asked in our MVP meeting last week just confirmed that. I take the NDA very seriously. There are many rumors flying around that I know are not correct and I have never replied to anything that I feel is under NDA.
Can you post a link to the public web cast? It is annoying isn’t it when we can’t clarify stupid rumors all the time.
I tried but can’t seem to be able to find it again. It might have been pulled… It was mentioned in a news item that you get in the screensaver. I’m always looking for those types of things, to figure out what I can and cannot talk about.