What is the benefit of .NET?

In simple terms

[txbakers]

I've been coding sites with ASP for years, very successfully. I've done some amazing things and created some great apps.

Now I am finally starting to use the .NET for a new project, enjoying it, but still fail to get the "AHA" moment as to why it's so much more superior to regular ASP.

Most everything I've done has required much more coding than the same functions in ASP. Although, it has been nice being able to create one CONNECTION class, and one function for running queries, updates and deletes, by passing the SQL statement.

It seems like a lot more work for not much more output. But I DO want to be proven wrong, and would like to be able to explain in simple non-Geek terms why it's worth learning.

THANKS

[mrMister]

I'm not saying that the viewstate is not useful. I'm sure that if you're an application developer moving to web development and you have difficulty adjusting to change, then it's probably a great tool to use in an Intranet environment ;-)

Seriously though, My viewpoint is distorted by having recently seen a client site where the viewstate was used where there was no need for it whatsoever. It added 15K to a 5K page.

The developer was clueless to the damage it was causing. He actually went so far as to say it was "speeding up the site"!

I've also seen sensitive information stored in the viewstate that shouldn't have been publicly accessible. A lot of developers seem to assume that it's encryped data when in fact its just encoded and anyone can read what's in there.

[Easy_Coder]

mrmister, sounds like you ran into someone that isn't using that feature carefully.

You do have the option of using the EnableViewStateMac page level directive to determine if someone has monkeyed with the viewstate values but your point is well taken regarding sensitive data. And yes your right, it's Base64 encoded not encrypted.