Click here to Skip to main content
15,868,141 members

Survey Results

Do you use other people's components   [Edit]

Survey period: 21 Oct 2002 to 27 Oct 2002

There are zillions of third party components in the market - both free and commercial. Do you use them, or do you prefer to write yourself.

OptionVotes% 
I use whatever 3rd party components will do the job.15219.05
I'll use whatever supported and documented components that will do the job.26332.96
I'll use 3rd party components only when there's no other choice.29436.84
I never use 3rd party stuff - I write my own.8911.15



 
General3rd Party Vendors WAKE UP! Pin
John Lyon-Smith25-Oct-02 4:43
John Lyon-Smith25-Oct-02 4:43 
I noticed some 3rd party control vendors are reading. I have some input for you. I remember sitting down with Visual Basic 1 or 2 and thinking, "Wow, VBX's are going to change everything!" Then reality set in. 3rd party vendors just weren't able to provide seamless, fully functional components without "hacks galor", which usually meant your program suffered as a consequence of using them. Then OCX's came along, and again here's me thinking, "Yes, this is finally it". BEEEP! Wrong again. COM, for all the great things that it acheived was really just a stopgap measure along the road to fully self describing object nirvana. If that's not .NET, then boy it's really, really close! MFC? Please. I'm still trying to find a use for my stack of Stingray CD's.

I urge all of you who have not sat down and written your own .NET controls yet to do so. It's criminally easy. Want them to show up in the toolbar? Easy. Want them to show all their properties with descriptions? Easy. Want them to generate events, integrate with the IDE, display at design time, do data binding? Easy, easy, easy.

So, on the one hand writing your own controls has suddenly become a reasonable (and fun) thing to do (certainly if you start with some of the great stuff available on CodeProject). On the other hand I've seen some control vendors who really get it and have written fully managed versions of their existing controls, with source code available. I haven't yet seen any "you could only do this in .NET stuff", but there you go.

Having worked with .NET for some time, and having worked for a 3rd party tools vendor (Progress Software/Crescent Software) I still think 3rd party vendors have some major problems to solve. 1. Your pricing models are all screwed up. Some of you charge way to much for stuff for which usually only 10% of the available functionality is going to get used. $1000 is a big ticket item to push through, $100 bucks is a, "Yeah, I'll take 10 of those" deal. 2. If your price is too high, this developer license thing just doesn't work. Perhaps if you break your products up so I can buy just what I need. 3. Work together! You're all producing the same stuff! Fill out your product lines by rebadging stuff from other vendors instead of writing your own. I'm always going to buy the library that has the most features. The first thing I do when I start looking for something is write down what I think I need. Anyone's controls that don't have the feature is O.U.T. How many vendors have a place on their web site to take input on why I rejected your stuff? Nada. 4. Get responsive to customer needs. I'm not kidding - the open source movement for .NET controls is going to be huge. Scratch that - it already is. I my opinion the source code is only important so that I can tell your support people where the program bombed and as extra documentation. I don't want to find your bugs - I want you too!

When all those MFC/WTL/VB6 developers work up the energy to learn .NET you're going to be wondering why nobodies buying UI components anymore. They'll all be up here downloading Carlos' stuff. If you can't do any of this then perhaps it's time to start developing web services to format code and clear credit cards? Wink | ;)

John
GeneralRe: 3rd Party Vendors WAKE UP! Pin
Patrick Lassalle26-Oct-02 1:34
Patrick Lassalle26-Oct-02 1:34 
GeneralRe: 3rd Party Vendors WAKE UP! Pin
Anonymous10-Apr-04 21:17
Anonymous10-Apr-04 21:17 
GeneralUse of 3rd party controls depends... Pin
LongRange.Shooter24-Oct-02 9:22
LongRange.Shooter24-Oct-02 9:22 
GeneralNeed Choice: I only use third party controls when source code is supplied. Pin
NormDroid23-Oct-02 22:48
professionalNormDroid23-Oct-02 22:48 
GeneralWho's the 2nd party? Pin
Marc Clifton22-Oct-02 7:17
mvaMarc Clifton22-Oct-02 7:17 
GeneralRe: Who's the 2nd party? Pin
peterchen22-Oct-02 13:18
peterchen22-Oct-02 13:18 
GeneralRe: Who's the 2nd party? Pin
Troy Marchand23-Oct-02 7:23
sitebuilderTroy Marchand23-Oct-02 7:23 
GeneralDecision factors Pin
Troy Marchand22-Oct-02 5:30
sitebuilderTroy Marchand22-Oct-02 5:30 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Gary Wheeler23-Oct-02 1:45
Gary Wheeler23-Oct-02 1:45 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Paul Watson23-Oct-02 3:21
sitebuilderPaul Watson23-Oct-02 3:21 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Gary Wheeler23-Oct-02 3:56
Gary Wheeler23-Oct-02 3:56 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Ed Gadziemski25-Oct-02 5:01
professionalEd Gadziemski25-Oct-02 5:01 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Gary Wheeler25-Oct-02 7:29
Gary Wheeler25-Oct-02 7:29 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Troy Marchand23-Oct-02 6:26
sitebuilderTroy Marchand23-Oct-02 6:26 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Gary Wheeler23-Oct-02 7:11
Gary Wheeler23-Oct-02 7:11 
GeneralRe: Decision factors Pin
Troy Marchand23-Oct-02 7:22
sitebuilderTroy Marchand23-Oct-02 7:22 
GeneralDependency issues Pin
Rob Caldecott21-Oct-02 1:50
Rob Caldecott21-Oct-02 1:50 
GeneralRe: Dependency issues Pin
Navin21-Oct-02 9:47
Navin21-Oct-02 9:47 
GeneralRe: Dependency issues Pin
peterchen22-Oct-02 13:19
peterchen22-Oct-02 13:19 
GeneralRe: Dependency issues Pin
Navin23-Oct-02 3:00
Navin23-Oct-02 3:00 
GeneralRe: Dependency issues Pin
peterchen23-Oct-02 10:09
peterchen23-Oct-02 10:09 
GeneralDepends on Cost & Client Pin
Paul Watson20-Oct-02 23:15
sitebuilderPaul Watson20-Oct-02 23:15 
GeneralRe: Depends on Cost & Client Pin
Troy Marchand21-Oct-02 8:48
sitebuilderTroy Marchand21-Oct-02 8:48 

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.