SubSonic: RIP?
I’m getting a non-stop barrage of emails/IMs/blog comments in the wake of TechEd asking me if SubSonic is dead and buried. Accusations of “Microsoft has bought and buried SubSonic” seem to be coming at me from various places. Someone even asked me if SubSonic is the Hillary Clinton of ASP.NET. Good grief people…
No, Never. Not. Ever.
This is partly my fault. I’ve been trying to be a good guy about this whole “Is SubSonic Dead?” thing for the last 6 months and essentially just ignore it. It sort of calls into question my integrity – suggesting I might have sold SubSonic’s soul to Redmond.
I get this from time to time if we don’t pop a release every month – it happened right before we released 2.0.3.
No. SubSonic is not dead. No souls were sold. It hasn’t been bought. Microsoft did not bury me.
I understand that a “sense of movement” indicates that a body is not a corpse, and I’ve felt that we’ve had that. Our checkins have been regular, as have our beta pushes of 2.1.
As a matter of fact, we just released 2.1 Release Candidate 1 today. Many thanks to Eric for that one!
Gray, Twitching Fingers
Today, as a matter of fact, I’m tackling (and hopefully solving) one of the core IQueryable bits that’s holding me back from a full Linq To SubSonic implementation. It’s not easy, this LINQ stuff, but I’m getting there!
The Dynamic Data Question
Yes, Dynamic Data. I like Dynamic Data. Some of my best friends use Dynamic Data. It’s presence does not mean that SubSonic is dead – simply because it’s a shinier scaffold. It does what it does very, very well and I am actually quite fond of it 
.
SubSonic != Dynamic Data. Yes there are overlaps, but that’s what SubSonic is really – one big overlap. It happens to be a very easy to use overlap, and that’s always been my focus.
Just what is Rob Conery doing? I thought SubSonic was going to be Dynamic Data!
No, never. That project (aka Oryx) was afoot long before I arrived and it fits a need that Microsoft has – and it fits it well.Yes, there are some interesting parallels – but that can be said about many programs at Microsoft . Sometimes the parallels exist inside these blue walls…
Overlap is OK. It gives you choice. It inspires competition to be better.
It’s happening, I promise. But I can’t jump until the plane leaves the ground – so I ask for your patience. Patience while MVC matures (and I drive as much love into the platform as I can), patience while Dynamic Data crystallizes, patience while I work out IQueryable.
