Volta: Redefining Web Development

A hands-on with Volta

Ramblings of a Lazy Coder — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:48:20 GMT

I could add a hands-on with Volta to elaborate on my previous post, but Wes already beat me to it on

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

Mike Parsons — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:29:39 GMT

OK ... now turn on Fiddler and watch what comes down over the pipe for this simple application ... you gotta be kidding me.

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

Chyld Medford — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:34:39 GMT

So, you decided to start blogging again...I was about to finally remove you from my feed reader.

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

Jafar Husain — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:37:52 GMT

Hi Wes,

Does Volta use Nikhil Kothari's Javascript Converter? Is it finally being productized?

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

wesdyer — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:48:20 GMT

Mike:

You are right that a lot is coming down the pipe today. The first preview is about establishing the right basic feature set. In the upcoming releases performance will be improved dramatically.

Chyld:

I am glad to start blogging again. I have a lot to say that I've been holding back.

Jafar:

No, it is not using Nikhil's JavaScript Converter. One of the things that Volta provides is a deep embedding of MSIL in JavaScript. So you can also write apps in VB.NET, F#, ...

Who am I

harishk's WebLog — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:14:11 GMT

Hi, My name is Harish Kantamneni. I am a developer at Microsoft and work for Erik Meijer of the LINQ

Volta preview is released

yag: Community and Architecture — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:31:21 GMT

Erik Meijer and I have discussed Volta a number of times - very exciting to see it released on Live Labs

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

dpirs — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:46:54 GMT

Oh, finally a new post. Welcome back!

What is Volta?

Ken Schaefer — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:49:54 GMT

Good question. I saw this today in my RSS reader: http://blogs.msdn.com/wesdyer/archive/2007/12/05/volta-redefining-web-development.aspx

Microsoft Volta redefines web development

DotNetKicks.com — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:01:00 GMT

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

Arno — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 12:14:10 GMT

(My first post! Be gentle ;) )

I'm not really convinced; the reason that I use different programs is to ensure the stages of communication are separated. For example, in your demonstration a button is defined which is exactly what I don't want; I want to separate the interface from the back-end code. I think, it makes for cleaner programmer practices.

Volta: een nieuw ASP.NET framework

Roland — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:23:36 GMT

Met Volta wil Microsoft de wirwar van methodieken die er op dit moment is om een ASP.NET applicatie te

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

Martijn Veken — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:23:42 GMT

This looks kind of nice. I'm still a bit sceptical, so I will play around with the hands-on-lab ;-)

I do have one concern though: I think that with all the cool new initiatives, Microsofts strategy on web-development is becoming a bit unclear. At the moment we have classic ASP.NET, the ASP.NET AJAX Framework, Silverlight, MVC, Volta, WCSF. All (very! :-) nice things on their own, but I think that at the moment there appears to be a lack of cohesion between all of them. They are all trying to solve a piece of the web-development puzzle, but they are not integrated in one solution (yet?). I hope this will become more clear in the future.

Microsoft Volta CTP

Willem Meints — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:56:51 GMT

Always wanted to develop web applications a bit different? Microsoft just release volta, a new way to

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

OnesAndTwos — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:40:43 GMT

Glad to see you blogging again... Was the same as Chyld and was just about to remove you from my RSS...

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

wesdyer — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:39:21 GMT

Arno:

Welcome. Can you explain what you mean by "I want to seperate the interface from the backend code"? I think that you are getting at the fact that you want to define the button in HTML, is that right or am I missing something?

Martijn:

Yes, there are a lot of technologies in the space. In some sense, I think that it reflects the confusion we see in the industry at large. Remember that Volta is an experimental technology preview at this point, so it really is about showing what the future may hold and shouldn't really influence your short-term planning. Furthermore, Volta is meant to complement the other technologies: it is a set of developer tools that can/could target various runtime web features.

I'm glad you're skeptical. You should be. Try it out and check out the information.

Tier-split Refactoring WinForms Applications with Volta

Dragos Manolescu's blog — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:52:12 GMT

The Volta quickstart as well as Wes ' blog post Volta: Redefining Web Development tier-split an application

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

buzina — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:30:36 GMT

Hi Wes,

It has been quite a while without a post from you, now I understand why. I do like many of the volta ideas. Is there a future plan to do things like:

[RunAtDatastorage] [RunAtDatabase]

[RunAtBusinessTier]

[RunAtPresentationTier]

etc. and getting your works into the database engine (hey translating IL either to IL for MS SQL or to PL/SQL for Oracle) to your SAP (by translating to ABAP) and similar? Are you planning to set this up as a framework, so that others can plug their tiers into it?

Please make it that way ...

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

wesdyer — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:07:19 GMT

buzina:

Do you dabble in mind reading? ;)

I think you will be pleased with what you see in the coming months.

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

dreamy_zombie — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:20:36 GMT

I can see two major problems here (this is why i can't say "great!"):

1) Code samples shows very unstructured code like php or js. It is not look like OOP or component oriented thing.

2) Performance is awfull. Both IE7 and Firefox nearly dies on the samples.

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

wesdyer — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:57:16 GMT

dreamy_zombie:

I like the name, it is pretty catchy.

I am very interested in why you identified problem (1). Are you referring to a particular sample or did something about their design make you cringe?

As for problem (2), we know the performance is not what it needs to be. The first release is a very early prototype. As I am sure you know, prototypes are most effective when they address the riskiest parts of the design. We did not nor do we consider performance to be the riskiest part of the design. We have measured and analyzed performance and know what we need to do to address it. The riskier parts of the design are how it feels from the programmer's point of view.

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

Ray Zhang — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:54:30 GMT

Hi Buddy,

It seems that the icon of Volta looks like firefox:)

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

wesdyer — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 09:03:26 GMT

Ray:

There is definitely a similarity. But it was actually designed to look like the other live labs logos (photosynth, deepfish, ...). Now, were they designed to look like the fox? I have no idea.

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

David McKay — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:56:40 GMT

What is the language named for? The Lake? The Physicist? The Bjork CD?

re: Volta: Redefining Web Development

wesdyer — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:51:39 GMT

It is named after the physicist, but it also means "revolution" in portugese.