Monday, June 13, 2005
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Who is Mort anyway? And why should he care about VS 2005?

Mort is the Microsoft “persona” often associated with VB, and for various reasons “Mort” has unfortunately become an insult.

 

But in reality, Mort is the business developer. You know, like the 3 million or so VB6 developers that have been programming for anywhere from 5-20 years and have a pretty good clue about how software is built. Mort is not a newbie or a hobbyist. Mort is a professional[1] business developer. In fact, the Mort persona represents the vast majority of developers. There are around 3-5 VB developers for every C++/C# developer out there. And an increasing number of C# developers are “Morts” as well - you don't stop being a Mort just because you change programming languages after all.

 

The highly productive majority of developers who build business systems day in and day out. These business developers typically build systems for 1 to 1000 users. Systems that are of critical importance to their business. Systems that are linked to the very lifeblood of the companies for which these people work.

 

Mort is the heart and soul of the Microsoft platform. Mort is the reason Microsoft development is pervasive in virtually all small to mid-sized companies, and why it is lurking in the shadows everywhere you look even in the Fortune 100. These are the business developers that won't say no, that won't give up and who refuse to spend weeks or months on over-thinking J2EE or COM+ architectures when they can have their software up and saving money in a few days.

 

These are the people who never left the "smart client" and so isn’t "coming back to it" in a revolution. Long-time business developers are the people who saw the web for the terminal-based monstrosity it is and never left the productivity of Windows itself. These are the true Microsoft loyalists.

 

They aren't the uber-geeks. They aren't in it for the love of technology nearly as much as for the love of helping their end users and their companies. They are pragmatic and focused on just getting stuff done and running and saving money.

 

It isn’t like quality doesn’t count. Quality is critical, but also relative to the task at hand. In most cases, adequate software that’s deployed in a couple months is infinitely superior to exquisitely designed and tested software that’s deployed in a couple years.

 

A very large number of these “Mort” business developers are still using VB6 and have yet to move to .NET. Whether these business developers stay in VB or move to C# doesn't really matter to me a whole lot. Speaking as a geek I think that what’s important is that they move to .NET, because it is a far superior platform than Windows. But is this actually important to the business developers themselves?

 

The fact is that the majority of business developers aren't going to change the way they work due to a new language or even a new platform. If .NET can't give them the high levels of productivity of VB6 they won't move. If Microsoft can't convince mainstream business developers that they can switch to .NET quickly, easily and in order to gain serious and pragmatic benefit they'll never move. Nor should they. If .NET doesn’t make their job easier what would be the point?

 

Personally I am convinced that Visual Studio 2005 (with its attendant new VB and C# languages and related tools) is the tipping point. Not from a geek perspective (though there’s cool stuff there too), but from a pragmatic get-it-done perspective.

 

The new data access features in ADO.NET and in Windows Forms are truly the best stuff Microsoft has ever done in this area. The levels of productivity for building business applications in Windows Forms are unmatched by any technology I’ve seen.

 

The new and updated Windows Forms controls and the streamlined nature of Windows development brings back memories of VB6. Yes, Windows Forms is still a new forms engine when compared to VB6, but finally we can honestly make the claim that it is easier and more powerful than its VB6 predecessor. We can sincerely show that a business application can be written faster and with less code in VB 2005 than in VB6.

 

Things like the new splitter control, the flow layout, the toolstrip (the toolstrip is my new favorite toy btw), the new datagridview and other controls are the keys to serious productivity. Couple them with the easy way you create template projects, forms and classes and you almost immediately have a highly consistent and productive development environment to match or exceed VB6.

 

At Tech Ed last week Microsoft announced that VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be released around the week of Nov 8, 2005. If you are one of the very large number of business developers who’ve been holding off on .NET, I understand. But I strongly suggest you look at VS 2005 and VB 2005, because I’m betting you are going to love what you see!

 

 

[1] As in sports, a professional is someone who makes their living by doing something. In this context, a professional business developer is someone who makes their living by building business software

Microsoft .NET
Monday, June 13, 2005 4:45:12 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [11]  |  Related posts:
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"Mort-ified" (Randy Holloway Unfiltered) [Trackback]
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005 7:16:24 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Nice post Rocky... Glad to hear someone of your stature publicly defend the "Morts" and put the proper perspective on it. It gets a little tiring in the blabosphere listening to a vocal minority slam the folks that makes MS what it is. If it wasn't for the "Morts", that vocal minority wouldn't have the tools it has today. And you're right-on about the C# Morts; Morts don't just use VB anymore! <g>
leigh.kendall@nospam.databridgesystems.com (Leigh Kendall)
Tuesday, June 14, 2005 10:21:09 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Hey Rock,

Great post. As a card carrying member of the Morts, I agree totally. I wasn't always a Mort..I cut my teeth in a similar environment as you, on Digital machines back in the days of Pick and the rest. I moved to C, then C++. Then Apple Pascal hit and I rode that a long while, officially jumping to VB at the 3.0 era. I've had a nice career being a corporate VB coder, never at a loss for work and producing some very nice and useful products.

Now the company I work for is transitioning to Java and SWT/JFace. Quite a shift for a simple MS Mort like myself. Interestingly, all the work by the Java community seems to be trying to capture the "Morts" of the world while Microsoft seems to want to leave them behind.

Oh well, the only constant is change, and nothing really changes.

Again, great post.
Mike Shaffer
Sunday, June 19, 2005 1:23:01 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I like the blog, and I understand the main intent: sympathetic invitation of VB6 programmers to .Net 2005 – and “sympathetic” is the key word.

However, I hope it does not mean that J2EE are all not “Mort” (business developer) -- and even that may make some sense, I really hope it does not mean that Java programmers are not “Mort”. Also, although web is weak, but web is indeed a revolution for distributed computing – it has shown how “easy” a distributed computing can be – and the key word is “easy” (whatever it means), which (with “quotation marks”) is a major part of the “Mort”.

“Morts” are business developers. So, if you have a very good business-domain library, C++ programmers can be “Mort”. Then, in the early days of web application, Perl programmers are “mort”. Further, Java programmers are certainly “Mort”, Java is simply an early born C# (and happened born by SUN-IBM, instead of MS). Those developers have the same mind set like VB developers -- I know that, because I used those (C++ as application tool; perl; and java) for quite a while, and I used them at the same time when I used VB.

In many ways, VB was the best, but then, Java is cleaner (which, any real “Mort” know that is crucial, in addition to brute-force “productivity”), and then, .Net (VB.Net/C#) is almost the same as java, and now perhaps we can say .Net is better.

My point: although VB are the most visible and extreme “Mort”, but they are not the only ones. C# are more recent ones, and Java are another crowd of “modern” ones. VB6 are simply a crowd of pre-modern Mort. I am sorry that I use “pre-modern”, I know the need of being “sympathetic”, but I also see the inevitable.

By the way, I have being using VB, not just 6, but earlier versions! So, I know the pain – the pain the “Mort” always experience: technology is always secondary; meeting users needs is always the first.
Kai
Sunday, June 19, 2005 7:45:09 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
It is absolutely the case that a great many Java programmers are "Morts". And I think there used to be quite a few Morts in the C++ world, though most of them fled to Java (along with the Powerbuilder crowd) when it appeared. C++ is really not made for business development, and the pain of trying to use it, even with a good framework, is quite high.

And there are a lot of web-Morts too, using perl and php and other technologies.

The key theme with Mort is that their focus is on results, not on whiz-bang technology. As long as the "whiz" and "bang" reduce the surface area a person has to know to be productive that's great, but if it is there for obscure reasons or doesn't make life directly easier it isn't overly compelling to a typical Mort.

Let's face it, the MAJORITY of the developers in the world are Morts. They should be driving a lot of our tool development, etc. But they don't, because they aren't the impassioned technologists. Instead the uber-geeks tend to drive innovation, and not always in a way that helps business development.

The reason VB has been so popular for so long is that the VB team makes a major effort to listen and respond to business developers. They got a bit distracted as .NET was coming out, which is why VB.NET lost some of its appeal. But if you look at VS 2005 you'll see that the web team is almost entirely focused on Mort, as is the VB team and the data team. Sure .NET 2.0 got generics, but the REAL focus was on business productivity.
Rockford Lhotka
Sunday, June 19, 2005 12:36:06 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Thank you, Rocky, for the blog and reply.

You mentioned "The reason VB has been so popular for so long is that the VB team makes a major effort to listen and respond to business developers.".

I totally agree that it makes a huge difference that you have an definitive source of tool-making. I was really tired of Java's many IDEs, even after Eclipse! On the other hand, I also noticed that VB culture depends too much on MS and some venders -- partly becuase VB hides so much, VB simply cannot "stand by itself" -- so to speak. However, perl is somewhat also that way, but perl community uses C. VB can also use C. There must be some business elements that VB culture is not pro-opensource (e.g., MS intentionally destroys elements of such culture). Now, because of the power of VB.Net (and C#), it is feasile to adopt some C++/Perl/Java opensource culture. Most importantly, I noticed that MS is cultivating it also, i.e., "Enterprise Library".

Still, as usual ;-), the best are outside MS, for example, CSLA, Nunit, log4net, and, I hope I can add Nhibernet soon.

We need both a definitive tool-maker, and opensource. The key is the right balance.

My observation is that adopting opensource mindset, even just a little bit, is a huge blunder for VB transition. However, it is a necessary one.

Return to your orightal topic, use VS 2005, it is now even more productive than VB6. In addition, take a look of CSLA, Nunit, and log4net -- just for starters.
Kai
Tuesday, June 28, 2005 2:38:41 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Thanks Rocky

I've been a Mort for 13 years. I love getting in and making a business solution work. Right now my main tools are C#, NAnt, NUnit and CruiseControl.net.

I've never understood how the name Mort could ever be taken as a derogatory comment. I guess my experience is that Mort's tend to ask slightly different questions than uber-geeks.
Questions like:
"How will my current task make the company more profitable?"
"How can we make the training cost for this new feature near zero?"
"How will this feature save money, or increase revenues?"

Again, thanks for the recognition.

Malcolm
Malcolm Anderson
Wednesday, June 29, 2005 6:37:08 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I appreciate your points, and understand there are certainly phenomenal developers and OOD experts that happen to use VB.NET (Rocky being a great example).

However, I think the deragatory aspects of "Mort" are meant for the folks who still want to write "on error resume next" in 2005, or who need "with events" because they can't grasp delegates. Hear me clearly, I'm not arguing against the fact that "with events" may be more productive, I'm saying there are millions of VB6 developers who couldn't write event-driven systems if they had to get their minds around delegates.

I've written about this before, but I'll say it again - I think the dilemma VB faces is the dichotomy between being taken seriously as a modern OO language and the need to carry along the Morts. It's the challenge of balancing the need to distance itself from some of those VB6 carryovers with the need to keep those millions of high-school, hobbyist, etc. developers buying the product.

All your points are valid Rocky, but you seem to want to dismiss the reality that there have been billions of lines of HORRIBLE code written by every 6th grader whose dad has a computer and thought he was a programmer because he could write a VB6 form. C++, for example, suffered from that to a relatively insignificant degree. I believe it's one of the subtle distinctions between VB.NET and C# that leads me towards the latter, although I certainly understand it's no longer anything of the magnititude of VB6 vs. C++.
Daniel Billingsley
Friday, July 01, 2005 11:24:00 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Hi Rocky, right on! I watched as all the hype surrounding web-based development occurred and simply kept doing what I was doing - delivering windows based applications to solve the business needs of my customers (who don't have months to wait or millions to spend). As an extension to our general IT consulting business, where we see an opportunity to improve what users are doing with a custom written application I get the job of doing it.

One of my latest projects cost the customer around $5k, and saved them $115k in the first year. That's a return on investment of around 15 days.

Thanks to .NET, Infragistics and my heritage in VB I delivered a nice looking, well behaving, standard CRUD application in no-time-flat. Infragistics were kind enough to prepare a case study at:
http://www.infragistics.com/Corporate/CaseStudies/CaseStudyViewer.aspx?Id=12

This is not talking about "improving value propositions" and all the other marketing junk I hear about SOA, WebServices, #insert new technology name here#, etc, etc. This shows something that seems to be missing for a lot of technologies coming out - actual results!

To paraphrase Denis Leary "I'm a Mort, and proud of it".

Having used VB since VB 1.0 (I even have VB for DOS!) all the way through to VB6 I held off, as much of the developer community has done, on adapting VB.NET. I finally got my head around the new way VB.NET and the .NET framework works and have never looked back.
Andrew Way
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:38:22 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Rocky,

Good post, and I agree with the gist of your comments. I did have a question about your following comment:

"These are the people who never left the "smart client" and so isn’t "coming back to it" in a revolution. Long-time business developers are the people who saw the web for the terminal-based monstrosity it is and never left the productivity of Windows itself. These are the true Microsoft loyalists."

Doesn't that comment only apply to folks doing intranet type of applications... i.e. they had a choice with the UI. For example, if one was creating an Ebay... being loyal to the "smart client" really wasn't an option right (the UI exposed to the customer)? I think html web UI (with or without ASP) is a joke... but... when in Rome. That said, I get your point that many raced off to the terminal-based monstrosity like sheep following the marketing hype... I was on one of those projects. :(

I have noticed you have made the terminal monstrosity comment (and like I said, I couldn't agree more) in several places, and yet your CSLA is also Win Form-Ready. I was curious if you view CSLA a primarily a Win Form framework with Web Forms thrown in... or equally compelling for both?

Mike
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:40:53 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Correction:

"and yet your CSLA is also Win Form-Ready."

Should have been:

"and yet your CSLA is also Web Form-Ready."
Mike
Sunday, February 05, 2006 1:26:51 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
If you are French there is one main reason that Mort is an insult - it means 'dead'!
Peter M
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