current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

Stack Exchange
tour help
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Programmers Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional programmers interested in conceptual questions about software development. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote -2 down vote favorite

Currently I'm still learning ASP.NET. My goal is to build dynamic websites. However, I also want to be able to build some windows applications as well.

So, is it easy to learn Windows forms or WPF after ASP.NET? or is the reverse easier? meaning to start with WPF then move to ASP.NET?

share|improve this question

closed as off-topic by Eric King, gnat, Kilian Foth, Yusubov, MichaelT Aug 27 '13 at 12:09

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

  • "Questions about what language, technology, or project one should take up next are off topic on Programmers, as they can only attract subjective opinions for answers. There are too many individual factors behind the question to create answers that will have lasting value. You may be able to get help in The Whiteboard, our chat room." – Eric King, gnat, Kilian Foth, Yusubov, MichaelT
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I would say it's easier to move to WinForms/WPF from ASP.NET than the other way. This is due in large part to the fact that ASP.NET has statelessness to overcome, as well as being inherently multi-user plus having a far larger variety of technologies which you have to integrate at once. To top all that off you have a whole host of reliability issues built into the fact that it's a combination of network resources that completes an ASP.NET website.

These are all issues that you will either not see at all, or very very minimally in desktop applications. There are however a minimum of desktop application issues you will see that are not also facts of ASP.NET development as well. The only real common desktop application problem that ASP.NET doesn't have is machine dependencies, with ASP.NET you control the server and manage what's installed on it, with desktop applications you have to manage dependencies on the deployment environment by way of some installer or other such. Also there's the presentational thread that you have to be mindful not to block, but the threading you deal with in ASP.NET is umpteen times more complex than this, so managing that is quite easy.

share|improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.