Gotham is at the stage
where people have to try it and report what is right and what is wrong. We are
under no illusions that it is complete or bug free. Equally though, we are
sure that people will find Gotham useful. It
brings several important features which are worth commenting on:
- It is a compiler. Might sound obvious but VBScript is an odd
language in that you only know its wrong when you run it. In fact worse than
that, you only know the syntax is wrong when the ASP system decides to tell
you. Every significant piece of ASP we have put through Gotham
has found compilation problems! Every one!
If you run a site that uses ASP you should try Gotham
for the compilation diagnostics alone.
- It is debuggable. Gotham
was borne out of frustration when trying to debug some intricate ASP functions.
You can step every line of your ASP with Gotham
and see all the variables change. You will not believe how liberating it is. It
is also worth pointing out that you do not need Visual Studio; DbgCLR is a very
useable and free .NET debugger.
- It is fast. The code produced is compiled, firstly by Gotham into MSIL and then by the .NET CLR into machine
code. In our tests Gotham compiled code ran
four to six times as quick as classic ASP. What will that do for your loaded
servers?
If you are an ASP developer then some of the .NET terminology can, like any new environment, seem confusing. It isn't really very confusing; just new. Feel free to ask questions on the forums.