Should I use ScriptSharp

Question

I am developing my first ASP.NET MVC application and I beleive that Script# can help me a lot. But it cannot find the resource necessary to support my development.

I could not find The codeplex site; There is only one manual, which is very good, but it is not enough; I could find very few tutorials; I know that Script# was used to develop ASP.NET MVC scripts and that the source of MVC distributes the library.

But it seems that it is used only internally in Microsoft.

Where can I find other resources???

Do you really think that Script# will be continued and new versions will be deployed and it should be used by third-party projetcs ???

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Don't be afraid of Javascript, it's a beautiful and powerful language. And with frameworks like jQuery, Prototype and Dojo, DOM manipulation and AJAX are greatly simplified and cross-browser issues are mostly history.

About Script#, I agree with this answer by mcintyre321. Last release over a year ago + closed source = no go for me.

UPDATE Jan/2010: there have been new Script# releases since the original writing of this answer. It's still closed-source but the author mentions open sourcing it after 1.0

UPDATE May 2011: Script# is now open source.

Answer 2

In short, my answer is: if you like powerful IDEs that run on Windows, OOD and C#, use ScriptSharp. It is more maintainable and structured, and demonstrably stable enough to use on serious projects. It can also be easily extended, as illustrated below and by other projects.

Since this is yet another Google indexed thread where people refer to Script# and jQuery as mutually exclusive I just wanted to point out some people are merging these two worlds, and in my case unleashing a lot of power by doing so. I'm offering a completely free and reusable library to access jQuery 1.4 from Script# projects, and full source code for the solution that generates it (almost exclusively from jQuery's own API documentation file):

http://www.christophercrooker.com/visual-studio-2010-rc-custom-tool-for-code-generation-and-jquery14-with-intellisense-for-scriptsharp

Answer 3

IMHO Script# fits well for large projects only, with really "rich" web client. Participating in such kind of project, I could only say that Script# helped us much. josephhemingway's remark about strongly typed is 100% true for such case. Also it allowed us to introduce new .NET developers without any JS background quickly. Assuming Nikhil Kothari's plans to open-source it in the summer 2008, we even decompiled (don't tell anybody! it's illegal) it and introduced generics, operators overloads, various bug fixes, etc.

BUT. Then Script# support faded away. Project on CodePlex with discussions and issue tracking was closed (interesting that parts of framework were published there shortly before). No updates, no future plans, no explanations. After such thing I'd consider Script# only after it goes open source to give the community ability to support it. E.g. on CodePlex.