patterns and object orientation in classic asp?!

[goaway1234]

I am a programmer on a rather large, old, and ugly asp web application, which uses oracle, msxml, and ado. This is a 'project in crisis' as it has become extremely difficult to maintain. Much of it is spaghetti code, and its original developers had no idea what the word 'modular' means. And to make matters worse, there is lots of new development coming down the road.

I know a bit about OO design and would like to take the application in that direction but can't make any progress because the language and its associated tools suck so awfully badly. Can anybody offer any advice on how to bring sanity to such a mess. I want to make sure that I've examined every angle before recommending a transition to .NET.

 

[stevexff]

Given the amount of refactoring you will have to do to get it into a fit state to start making modifications, you might be better off with a clean slate on .NET (2.0?). Tools like NUnit, NAnt, FXCop, and the more modern IDEs of VS.NET will make your life a lot easier, not to mention improving your code quality.

Furthermore, if you foresee a lot of new development, it makes sense to do it on a platform that is actively being developed and supported by the vendor.

But you won't sell this to your bosses on the grounds of code elegance or maintainability. You need to be able to prove that it will be quicker and cost-effective in both the short and long term. What's the possibility of doing a small time-boxed pilot or proof of concept on a small chunk of the existing app? Do it in .NET with NUnit so you can refactor it back in to the rest of the app later if your plan gets approval.

 

[h0h0h0]

Yeah you have to sell the move on business grounds witha sprinkle of technical support rather than "This code sucks"

Also - there are ways to clean and refactor the ASP code to be a bit cleaner and that might be better for you to do now rather than try and port and refactor at the same time. You're right, the tools suck, so it's going to be up to do to perform this work on the ASP side. You're going to have to sit down with a paper and pencil regardless if you port or not. So use the refactorings you come up with in your "ideal" system and clean the ASP to move towards your ideal. That way you save your own hair.

 

[h0h0h0]

Also OO design is not going to fix bad code.
You can also have bad OO code