Since we are interviewing so many candidates I thought I explain a bit of a strange statement that I usually make and it appears on our job's page:
"Sampa is built with C#/.NET but not ASP.NET"
That wouldn't be strange at all if Sampa was creating a client software that you download, but we are not. We are doing server-side development for a Web-based product. So, how is it possible that we are not using ASP.NET?
First, let me explain that Sampa has two big customer facing parts: The Sampa.com website and the customer's site.
Sampa.com is a marketing site to "sell" Sampa to users. It contains almost no intelligence, being made mostly of static content. The only part of the site that has "intelligence" is the signup/account system. So, Sampa.com is done using ASP.NET (hence the *.aspx pages) and has a SQL Server backend. Very simple and straighforward.
However, when a customer creates a site with Sampa, she's sent to the "Sampa Site Web Server", that is where our product really lives. That service is where most of our development work goes and is developed with C#, .NET, JavaScript and static conent (HTML, CSS, etc.), but *not* ASP.NET.
Again, for most people that is a bit absurd. Can you have a .NET application running your webserver that is not based on ASP.NET? Yes, you can! (trademark by Barack Obama).
ASP.NET is a mix and mesh of multiple parts. When people talk about ASP.NET, mostly they are talking about server controls, ASPX engine and many goodies that make ASP.NET the perfect choice for many sites. But Sampa has some serious perf requirements and from previous experience on MSN, I know the right way to implement Sampa would be to not use those ASP.NET facilities. And that's what we did.
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October, 2007
