What advantages can ScriptSharp bring to my tool kit?

Question

Currently we use jQuery to add RIA goodness to our apps, but recently we have been implementing the Coveo Search engine into our Sharepoint portal and found that ScriptSharp was used in their product. What can ScriptSharp bring to the table?

Answer 1

I am using ScriptSharp as we speak, having discovered it about 2-3 weeks ago. Honestly, I love it. Native Javascript is a challenge, and the DOM model makes client-side programming even worse. Then I discovered jQuery about six months ago, and I thought it was a godsend. jQuery increased my productivity, but I still get bogged down often with jQuery because you still have to write and debug and tweak Javascript.

Enter ScriptSharp. It has boosted my productivity over jQuery and reduced my headaches immensely. The biggest advantages I can see are the fact that the power of C# and Visual Studio are yours while you're writing code. The power of this cannot be understated. Now the niggling little Javascript errors that used to take hours to debug are eliminated at compile time. The lines of code are probably about twice as many than with jQuery, but the productivity is so much higher, so who cares? You basically just write code, with many fewer compile/test/debug cycles. Hours become minutes.

I will say it was quite a struggle initially to get ScriptSharp to work with Microsoft AJAX until I learned of a very important step you must take in order to work with it. I pulled my hair out for days before I knew about this. (I believe this is documented in ScriptSharp's 61-page PDF Readme, but it's very easy to gloss it over.) The key is to choose the project type "Script# Class Library inside a Web Site" (or "MS Ajax Class Library Inside a Web Site") when creating a ScriptSharp library. This places the ScriptSharp project in the Bin/Scripts directory of the website, and -- very importantly -- directs the compiled output to that directory instead of to the default "bin" directory of the ScriptSharp project. Perhaps an example will be instructive:

Web Site or Application directory\
   Bin\ 
      Scripts\           <-- "..\\" config setting sends .js files here.
         ScriptSharp Project directory\
            Bin\         <-- will not be used at run time
               Debug\    <-- will not be used at run time

In short, I found this project worthwhile. I'm going to write up my own HOW-TO (which in my case involves using Web User Controls) on how to bind everything together, and post an URL back here. Now that I've figured ScriptSharp out, it's made me very productive in my RIA development. If only it were more visible, and if only the CodePlex site were still there.