Blazor vs Angular - Growth Mindset Show Ep. 12

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Good morning and welcome to the Growth Mindset show

My name is Mahesh Chand. I'm founder of C Sharp Corner. This Growth Mindset show is every Friday 10 a.m

And in this show, we talk about different topics, mostly around growth of software development and software developers

Our goal is to bring different topics. If you are joining us first time, welcome to the show

If you are coming back, welcome back to the show. I live here in Philadelphia

It's nice, bright and sunny today. A little bit cold, about 40 degrees in Fahrenheit

Outside a little bit chilly, but sunny. Nice day. Well, first of all, let me start with hopefully everybody's safe during this COVID time

It's pandemic is still growing, really big time. In the US, we have reached, you know, highest cases in this week and like deaths are still growing

We have about you know almost every day 3,000 people are dying which is crazy

This has never been before so hopefully everybody watching the show is safe

Stay safe, wear a mask please if you have to go outside

Do the you know what's supposed to do, wash your hands. If you don't need to go in a group and travel or do any meetings you don't need to stay you know home

That's the best way. And, you know, we're trying to do is find different ways to keep ourselves busy

And so is one of the way we started this in C Sharp Corner is we started a lot of virtual events, virtual meetings, virtual conferences in these shows

So today we have an interesting topic. We are today going to talk about Angular versus Blazor

Angular, as we know, is one of the most popular JavaScript framework for building web applications

And Blazor is new compared to Angular. And that's our big topic today

If you have any questions in this show, this show is all about you

If you have any questions, it can be about Angular and Blazor

It can be anything about your career, your jobs, community. pandemic anything you want to share with us feel free to post in the comment

um it's again you can ask us any questions we'll take questions in the you know in between of the

show and then maybe later have there'll be more questions um today we have a guest michael

washington michael has been a is a community guy for years i know and you know at least you know

Personally, I met him at Microsoft MVP Summit years back, but he's been helping community for several years

He's 12 times Microsoft MVP. He's written, he's an author, written several programming books

So let's invite Mike, our guest today, Michael Washington, and then we'll add more to his introduction

Again, if you have any questions for Michael, feel free to ask as well. This show is for you, and we want to make sure you get benefit out of the show, watching the show

So, Michael, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me

How are you doing today? How's everything? We're at your place, and where are you joining us from today

Well, I'm coming from Los Angeles, specifically Pasadena. So, yeah, we're right in the middle of the COVID thing

So we're all just staying at home, working from home, wearing a mask everywhere

I just got back from a run and I had to have my mask on the entire time

So, yeah, we're just trying to stay safe right now. And I wish the best for everyone out there

Oh, wow. Well, it looks like we have vaccine coming out soon

So hopefully once this starts rolling out every week, we should have millions, millions probably getting it

Yes. Looking forward to that. Yeah. So, Michael, you know, I know I was telling our viewers here, I know you for several years now

You have been in this community, Microsoft community, helping people for many years

You want to tell a little bit about how long you've been and what you've been, how you're helping

and what makes you keep going back and give back to the community and keep helping

Well, I definitely get a lot more from the community than I put back, so I just try to put back as much as I can

But, yeah, I go back as a Microsoft Stack developer all the way back to classic ASP

Actually, you know, VB3, you know, that sort of thing. So I've just stayed with the Microsoft stack

So, again, I went through the classic ASP, the early, you know, .NET stuff

I became an MVP because I got involved with .NET Nuke, and that introduced me to open source

The whole idea of, you know, you give away something for free, you know. So Sean Walker is a big influencer of mine, and he still continues to be through

There's a newer version of the .NET Nuke called Octane, and that's a Blazor application

So I'm still working with Sean Walker with that. But that's how I really became an MVP

And I remember Mahesh you and I would be on the bus you know driving back and forth to the MVP summit and we be talking about things So I seen your incredible growth throughout the you know you been wildly successful so um a lot of us are you know really are inspired by what you done over the years

because yeah i knew you back when so so it's just funny everything comes full circle hey you know

that's how it is we all you know small world small world and i was working i was talking to you a

I have a client I advise a nonprofit in LA and I visit LA County and you are in LA County

So, yeah. Luckily, we're in tech and we're still working. My wife, unfortunately, she worked for

the hotel industry and she's been laid off since this whole thing began. So, luckily, I can take

care of the family. But yeah, so many people are affected by this and right now we're just doing

our best, but the vaccines are coming. So hopefully people looking at this broadcast

years from now will know that, you know, during the darkest times, we're still holding strong and

it will definitely get better. Well said, well said, my friend. So Michael, I know you are 12

times Microsoft MVP. You have written programming books and you run a website, Blazor Help website

as well as your ADAP server website. You want to talk a little bit about that

so people at least get an idea? Yeah, if you want to see the latest open source things

that I've been working on, yeah, blazerhubwebsite.com. That's what really take you to everything

And you kind of see there, the last blog post I did was on Octane, which is, you know

the large open source framework built on Blazer. Again, with Sean Walker of .NET Nuke fame

who, you know, he's the guy who really got me into open source and MVP, you know, help me get my MVP, you know, back in the day. So that's the

place to go if you really want to see what I'm doing and all my open source stuff. And that

application, BlazorHelpWebsite.com is a Blazor application. So you can actually download the code

and install it yourself. I have blogs on how I created that. So really, that's really the main

link that leads you to everything that I've done. And of course, I've also written some books for

Syncfusion, which are available for free. So this one is the Blazor WebAssembly book. And then there's

another edition of the book that covers the same application in this book here, but it covers for

Blazor server. So Blazor has two different hosting models. And when we get to that section of our

back and forth debate, I'll explain the two different hosting models of Blazor and what

that entails. All right, great. So yeah, so let's start. So, you know, anybody joining us, looks like a few more folks joined us just now

Welcome to the show. Today we have our guest here, Michael Washington

He is a, you know, 12 times Microsoft MVP author and community leader

we're talking about today our topic is angular versus angular versus blazer so now if you want to

build your next application if you are in a company and you are the decision maker or you're

building your own project and you know you are kind of typescript c-sharp guy so you and you

want to build in the latest modern framework obviously you have two choices angular and blazer

Angular is obviously not 100% C-sharp, but it does use TypeScript. So I want a little bit to go back to Angular and Blazor's history

Angular started, you know, it's open source. It's open source JavaScript library

You can go download everything. It's open source. You can also get involved in the project

It's managed by Google team and open source community. Same thing, do you want to spend a little bit of background on that

Let's start with Angular first. And again, I'll just talk about my personal history

And just to keep in mind, Blazor is also open source. It's also on GitHub

It's all open source. But let's first talk about Angular. So I don't know if Stephen can show a link of, there we go, ADEF help desk

So I got involved with Angular, God, I guess maybe it's going back six years or so

And the reason why I was drawn toward Angular is there's Angular Classic, which was pretty much more of like a scripting sort of language

But then the modern, what we call Angular, it's based on TypeScript

It's built on top of TypeScript natively. And TypeScript is a language that allows you to write code that is like C Sharp

There's like a compiler, you know, type checking, that sort of thing. And it then creates the JavaScript, transpiles the JavaScript that actually runs on the person's web browser

But as a programmer, you're able to use, you know, your object orientated, you know, type checking language

So that's what got me really interested in Angular. And I created this application, ADEF Help Desk

Again, it's an open source, so you can go ahead and download it. And I really liked it

You know, the experience, development experience, you're able to make large applications

And then, of course, you start using it at work. And Angular really became pretty much the standard for creating web applications

But I do want to focus on just one quick thing, and that is Angular is what you call the front end

The back end, you know, how you communicate with the database, you know, how you communicate with the data, how you communicate with other services

The platform that the application runs on has always been C Sharp

So in everything I'm talking about today, the back end is C Sharp

And there was a, to get Angular to talk to the C Sharp, there's a, I don't know if it's called the service

but this thing created called JavaScript Services. And it's interesting because it was created by Steve Sanderson

Steve Sanderson happens to be the creator of Blazor. So again, everything kind of comes full circle

So, you know, but I had a lot of experience with Angular

I actually wrote a book on the creating of ADF Helpdesk. So, you know, I was very, very deep into Angular

So that's why I think, you know, I wanted to come on the show to kind of talk about my experience from Angular to Blazor

What are the differences and why, moving forward, I'm Blazor all the way

Yeah, no, that's good. And again, this website and this project is all available open source

People can download this, and they can also read your blog to learn how you built that

How they built it. And there's also a book. There's also a book on Amazon that I wrote called ADF Help Desk 4

and it goes very deep into the whole program and how it works and that sort of thing

Yeah. So, you know, there are obviously some people, there a lot of applications are still being built in Angular and I talk to you know some of my clients large corporations they all using Angular because Blazor being so new right So one point also I want to cover before we jump

into the Blazor side is that what are the major advantages of using Angular compared to other

JavaScript frameworks? And there are a ton of out there, and obviously React is one of them, yeah

The biggest one is the fact that TypeScript is really native, built in natively to

Angular is a big thing because if you're dealing with JavaScript, any JavaScript framework

you want to be using TypeScript. So that's one thing. The other thing is, is that there's a

number of, you know, plugins. So that if, for example, you need to show a PDF file or something

there's a plugin for that. So it's got the biggest ecosystem for plugins, the most documentation

when a lot of programmers are using something. If you need to get contractors or that sort of thing

it's easier to get somebody for something that's more widely used. There are other JavaScript frameworks

Vue is another one that comes up a lot. But if you're trying to hire a contractor, let's say on the West Coast

it's easier getting an Angular contractor than it would be, say, for some of the other JavaScript frameworks

Also, Angular is more complete. Whereas with other JavaScript frameworks, they only do, say, a part of the application

You still have to roll your own for other parts of the application

So its size, its ecosystem, the fact that TypeScript is built natively to it, these are the advantages of Angular

Angular does work, so I don't want to imply that it doesn't work well. so

yeah and I believe a lot of these component vendors like you know Syncfusion

Air Express, Infragistics they all have Angular libraries and controls as well right

so that's a big plus that helps like building data grade or some kind of the controls

you know calendar control so you don't have to write code your own and you can read easily

and licensing is pretty cheap for those components also. Yes. Most of them are free

Most are free and the licensing is, you know, comparable with the big component vendors

like Syncfusion and Telerik and that sort of thing. Yeah, the licensing is, you know, very reasonable

Yeah. So you would say, you know, it's easier to build, you know, applications using these

controls and components. Yes. A big ecosystem is a big plus. Yeah

All right. Looks like we have a few more folks joining us. Welcome to the show. It's a growth mindset show

My name is Mahesh Chand. I'm here in Philadelphia. Again guys if you have any questions just keep posting those questions

We will try to cover most of your questions in the second half of the show

Today we are talking about Angular versus Blazor. If you are building your new application and you don't know which one to pick between Angular and Blazor

today our goal is to clarify that and maybe help you make the decision

decision and here I am with Michael Washington. He's worked with both Angular and Blazor and that's

what we're sharing today. If you have any questions guys, feel free to post those questions

So we just talked about Angular's background and you build an application, you share your

experience. Let's talk about Blazor. Blazor is very new compared to Angular and it's basically

by Microsoft and open source, free, available free. There's a lot of free content available on that as well

And it's a licensing is Apache Licensing 2.0. You want to talk a little bit more about history of Blazor

Yeah, actually, but actually let's finish up on the Angular. Okay. And the reason why, as far as definitely in my personal projects

And also in my work projects where I have an influence as an application architect, I'm moving forward with just using Blazor for all new applications

And the reasoning is not that there's anything wrong with Angular. The problem is, is that in order to create applications in Angular, you have to use a thing called NPM, Node Package Manager. Yep

That's the problem. That's the problem. The biggest problem with Node Package Manager is it really is

Node Package Manager, for those who are not, who are just, say, from the Microsoft stack

it's comparable to, you know, when you pull down, you know, components, you know

through your Visual Studio and you're pulling down components. And it's a way to pull things into your application

However, the problem that we run into with Node is that you end up pulling in our average application

You end up pulling in 30,000 to 60,000 files are required. And the problem is that instead of having a company like Microsoft who makes, let's say, 90 to 95 percent of the application and you only have to pull in, say, 10 percent more from outside component vendors and that sort of thing

When you're doing an Angular application, the stuff that's being pulled down is by several different organizations

literally hundreds of separate organizations have created the components that are required to be pulled down for your application

So when you start a new Angular application, you basically have to have node running

You have to kind of go into NPM install, which tells Angular, okay, great, install yourself

And then Angular says, hey, I need all these components by all these organizations

And it starts to pull stuff in. Well, when those components start to come in, they go, oh, well, we have, you know, our component is made up of other people's components

So it starts pulling that in. So you start to pull down tens of thousands of files

Well, when you first do your, you know, hit F5, you run the thing, you're like, okay, it works

Even though I've now pulled down at this point, like, say, 20,000 files, it works

And it's fine. Here's the problem. Any one of those components can break something

And if you start looking at the warnings, you see all these massive warnings and go, this has been deprecated

You're like, well, I should fix this. But if you try to fix this, there's a bunch of other components that can use that component and you'll break this other thing

And you're thinking, OK, well, don't they know this? Remember, they're all separate organizations

Most of them are many of them are open source. they're like some guy in some country somewhere who's just doing the best he can. He's not trying

to hurt you. But hey, his stuff is affecting your stuff. One line of code that goes bad

and your entire application may not start. So it's funny. It was after you and I agreed to do

this show I ran into a problem about two days ago where this one component doesn work with Internet Explorer

And, you know, because we tested the whole thing. But because it didn't work with Internet Explorer, we tried to, okay, we're going to try to fix it

And when we upgraded that one component, and this was just a minor thing to display a PDF file inside, you know, the application

When you tried to run the application, the whole thing just wouldn't start at all

I mean, not like, oh, that one page didn't work. The entire thing, because the TypeScript has to be transpiled into JavaScript

If there's one little error, the entire thing doesn't start. So, you know, a developer had to spend almost two days trying to slowly compare it to an application that did work and figure it out that this one little component, which is, again, it's open source

It's by, you know, some well-meaning person. They didn't. They weren't trying to break the app. So much time was spent just tracing that one thing down

These are the problems that we don't have with Blazor. You know, Microsoft makes most of the app

You know, Microsoft is, you know, they talk to, you know, all parts talk to each other and they keep things running well

So the NPM part is really the problem. Everything is very, very brittle

So, you know, never do you have an application with Angular that I've done of medium size where every time you try to compile it, you don't see tons of errors and warnings

Oh, actually not errors, but the warnings. And you can't fix it

I mean, literally, the average application now has 60,000 files. Where do you begin

So it's the idea of NPM, you know, and being very democratic and open and therefore can grow big and that sort of thing

The problem is it creates too many dependencies that cannot be managed

And it's just it's brittle. and yeah and and that's why um when blazer uh came out i really looked at it because it gives us

the stability that you would have with say for example an mvc application or even let me go back

to even a web forms application you know those applications they just work you know and that's

what blazer gives us back it gives us back a stable uh a structure where stuff just works

Yeah, and I believe because there's so many files are being downloaded, if you want to take even content rise, it can deploy it on some kind of your cloud, I guess, for the size of that application would be used

Yeah. Yeah. So really, like I said, it's a development process that really has the biggest issue

Obviously, deployment, you have issues there. And also, again, the other thing is with JavaScript, again, like I said, we have this issue where we're still having to support Internet Explorer, which, of course, people should not be using

But you know, they do, and especially government companies, you know, they have users

They are. You cannot force them to change their browsers. Right. So so that's so. So there's that

So so then let's get into Blazor. so with Blazor like I said you have

there's one Blazor but it has two different hosting models before you go there let's make sure everybody understand

that Blazor is again it's from Microsoft initially managed by Microsoft team

and it's open source means anybody can get involved with part of the project

download it look at everything and it's free and it's basically compared to, you know, there's nothing like, it's not like a previous versions where you even you

need a, if you need to drive Blazor applications, you can even down, you can use in a Visual Studio

code, which is a free IDE and a editor, right? Or you can use Visual Studio community. I personally

use a Visual Studio community because me being background on, you know, on C sharp and .net

I'm used to Visual Studio. I tried not to go to the new editors and you have to install NPM and this and that

So before we go to Blazure, I want to share my experience. I was just trying to play with the React

I just want to write the simple app. Really, it just saves me when I go to command line. I'm too old for command lines

I want to just be a virtual studio, open my thing and create my application and get going

But I agree with you, NPM, I do not like that part. So yeah, go ahead

Share a little bit more on Blazor, like how the project started. You said Steve Anderson came in

He was part of the team. A little bit more on that before we get into client versus server

So just real quick on Steve Sanderson. And again, a programmer that I admire greatly as far as probably one of the smartest, most forward-thinking, most influential programmers that maybe some people have never heard of

But he created – he's done a lot of stuff over the years

As a matter of fact, Knockout JS was, I think, his big thing that made him famous

but I encountered him when he created this thing called JavaScript services and it allowed not just

Angular but a number of other JavaScript frameworks including Knockout at the time to easily work

inside Visual Studio to talk to your back-end C-sharp code. Well the man is really an expert

in JavaScript, you know, languages and that sort of thing. So he, on his own, created a project where he was trying to allow people to achieve what

you can do in these JavaScript frameworks, but basically do it in C Sharp or C Sharp

like language, which really... Object oriented. Yeah, object oriented. Which is pretty much like an MVC application

You know, it's C sharp, but it's the Razor syntax. So that's what he came up with

It's basically you can do what you can do in JavaScript using the Razor syntax

So and this is an oversimplification. But in my opinion, what you end up with is MVC

OK, so if you're familiar with MVC, you basically end up with an MVC app that doesn't have postbacks

So what I mean by postback is that if you have an MVC app, the page comes up, a person clicks a button, the web browser has to be refreshed

It goes back and comes in. So what Blazor allows you to do is your application looks like an MVC app

You have your markup. You have your code behind, your C-sharp code

Yet when they click on the button, there's no postbacks. And the page is called a razor page

you know, extension is dot r-a-z-o-r. That's pretty much what Blazor, an oversimplification, that's what it is

It has two hosting models. One model is what we call server-side Blazor

That one really is just like an MVC app without the postbacks

There's another hosting model called Blazor WebAssembly. And this uses a technology, which is, again, it's an open source technology that actually does not belong to Microsoft, called WebAssembly

And what WebAssembly is, is it's not a plug-in officially, but as an oversimplification, it is a plug-in

Okay. It is a plug-in. I mean, sorry, it's just that if it's built into the web browser when you download it, it's not considered a plugin

But really, it's this thing that runs programs inside your web browser the way that Flash used to run

Honestly, the way that Silverlight used to run. It's a thing that, you know

So instead of having to use JavaScript to do functionality, this thing is what runs

So WebAssembly, so Blazor can run in WebAssembly. And to the end user, it just looks like everything's running on the page

But that's not JavaScript that's running on the page. That's WebAssembly that's running on the page

And inside what WebAssembly is running is your Blazor program. So Blazor can run in either mode. The Razor code, which is Blazor, is the same, whether it's running inside WebAssembly or running server-side Blazor

The reason why that hosting model is very important as a difference is that when it's running as WebAssembly, it's very much like Angular

Your code is just client-side code, and to communicate with the backend, it has to make HTTP calls or web API calls to the backend

When Blazor is running in Blazor server mode, like an MVC app, it doesn't have to do that

So you literally can have just some code in the markup, some code in the, you know, what we call the code behind file

And there's no clicking of the, you know, no refreshing of the web browser

It just, everything just moves as, you know, fast and whatever. And you need a lot less code

So just really quickly, for Syncfusion, I wrote two books. and both books walk you through 100% of all the code you would need to create the applications

Both books create the exact same application. It's a little help desk application where a person

puts in a help desk ticket. It sends an email to an administrator. The administrator logs in. They

can see the help desk ticket. They can add comments. It emails back to the user. The user can keep

they keep going back and forth. They can close a ticket. There's a grid, a Syncfusion grid that

allows you to sort and that sort of thing. So I built the application as a Blazor server application

and the exact same application as a Blazor WebAssembly application. The Blazor WebAssembly application, the Blazor code is about the same amount

but the back end code, there's twice as much needed for the Blazor WebAssembly version of it

So, but they're both considered Blazor, but the hosting model, you know, is different

And the reason why a person would, for example, want to use, say, Blazor WebAssembly versus Blazor Server is

If you use Blazor Server, you must use C Sharp.net as your back end

If you use Blazor WebAssembly, your back end could be, you know, anything

So all these other technologies, you know, you could use as your back end, you know, Firebase or whatever

So that's one of the major reasons why a person would say I want to use Blazor WebAssembly versus Blazor Server

so if you are you know person like me whose background is c sharp dot net i come from windows

that's blazer server seems to be easier for me because my kind of space i've been doing for so

long and then if you are a javascript background you've never done you know dot net and c sharp

but you want to build probably blazer app because that's the new big thing you like you probably

better on WebAssembly as long as you're okay with, you know, running WebAssembly running in there

Okay, that kind of makes sense. So we will, what we will do is we will take a little break

two minutes break, three minutes break. We will be right back. We have a few questions. We'll take

all of your questions, guys. Everybody who is joining the show, welcome to the show. Make sure

your questions are posted because we're going to start taking questions soon. We will be right back

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Hey guys, can't believe we haven't seen each other since graduation in May. What's going on

Not much. With the pandemic, I can't really do anything right now. Me too. I mostly just stay at home, hang out with my dog, and watch the news

I feel you. Have you guys been able to get jobs yet? Funny that you ask. Gary and I actually have been working on something together

Yeah, we came up with an idea for a startup that's an app that will help us stay active since we both have been sitting around so much during this quarantine

That's genius. I could definitely use something like that. When are you guys launching it

Well, that's the issue. We don't really know how to build it, so we're kind of stuck

I know this company that does startup advising, if you guys are interested

Oh, really? Yeah, they're called Mindcracker, and they'll help you validate your idea

and connect you with angel investors and help you build everything from your product MVP

to your technical team and even your go-to market planning and execution

Wow, that's awesome. Do you know how we can get in touch with them? Yeah, you can just visit their website, mindcracker.us

That's awesome, May. Thanks. I'm excited to get started on this. Of course. Good luck, guys, and let's talk soon

Thanks, May. All right. Welcome back to the show. We are back

We are here today talking about Angular versus Blazor. I am here to have a guest, Michael Washington

You know expert in Blazor We have a question actually following by exactly what you just talked about Why should you choose blazor over angular Simon you want to put the question here

The question is so next one. This is not really the question. Yeah there you go. So this is the

question i want to build an erp app for school how would you angular versus blazer how would you

select which one you choose well so keep in mind angular can definitely create the application

that you need to create okay however blazer can also create the application that you want to create

The issue becomes, is speed of development and ease of maintenance important to you

If that's the case, then the decision that I've made is that Blazer is the winner, hands down

So during the break, I went to the Syncfusion book, Blazer Succinctly

And I know the link was placed in there. And I actually want to see, I know that on purpose, I made sure I covered every single line of code in the application

Okay. Every single line of code is covered. I walk you through every single line of code in the application and it's only 86 pages

There's no way I could, you know, if it was an Angular application, could I cover every single line of code in 86 pages

As a matter of fact, and I'm just being totally honest, I don't know if I could cover every single line of code in 900 pages

So, you know, right there. So you would say there's a lot more code you have to write if you're using Angular

A lot more code. And here's the other thing. It's not just the amount of code

It's the complexity. So especially if you're using Blazor's server, the complexity is just not there

Everything is pretty straightforward, you know. put the markup for a button here

When they click the button, write this method down here that says, grab these fields and save it to the database

Very straightforward. With Angular, I would say, okay, create first, do all these imports

Now set this file to talk to this file. Now configure it so this talks to this thing

Okay, now we're about to do the button. Okay, the button goes to this method. here, but now this method has to go to a service. Configuring a service, there's a special component

created by, by the way, a different organization that indicates how my code will talk to the

service. Is this the thing that's talking to the backend? No, no, this is just the service

that inside that service, it then talks to your C-sharp code. Okay, now we're going to start

writing that C-sharp code. So just for a simple button click, we're into like 20 different files

with very careful configuration that if you get one thing wrong, you're done, man

So it's just a magnitude of like, I would say a factor of 10

versus doing the same thing in Blazor as I would in Angular

So Angular, it's a good technology. It does work. But, you know, it's compelling to say to somebody, you know what

You can do this thing 10 times faster with 10 times less code. So therefore, hopefully that answers the person's question

Into Ad, he's writing this for a school, so I'm sure schools don't have a lot of resources

They don't have full-time people just maintaining your software. You just build there and hopefully it works

I would say there's definitely low maintenance compared to Angular if you are using Blazor

One more thing about the teams. With Angular, you pretty much need a team

As you all know, when you have people working together, You spend a lot of time just managing the fact that people have to work together

You know, the nice thing I've had with Blazor is, you know, even in my work, when I put a person on a Blazor application, I put one person on it

One person. And we're talking about some really big applications where people are uploading files and I've got, you know, trees opening up and, you know, just massive stuff going on

one developer is all it needs. One developer. So therefore, because that person

is, of course, working by themselves, they're working even faster. With Angular, I can't just put

one developer on a project because there's so much to do. You have to have a team

So that's another thing is that you can put one developer on a

Blazor application and they can leave them alone for two weeks and they'll come back with

it's done. so there's that so yeah that's the decision I make

however I do not want to imply that Angular can't do that ERP application

no Angular can do it and they can do it just fine oh yeah and there's a lot of large applications

live scalable already built in Angular right? I built them and they're still running

but it's the matter of choice now we have a choice now we have a different choice

Yeah. So continue that. There's two more questions from Amit. This question is Amit

This is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll go ahead and read this one

Yeah. These two questions, we can combine both of them, right? Well, actually, no, let's take them separate. I really think it's separate

Okay. So Blazor server. So someone is basically saying, okay, well, Blazor server, it needs this continuous connection

And what happens is, is that Blazor server, what it does is it uses actually a very thin JavaScript layer to launch its runtime

But it's a very, very thin thing and you don't have to code it. It just runs. But what it does is it sets up what they call a SignalR connection or connection that uses the technology of SignalR, which constantly communicates with the backend server to maintain the state of the application

and when a person, for example, clicks on a button, SignalR sends a message to the server

says, hey, they clicked on a button and the server goes, oh, okay, we'll change the page to this and it sends back what we call a diff, D-I-F-F

back to, you know, through the SignalR, back to that little thin layer of JavaScript

and it goes, oh, I need to repaint, you know, just move that button over here

or show a little label. So this thing is constantly going. So people were concerned with the fact

that if you have to maintain this connection, if you have a lot of people hitting your site, aren't you using up too much

Is it going to require too much server resources and that sort of thing? So Microsoft did publish benchmarks

And essentially what they showed is that if you were hosting your site, say in Azure

with a $70 a month app service plan, basically you can just take thousands of simultaneous users of your application without a problem

and in my experience I've been running blazer applications and pretty much kind of production

for over three years even though I think production was only supposed to be about two years ago but you know and I telling you I never had a problem And you know even all my websites are all running you know in Azure

My personal stuff is running in Azure. And if you look at the resources of the app service, it barely peaks one to two percent

you know, and I'm running about, you know, $70 a month app service plan

So I understand why someone would be concerned about that. But I'm telling you in practice, it's not an issue

That's just my personal experience. So that's good to know. That's really good to know

And let's take it. Okay, so the second question is, yes, the problem with WebAssembly, which is actually the exact same issue that Angular and all the other JavaScript frameworks have

is that when the person first comes to your application, they need to download, for the most part

there's exceptions to this, but for the most part, they need to download all the application

into their web browser. In the browser. Right. Before things start running

So this was true with Silverlight. This is true with Back with Flash. And it's true for the most part

There's exceptions, of course, but for the most part with Angular or even any of the other JavaScript frameworks

So there's like this little delay, and that's why you'll see a little waiting symbol

or spinning thing while that happens. A couple of things. One, you can compartmentalize it

so that only the first part of the application has to be downloaded

and the other parts are downloaded as people invoke those things. Number two, WebAssembly is the reason why

and that technology is getting better and better. So they're improving the loading speeds as time goes on. But however, with that said

Blazor Server, which does not have that problem, in my experience, is massively faster than Blazor

WebAssembly. So that's another reason why I use Blazor Server. It's faster to develop

and it runs faster. There is no technology, and all the time I've been writing programs

and I go all the way back to web programs, all the way back to 1998, I guess

No technology is faster than Blazor's server, in my opinion. So there's that

So 12 is the fastest right now, as of now. As Apple says, iPhone 12 is the fastest iPhone ever

Tomorrow will be something different. But seriously, Blazor... I laugh hard. I laugh hard. Obviously, it has to be the newest iPhone, obviously

I would hope so. As much as they charge, yeah. But I will say a couple of other things real quick

Blazor Server, WebAssembly programs, they actually are indexed by Google and Bing

So that was normally a negative of, you know, especially I know back with Silverlight, you know, it's like you can't index it

it would not be indexed by a search engine. So SEO is very important

However, Google and Bing, they actually will index a WebAssembly app. So that's an actual plus

So right now, this person's question is a very good question. It's very relevant

And I would just say to you that if this is something that you've been encountering

number one, can you use Blazor server? If you can, boom, the problem goes away

But number two, they are constantly making improvements so that, you know, the problem is slowly going away

And if you have a lot of images and that sort of thing, you know, you can not put the images, you know, in your WebAssembly app and just have like it, you know, be referred to from a CDN or something like that

So that's also something else that I might look at if this were my situation

All right. That's great. That's great. Let's take another question here. This is a quick question for you

Simon, you want to put... Oh, so, yeah, the question was, yeah, if they want to work with Blazor

which back-end language would I have to know? If you work with Blazor server, it must be done in C Sharp

If you use Blazor WebAssembly, you can use the back-end language of your choice. so

yeah so listen if you're a .NET background Microsoft for you choice

is easy blazer server sounds make sense to me without even a question right yes exactly

performance is the key for me right performance is very important right and

I do not I'm not even fan of JavaScript I don't like messy things around in my code

I want to make sure they're organized the way I like. Laser server is for you

I should take everywhere when you don't know what's going on. What it does until you run it

But I do want to point out, though, if you do have a back end that you do prefer

like, hey, I like PHP or something like that, which, of course, I know is more of a front end

But just if you have other back ends that you like to use, that is the reason why a lot of people do use Blazor WebAssembly or some also known as Blazor Client because it allows you to use Blazor for the front end

But it will work easily with the back end of your choice

So hopefully that that gives that person some guidance that you do have a choice

Yeah, or somebody doesn't want to learn C-sharp or, you know. Well, the backend is just some different backend

That just is what it is, you know. For example, WCF. So there's a lot of people who, for example, have WPF apps that they want to put on the web

Let's say they have some civilized stuff they need to migrate. So these people have a back end built on WCF or ASMX, which could be C Sharp or in some cases VB.net

I mean, come on, right? So those people, you literally can make it a Blazor WebAssembly app, which communicates with those back ends

That's doable because they've got literally hundreds of thousands of lines of code that they're like, I don't want to throw this away

It's actually working for me. So for those people, I would say, yes, look at Blazor WebAssembly

That's something that could work for you. Yeah, definitely. So one thing I have, this question I have is how, let's say we start building

obviously one of my projects is coming up, and we are going to figure it out

Blazor versus Angular. So an application will use some components, some controls

you know like charting or it can be reporting or it can be some grades

and whatever what kind of support Blazor already has or does not have from the component side These component vendors already have start building control libraries like those DevExpress and all that

I'm so glad you brought that up because that's actually a huge thing for Blazor

So remember, Blazor, again, is an oversimplification, so people will be critical of me for making this thing

But Blazor server is pretty much MVC without the postbacks. and you know from, you know, NBC era days or whatever

that you can get this component, which you just drop it in

and that grid can easily communicate with the database with not a lot of lines of code

because it's all kind of, it's all in one place. When the JavaScript framers came out

the component vendors had a problem. You had all this, you know, their component had to sit in this JavaScript layer

But then to communicate with the back end, you know, there's all this stuff you kind of have to do to kind of make it work

But it's very separate and it's not a unified experience. If you go forward with Blazor Server, because it's all unified, you end up with a situation where you just drop the grid from the component vendors on the page

You indicate the data source, you know, that this grid you're talking to

It just does it. So that's why the Syncfusion book, I'm able to get through every line of code you need in 86 pages because seriously, there's basically this admin section where you build the admin section from scratch in 10 pages

I basically go, yeah, drop the Syncfusion grid on the page, wire it up to this one data method that I walked you through in earlier pages, and then just hit F5 and look, it sorts it, it pages, it just does it all for you

So all the component vendors, all the major companies, as well as the open source companies like Radzen, you know, does some open source, free open source, like a NuGet package

You just download it. They all just create these components. They're just so easy to use that it's just you're like, oh, this is great

They also create components for Blazor WebAssembly, but those components aren't as tightly integrated as the ones, you know, they don't give you an end-to-end experience the way that the Blazor server would

But they do, you know, especially for those components that are just UI only, you know, they work the same and they're really fine

So the component vendors are full in with Blazor. They've all, you know, have their, I mean, they're fully behind it

And life is good again for them. Because honestly, it was the dark days for them when you had, you know, the rise of the JavaScript frameworks

Because the component vendors couldn't give that full, easy-to-use experience that they had in the past

With Blazor, you know, hey, you know, life's back. It's good again

And it's full on. So so that's another compelling reason that if you're used to using components to speed development for ease of maintenance for the support

That's another reason for using components is that if you go to the component vendor, you're really paying for support

OK, that's why they get their components for free. It's like you can always download the stuff for free

It's the support that you're paying for. So if that's important to you and it should be, you know, time is money, then that's another compelling reason to use Blazor

Yeah, and I think, you know, how one of the biggest challenge for developers if we are building these large applications is also like a tooling, right

IntelliSense and like debugging, you know, testing and look at the variables

And, you know, I'm assuming that this Blazor server is much easier, similar to what we've been doing for so long in Visual Studio

Especially for end-to-end. So, again, you can still do the testing and that sort of thing with Blazor WebAssembly

So I don't want to imply that there's any difference there. But, you know, when you're an application architect, you know, you're thinking end to end

Yeah, of course. That's what I'm going to get. So for an end to end experience, yeah, Blazor Server is why, you know, I use Blazor

The only time I actually use Blazor WebAssembly for any of my projects is if I have a situation where the person is going to be running this app on a phone and they may not have an internet connection

In that case, a Blazor WebAssembly app allows me to create an app

And again, the person can have like a little icon that shows up on their phone. And when they click on the app, if there is no Internet connection, the app will still open up and it can have like a local database, you know, of, you know, it can say, OK, well, here's the data I last downloaded

And when we get the connection to the Internet. So to have that sort of experience, I would have to use Blazor WebAssembly for that

So that is the only time I've personally gone into using Blazor WebAssembly, because, again, with Blazor Server, it's kind of like an MVC app

If a person had an icon on their phone, they double clicked on it, but they weren't connected to the Internet, it would come up blank page

So I do want to kind of point that out. That's a good question, actually

Good point, which is if you are building a progressive web app where you want to basically target mobile devices, WebAssembly is something you want to look into compared to

Yes, that's another reason for using the Blazor WebAssembly version. yes and that's probably web assembly existed to compete with other javascript framework they can

support you know progressive web apps or these mobile they can also do that so an angular app

can also be a progressive web app a person opens it up there's no internet connection an angular

app you know could be programmed to still work and pull you know from a local in-memory database

so yes Angular also can do that too yeah we definitely have built a React

in Angular their PWAs with some support so that's good to know right

because obviously mobile presence is good depending on the client some clients say we must run

this on mobile so one more thing if you do decide to go mobile Xamarin

does have I think it's still experimental that allows you to create Xamarin apps using Blazor syntax

But then, of course, what Xamarin gives you is it gives you that equal structure for deployment

and write once and still have an Android version and an iOS version

So if you do are interested in that, I would look at the Xamarin offering

And the reason why Xamarin is doing that is that the Blazor syntax is so easy to use

use, and again, this ecosystem that we've been talking about is also very compelling

That's a reason for wanting to mash those two things together. All right

Wow, that's great. I learned a lot. If you guys have any other questions, we have one last minute to go

Feel free to ask questions. But looks like you covered a lot, Michael

We covered both. And I think I got some of my questions answered

Frankly, anything you want to add to the... Who's yours in the end

Again, I just, you know, my site, BlazorHubWebsite.com is where you can see what I'm working on

But also Octane, O-Q-T-A-N-E.org, is the open source framework that allows you to, instead of having to build the entire website, Octane allows you to make, for example, just a module

and then you install Octane, you install just your module, yet you get the full website

of membership management and logging and all sorts of text-based editors and all that sort of thing

So that's another project that I'm very involved in and it's something that you might want to look at

if you're looking to make Blazor applications, yet you want more help

and more ease of creating those applications. So, octane.org is the thing that I think people might want to look at

And it's something that I'm very involved in. It's an open source product. Yeah And I believe people can reach out to you and follow you on Twitter and ask you questions You are always on Twitter I know You on LinkedIn as well So if you guys still have more questions just follow Michael on Twitter and just shoot him some questions

Yep. All right. That was awesome. Thank you so much for coming that early

you have a you know we learn a lot and hopefully you you know enjoy your day and have a safe

next few weeks until we get this covid vaccine yes you too and thank you for having me no thank

you bye bye Thank you