Project Cool and the Next Gen ASP Model
Leaked details and rumor articles abound in early to mid 2000 about Microsoft "cloning" Java (Project Name: Cool).
Prologue
The year is 2000, in the IT workforce we are all using Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server. The latest IIS version 5.0 is the running as Microsoft’s new Web Application Server and very soon a new framework is about to be revealed.
By this point in time, I personally was 3+ years into my Web Development career and about 2 of those years were spent learning, implementing and teaching Web App development on the Microsoft web stack:
IIS 4 on NT 4
ASP & COM
VBScript (server side only)
JavaScript (client side only)
HTML/DHTML
CSS
Next Gen ASP Timeline
After the release of Internet Information Services 4.0 in 1997, Microsoft began researching possibilities for a new web application model that would solve common complaints about ASP.
Mark Anders, a manager on the IIS team, was tasked with determining what that model would look like.
Scott Guthrie joined MS in 1997 and he was tasked with working on designing and implementing the new Active Server Pages model Scott became co-creator of ASP.NET and personally designed core parts of the .NET Framework.
New Web app model that would solve common ASP issues, especially in regard to separation of presentation and content and the ability to write “clean” code.
Original prototype was called “XSP”, this did not really stand for anything but replaced “A” in ASP with “X” (apparently all the cool kids were using XML and XSLT). XSP Team was the first one to target the CLR (move away from COM)
With the move to the Common Language Runtime, XSP was re-implemented in C# (known internally as "Project Cool" but kept secret from the public), and the name changed to ASP+, as by this point the new platform was seen as being the successor to ASP, and the intention was to provide an easy migration path for ASP developers.
Once the ".NET" branding was decided on in the second half of 2000, it was decided to rename ASP+ to ASP.NET.
After four years of development, and a series of beta releases in 2000 and 2001, ASP.NET 1.0 was released on January 5, 2002 as part of version 1.0 of the .NET Framework.
Cool Summertime Reveals
Below are a few excerpts from a fascinating article titled “Official: Microsoft's C# is Cool“ from The Register, dated Tuesday, 9-12-2000:
“When Microsoft rolled out its new programming language, C#, in June, a team of spin-paramedics was on hand to point out that no way, never ever was this anything to do with Microsoft's allegedly mythological "Project Cool".
However, we spotted in the documentation for C# an extended attribute created by language spec co-author Scott Wiltamuth that read 'Owner=scottwil Team=VC Feature=Cool'.
By your extended-attribute-tags shall ye know them, we thought, although we couldn't quite rule out the possibility that the witty language authors had inserted the reference as a tease. We even tried to out these fine folk with the naked inducement of a Register label badge, but the buggers wouldn't bite.
But it's all over now. Thanks to eagle-eyed Register reader Larry Smith, we've learned that C# is indeed Cool. Or if it isn't, it's chocca with references to it.”
I can recall that around this same time, summer of 2000, our CEO at TPI shared an article like this with us. The article came from some Seattle-based software magazine that he subscribed to and in it there was the rumor that Microsoft had “cloned” Java and this new language was “Project Cool” (later on revealed as c#, the new MS default language for coding .NET/CLR apps).
Later that very summer, I attended an MSDN Tech event and approached one of the speakers on the side of the stage after the show. He was running a little informal after show Q&A discussion there on the side. I waited for my turn to ask a question and then asked him specifically about the published rumor about Microsoft cloning Java and was that “Project Cool”?
I remember this speaker immediately started deflecting and asking “Where did you hear that from?” type of questions back as his response. He did not answer the question and then promptly ended the little Q&A. We took his lack of response to be confirmation that Microsoft really had cloned Java and it was implemented as part of whatever this new Project Cool was!
The Rest is .NET History
Of course, I went on to take full advantage of TPI’s MSDN Library subscription and installed the Microsoft .NET Framework and the very new Visual Studio.NET Beta 1, as soon as it was available in early 2001! ;)