While it's true that the .NET 3.0 doesn't directly add any ASP.NET functionality, it's also true that the .NET 3.0 install makes changes in your \Framework\v2.x directory.  Although the install introduction warned that a reboot might be necessary, it didn't turn out to be necessary and the install was relatively painless.  ...Untill we tried to install on a server running a 2.x webservice and received an error indicating that assembly ServiceModel.DLL couldn't be found. 

The primary assembly for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services is ServiceModel.DLL. Another seemingly unrelated fact is that hosting a WCF service in IIS requires a service file with a ".svc" extension in a virtual directory.  How is the svc file processed?  An Http handler for the "*.svc" extension is associated with ServiceModel.DLL.  And how does the .NET 2.0 based ASP.NET know to suddenly start looking for this service file?  The 3.0 install adds a new http handler to the web.config file in the \WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG directory.

<configuration>
  <system.web>
  ...
    <httpHandlers>
    ...
 <add
           path="*.svc"
           verb="*"
           type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler,
           System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, ...

An IIS restart allowed the web service to resume without error.

I've written and revised a reasonable number of DotNetNuke modules, as well as Falafel's course material for DNN, and I think I can probably create binary Private Assemblies in my sleep.

I was a little unnerved, then, when I was getting something ready for an important customer this morning, and discovered some very weird and different behavior in my test environment than in the development environment. Specifically, I had written a module which collected some extended profile information from Joe User when he was logged in, which I didn't want to collect for the host user or for members of the Administrator group. So I'd upload the new module (logged in as host), then log out and go register a new user name, going immediately to the new module page, where the first thing I needed to do was enter the profile information. Dutifully, I would enter the information and submit it. And nothing would get updated. Yet this worked perfectly in my development environment.

Did I say it didn't get updated? That's not exactly true. I was feeling pretty confused, so when Lino the Wise walkd past my office, I grabbed him and said "Boss, I need some help". He listened patiently as I explained the problem, then turned to my keayboard to demonstrate.

And it worked just like it should. Lino laughed, and said it was because he was standing there that the problem got scared and went away. Then so did Lino. And the problem came right back. After a while longer, I got another coworker to come in. And again I explained the problem. And again, the program performed correctly. These two times, out of perhaps a hundred attempts.

I tried lots of things. Rebooting, of course, and iisreset. Clearing out the temporary files. Creating a fresh virtual site with the same name as the old one, then a new virtual site with a different name. Nothing worked.

I finally noticed (while doing some further testing, with a second user name) that the information from a previously logged in user was being displayed. I had been in the habit of logging in as host, uploading the new module, then logging out and immediately registering a new user. I resorted to brute force: I displayed the current user id on the form. When I'd enter and submit the new user's information, I checked and found that DNN's this.ModuleId function said I was userId=1 (host). Since I was disabling profile update through this particular page for host and administrators, my updates were getting thrown away. Apparently the couple of times it did update were when I was explaining the issue to co-workers - thus taking longer, letting the cache time out (??) and by the time I loaded the offending page, everything behaved properly.

I loaded DNN 4.4.0, and the problem went away. I had been developing and testing in DNN 4.3.5, because this was a custom job and that's what the customer was using. And the heck of it is, they (or actually, their users) will probably not ever encounter the problem because of the way the module will be used, one user at a time from computers all around the country. This particular bug hatched to frustrate only the developer. Too bad I didn't find that out more quickly...

So I recently discovered programming.reddit.com, a site that lists the latest and greatest programming articles and blogs that other people have read and rated, and I noticed a trend: a lot of the articles are about functional programming languages. This piqued my curiosity. After all, what's the big deal? I learned some Scheme in college, and it was weird compared to programming in an imperative style. Besides, functional languages don't even have objects, so they don't have the same power of abstraction, right? (wrong, and wrong again.) Well, since then, I've read several fascinating articles on the advantages of functional programming languages, and this article was one of the best. Then I learned that Microsoft is researching a functional language for .NET, and that many of C# 3.0's features were lifted from it.

So now I'm wondering, will functional programming become the way of the future? I've decided that it's important enough to acquaint myself with functional programming techniques. I surveyed many functional languages, trying to decide which one to choose.

I want to learn F# eventually, but I don't want it to be my first functional language, because it allows a mixture of functional and imperative programming, and while that might be a powerful combination once I'm fluent in both styles, I don't want to be tempted to fall into familiar imperative patterns while I learn this new style of programming.

Clean looks pretty nice; it performed admirably well for a functional language in the Computer Language Shootout, and it even has its own IDE written entirely in Clean! It is a modern language, but its development and usage isn't as widespread as Haskell's, below.

At long last, I come to Haskell. Haskell is a pure functional language, so I won't have the crutch of imperative programming to fall back on. It was designed to be an open standard, consolidating existing functional languages into a common one as a basis for future language design, which also means that it will be an epicenter of new language developments. While the project to create a Haskell IDE written in Haskell is still underway, there is a Haskell plugin for Visual Studio, which is still pre-release, but the author feels that it's getting close.

In the end, I've decided to pursue learning Haskell first, and then probably F#. If I have any great epiphanies, either for or against functional programming, I'll be sure to post my thoughts here.