Honestly from the programmer's perspective, it's really just one framework: .NET. I know that .NET abstracts away other frameworks such as the Win32 API, but generally you don't need to know any Win32 API etc. to make a Winforms / WPF / etc. application. With modern "web application" style development, it seems these days you need to know multiple frameworks by default, for better or for worse.
More to the point, .NET was designed from the get go as an enterprise programming language. The web was not designed from the beginning to be a universal application platform, it was designed to display formatted hyperlinked text. Much of the hack-y feel of today's web development -- as well as other aspects such as the rather poor security -- springs from this. If the web were designed from the get-go to be a universal sandboxed application platform, I feel that many things (ranging from the scripting language choice to the DOM model) would have looked a lot different today. Standard, non interactive HTML + CSS (what the web was designed for) certainly doesn't feel too hacky after all.
I'm not sure what sre you talking about, if you program with c# and wpf, you need to know xaml and their weird syntax, you need to know prism which is a framework to properly organize your UI, you need to know a server language like asp. Net if you want to deal with backend code.
Prefer winform? That's much like react without using jsx, and if yoy want fancy graphics is much more complicated than html. Now sure you can stick to system style, but you can also buy css themes, use bootstrap, material ui frameworks to have your already prepared ui in html too.
Same issues with qt libraries... The thing is simple: inevitably you need more layer of complexity if you need to be able to maintain the code while being open to changes.
For simple apps, sure winform is faster, for complex apps, no way, it's the same.
And you can't really say that.net is a single framework when it includes so much stuff that is bigger than react, node, webpack, css and html put together
I would have to disagree on the last sentence -- there is nothing in any definition of a software framework I know about that suggests that a software framework cannot encompass more than one function. .NET indeed does have a much larger solution stack then most web frameworks, for better or worse (there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach). But that does not disqualify it from being a framework in my opinion.
Web programming is more fragmented in nature, for better or worse. I think that was more my point with the first paragraph (and also a response that most .NET programmers don't need to care too much about any backbone frameworks .NET was built on). .NET provides you with a full front-to-back ecosystem. With web applications, you usually chose, at minimum, some form of Javascript framework, some back end framework, and some form of style framework. (Full stack frameworks for some reason have not taken off in the web ecosystem.) Even that description simplifies some of the fragmentation, due to the bewildering amount of choice. If you want to implement a Flux pattern in React for instance, there are over a dozen versions out there to chose from.
I don't think this necessarily says anything about app complexity or speed of development at all, agreed. Complex apps are going to be the same. I do think that the current fragmented, churn-y nature of the Javascript ecosystem can be a barrier to entry for simple apps at the moment; for that reason, I'll welcome the day when the Javascript ecosystem reaches peak "Javascript fatigue", becomes a bit more stabilized.
True it's a single framework, my point was only the size... I mean, the amount of knowledge you need is probably the same you need to work with web stack.
Also, if you need a backend even if it's written in same language, is still a different thing, much like node and web javascript. Choosing a different backend languages usually is made because of the advantages it brings (Rails for prototyping, Erlang or Elixir for stability, Java for performance and so on)
Not trying to be pedantic, just posting to set the record straight:
- WPF, WinForms, ASP.NET, ADO.NET etc. etc. are all officially part of the .NET Framework.
- WPF doesn't do much (or any) direct interaction with Win32. It uses Direct#D for rendering.
- The CLR is the .NET equivalent of the JVM.
It's useful to look at the .NET Framework the same way as the standard library that ships with the JVM. They're both large standard libraries that include GUI Library (AWT, Swing, JavaFX, Winforms, WPF), database access (JDBC, ADO.NET).
In both cases, the extensive standard library can easily be used by multiple languages (i.e. VB, C#, F# in .NET, Java, Scala, Clojure and many others on the JVM).
As rpeden pointed out, it's you that are confusing the things. CLR is what JVM is for C#, while all the stuff I mentioned are inside the .net framework
If we're going to count frameworks, there'd be no end it. As I once said, programming is abstraction upon abstraction.
Like an onion, a Russia doll or better still, inception.
Frameworks abound everywhere, at every layer. You just need to adjust your scope as you see fit, to find them.