Interesting write up, and a nice style.

The filename limitation isn't the only problem. There's also a limit of 260 characters in the URL.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/265251/asp-net-url-maxpat...

Boo-sucks if you suddenly run into that without expecting it!

> But ASP.NET MVC was based on ASP.NET. Which checks for the existence of a file before running any scripts.

This is not correct. When you configure an ISAPI filter in IIS, such as ASP.NET or PHP, you can choose whether or not to verify the presence of files. You can also do this via configuration for .NET HTTP handlers. Parts of ASP.NET itself rely on this feature, such as the trace.axd handler and the web resource handlers.

I don't have the option to verify that you can't create those routes, but if you can't, it's not related to that particular feature.

You can create these routes via ISAPI, but not via ASP.NET (i.e., writing your own .asxd and observe the same borked behavior)--hence why I know the bug's somewhere in ASP.NET proper. You're correct that my post as-written is off, though. I initially thought ASP.NET was hitting files even though I'd told it not to. After more investigation, I think it's blocking those routes as a security feature to protect you in case you at some point turn file routing back on.

Did you check the source? I have never heard of this feature, which certainly doesn't rule it out, but I try to keep abreast of issues like that and haven't heard anything about it.

This article (and the comments on it here) is a pretty classic illustration of the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation Microsoft (and any other company that at least attempts to preserve backwards compatibility) inevitably ends up in.

Reminded me of this Snopes piece about the width of space shuttle parts being determined by the size of a horse' butt. http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

Technology may not be immune from the stubbornness of standards that no one feels inclined to change.

I couldn't believe the kludginess of Windows did run that deep - I had to check it out: http://www.dieblinkenlights.com/blog_en/the-unbearable-kludg...

And what's the matter with the "all extensions" thing?

/me ducks and says goodbye to karma.

The reason for "all extensions" is because some (obviously important) DOS programs would insist on saving everything with a certain extension; it's be whatever.pbf, hello.pbf. So how do you write to 'lpt1' when you can only save 'lpt1.pbf'? Behold, the solution to one problem and the cause of many more.

You say "goodbye to karma" because you say something bad about Windows on hacker news? That would be surprising.

And with regard to backwards compatibility, I believe, Goedel's incompleteness theorem holds. It's always either kludgy or incomplete ;-)

No. I am saying goodbye karma because I am saying something unfavorable to Windows. You have no idea how many people prefer to disagree by voting you down than by starting a legitimate discussion.

You have to see what happens when I say Mono is a bad idea...

Windows isn't exactly popular here to say the least. Anyway, I fully agree with you on that strange aversion to expressing disagreement with words.

I find this aversion quite disturbing.

And damaging to my karma ;-)

Thank God for *nix based systems

for indeed they are free of all historical cruft, hallelujah!

Perhaps not, but they do allow me to arbitrarily name URL routes! Hallelujah!

You /can/ use arbitrarily named URL routes in Windows; Rails runs fine on Windows, after all. It's ASP.NET that doesn't allow you to do it.

The legend continues.

Honestly the fact that you couldn't user certain filenames in the URL wasn't as big a problem, it was the fact that you couldn't do URL rewriting unless you wrote your own httphandler that annoyed me the most. MVC does an awesome job with regex based URL routing. ASP.Net MVC is by far the best ASP.Net solution MS has provided to date.

It's not astroturf unless the guy is being paid to do a campaign. I have seen things here and on Digg that can only be explained by active astroturf by the part of Microsoft - the active downmodding of comments, sometimes every comment in a given discussion or every comment in the downmoddable range, after posting something that paints Microsoft or its software in an unfavorable light.

It doesn't surprise me a bit.

(burn, karma, burn)

It sets up the punch line nicely.