Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net?

#11

Post by ScottWhigham » Fri, Jul 04, 2008, 10:41 AM UTC

jamess wrote: post #3

jeremytliles wrote: post #2

I think hosting cost is the biggest issue, especially if you reach a point where you need to balance load across many servers. There is also the cost ofthe development tools, although I think MS has some programs that allow you to get Visual Studio .NET for free or for minimal cost. Other than that, I think there is just a huge bias against the MS stack in the "hacker" (yes, ironic quotes) community. Having worked wi…

Not to mention that the average hacker is usually far better equipped to manage a Unix flavoured server than a Windows server. With small companies who can't afford to have a full time sysadmin on staff, what you know is a powerful motivator. Windows server administration simply isn't the type of thing you pick up while using Windows, while the basics of managing Unixen is something you pick up while using Unix boxes…

I'm sorry but I don't see any difference in learning *nix admin vs Windows admin. If anything I think it's the opposite: Windows admin is much, much easier to learn. Where MS excelled early on was in usability and less-training-required - that was kind of the whole point.

Re: Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net?

#12

Post by ScottWhigham » Fri, Jul 04, 2008, 10:44 AM UTC

Reddit, YCombinator, Digg are all rife with anti-MS folks so, if you follow the idea that, "The world must be like what my experience is" and you only visit those sites (or similar ones), then you would absolutely get the impression that ASP.NET is a bad choice. There are as many if not more "hackers" using ASP.NET than all others except maybe php but those ASP.NET folks typically hang out elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net?

#13

Post by babul » Fri, Jul 04, 2008, 11:45 AM UTC

nreece wrote: post #8

babul wrote: post #6

Why use it when you can use good, free, robust/reliable, open-source tools to do the same things?

ASP.NET and the .NET Framework are free no less, and more reliable than Windows itself. And the Mono project (.NET stack for Unix) is open source. While ASP.NET in its out-of-the-box form may be a bit daunting at times, since it follows nearly the same development model (viz event wireups, binded controls etc) as with developing software apps. But ASP.NET MVC is an upcoming alternate model that is quite flexible and…

The basic tools are free but why get locked into MS with all it all its licensing, proprietary software/platform/toolset, upgrade, and cost issues.

MS does make some very good products (I use and like VS2008) but the core reason most hackers don’t use them is because they don’t want these aforementioned issues. This becomes more evident the more you scale.

It is no coincidence the top performing web-apps produced so far have not been based on MS software.

Re: Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net?

#14

Post by icey » Fri, Jul 04, 2008, 3:37 PM UTC

MS Tools & Languages are made with corporations in mind. In other words, ASP.Net is structured so that programmers can be treated like replaceable cogs. There really isn't anything wrong with that, but if you aren't in a "replaceable cog" situation, you can get things done faster in other languages that require less boilerplate code.

Re: Ask HN: what is wrong with asp.net?

#15

Post by gaius » Fri, Jul 04, 2008, 4:13 PM UTC

ScottWhigham wrote: post #10

gaius wrote: post #4

Nothing is wrong with ASP.NET if your problem is building websites the same way you build Windows desktop apps . If not however, ASP.NET is simply the wrong tool.

I don't understand what your comment means. Elaborate?

ASP.NET is Windows Forms for the web. It uses the same approach as you'd use to build a desktop app in Visual Studio. Which is good if that's what you want to do (or if that's what your developers already know), but starting from scratch, a natively web solution would be better.