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Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#21

Post by mdorazio »

1) As others have mentioned, .NET has a legacy of being expensive and closed, even if that isn't really true anymore.

2) .NET isn't really taught in college classes, and a lot of startup devs come more or less right out of college, using whatever stuff they learned as a basis.

3) .NET isn't sexy in a cultural sense. It doesn't have a shiny new flavor of the week framework, compiler, library, or whatever for everyone to trot out every 6 months and brag about on their resume.

4) .NET has the perception of being a "big business" framework, rather than something you use to bang out a scrappy MVP. Scrappy MVP is where a lot of startups... start, so the impetus is to use whatever tool flavor of the day will get you to customer #1 the fastest.

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#22

Post by vips7L »

decebalus1 wrote: post #17
ykevinator wrote: post #11

It's slow and closed source. Not being pedantic, it is just super stagnant compared to open source platforms.

Don't want to start a flame war, but there's nothing factual correct about what you just said - except for the open source activity around .NET (if that's what you meant by 'stagnant') Source: Worked for a decade on the .NET stack and for the past few years I've been working on a series of large codebases using Java/Golang/Ruby/Python/the_usual_startup_things. Got my taste of both, still miss C# as a language. I woul…

I think the biggest problem with Java is the reluctance for anyone to move beyond jdk 8.

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#23

Post by davismwfl »

I also have a long history of .NET back to when it came out, although not currently using it. .NET was a solid enterprise answer to Java and was "safe" since it was from Microsoft. Only in the past say ~7 years has .NET really come to the point where running it outside of the Windows environment was even an reasonable option for anything other than prototypes or side projects. And not until the last few years has it been something I'd even contemplate to use outside of the Windows eco-system on a production product. Personally, while I don't use Java anymore as a primary language, Java won the "write once, run anywhere" paradigm even though we all know that there is not such thing as a complex app that is truly write once run anywhere. I think one of the key differences is that Java focused on nix as first class citizen (never really worked as cleanly on Windows IMO), and Linux not having any licensing costs then won the hearts and minds of startups (rightfully IMO). nix in general to me is more robust than Windows as well, and makes solving scaling issues much easier. When you are worrying about server licenses and the such deploying something like micro-services (or any distributed system) can quickly become a costly endeavor. Not to mention the extra time spent in IT managing the infrastructure and licensing etc. Also remember that enterprise licenses of SQL Server and Windows server were charged based on number of CPU's etc (not sure if this is still true been a while). But I remember at one company one of our SQL Server boxes was well into the 6 figures just on licenses for OS and SQL.

There are startups that use .NET though, one that comes to mind that has been very successful is fanatics out of Jacksonville, FL. They went with SQL Server and .NET for their startup early on because there was tons of enterprise talent around and Microsoft was giving great incentives for startups to use their tech. I am not sure what they are on today, but I know they still advertise for Microsoft and .NET people a lot.

C# is a pretty damn awesome language and you can be super productive in it but not lose feel like you are hand tied. I am sure there are also those people that just shit on .NET/C# etc cause it is Microsoft, but honestly I'd use it if the opportunity was there and it made sense for the startup.

* edit - clarified a sentence.

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#24

Post by mruts »

mdorazio wrote: post #21

1) As others have mentioned, .NET has a legacy of being expensive and closed, even if that isn't really true anymore. 2) .NET isn't really taught in college classes, and a lot of startup devs come more or less right out of college, using whatever stuff they learned as a basis. 3) .NET isn't sexy in a cultural sense. It doesn't have a shiny new flavor of the week framework, compiler, library, or whatever for everyone…

F# seems pretty sexy to me.

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#25

Post by bradleyjg »

Path dependency. .net may be open source and interoperable with all kinds of non-MSFT technologies today, but 5-10+ years ago it was only usable in places that went all in on Microsoft technologies. Those Microsoft shops tended to be older, large enterprises outside of pure technology.

Now fast forward 5-10+ years back to the present, are people that choose to start their career in older, large enterprises outside of pure technology more or less likely to be a technical co-founder or first technical hire at a start up than people that choose to start their career in startups or pure technology companies? For consumer focused startups I'd probably say the latter.

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that startups trying to sell to exactly those older, large enterprises outside of pure technology are where you are more likely to find technical co-founders/first technical hires with experience at those companies they are trying to sell to. So I'd look there for .net stacks.

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#26

Post by jinushaun »

I’ve worked in a .NET based startup before. While .NET itself is very nice, the ecosystem is not quite there so it’s a lot harder to get started and manage compared to other open source stacks. It’s harder to automate and script. A lot of tools you rely on aren’t made to run on Windows. Windows itself is hard to automate. For example, rebooting your EC2 instance might trigger a hour long Windows Update. You can’t really use tools like Chef, because installing .net and sql server might take 2 hrs. It’s better to have golden VMs with everything installed.

I don’t know how much the situation has improved with core running on Linux.

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#27

Post by jasode »

>What are you thoughts as to why .NET hasn't taken off at startups?

To echo what others said...

A lot of hot startups are founded by young college kids. They don't have money for expensive Visual Studio licenses to program in C# and .NET world. In contrast, the alternative dev tools like Java, Ruby, PHP were free. In college classes, they would have played around with free software instead of Microsoft.

Microsoft charged money in multiple areas of the stack: the compiler (VS) cost money, the database (MS SQL Server) cost money, and the operating system (Windows licenses) cost money. In contrast, PHP+MySql+Linux was $0.

Microsoft later tried to reverse the loss of mindshare with promotional programs such as DreamSpark and BizSpark[0]. That's where a small business could get Microsoft dev tools for free for a limited time. However, those enticements really didn't change a lot of minds because founders knew that once the startup had revenue a year later, they'd have to pay a "Microsoft tax".

Yes, MS later radically changed strategy by making their tools open source and more compatible on Linux. However, it was too late because the culture of startups avoiding MS technology was already deeply ingrained. The StackOverflow site would be one of the few high-profile startups that bought into the Microsoft tech stack.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+dreamspark+bizspar...

Re: Ask HN: Why is .NET not popular with startups?

#28

Post by mola »

I find c# a great language, much better (more argonomic, less verbose, less 'patchy') than Java. I do believe that historically developing on .net didn't make sense for startups because of the huge licensing tax for the OS (servers and Dev stations) and developer tools. Moreover the usual bodies that preferred paying licenses for stable vendor were large, slow enterprises. This made .net appear less sexy and fashionable. We might see this turning around with the recent push for open source from Microsoft.
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