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Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
61–70 of 148 posts
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#62Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a SharePoint issue with the emails it sends out and it ended up being a permission issue (well, not even sure you would call it that - but the fix was resetting the system account's password). There had been no changes in accounts or anything else besides the creation of new sites and to make it even harder no error messages or useful logging. I've seen issues like this more times than I can count over the yea…
Sharepoint should not fall under this discussion... that's a product and has little to do with a startup's development stack.. Most .net devs won't touch it
I don't know about that since Microsoft is pushing SharePoint to developers as their main web platform. Would I use it personally, no... but there is a lot to gain from it if you are already a Microsoft shop and the newest version is a lot more standards complaint and the API is pretty good now.
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was the problem?
It was a SharePoint issue with the emails it sends out and it ended up being a permission issue (well, not even sure you would call it that - but the fix was resetting the system account's password). There had been no changes in accounts or anything else besides the creation of new sites and to make it even harder no error messages or useful logging. I've seen issues like this more times than I can count over the yea…
FYI, as a SQL Server dev intern I can tell you that we have little to no interaction with SharePoint (except that Sharepoint runs on SQL Server). We focus on application development. SharePoint is just a management product.
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#65MS seems to have equalized most of the initial price advantage of FOSS with their free bizspark stuff. Other issues involved: 1. Many startup hackers are good enough customize Linux for their needs, but would lack that freedom under Windows. 2. Open source security model perceived as more reliable than MS's security through obscurity. 3. Performance. Not an expert here, but from anecdotal evidence of running Win7 vs…
1. It's not difficult to customize Windows. There are well defined SDKs and interfaces for most of the kernel points. Honestly, how many web startups are customizing their kernel? 3. The performance differences are negligible in the general case. Startups write their own code so most of the performance differences are going to come from the code they write rather than underlying performance differences. In both cases…
1. I read that more as customizing in userland than in the kernel, but I don't know what the original poster's intention was. I personally find it easier to configure a Linux machine than a Windows machine, but I think it comes down to familiarity and subjective preference a lot more than anything else.
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#66I firmly believe that your team should choose the right tool for the job, factoring in what the team is comfortable with. I would never tell a room of open source coders that they had to use .NET, and I sure wouldn't want to make the .NET folks learn anything new, either. ;)
Humour aside, the language of your question ("non-MS" and "some open-source language") implies that the decision to use anything except Microsoft stuff is the Other, and I just don't think that's a realistic baseline.
There's a world of excellent tools for different jobs, and we are so lucky because the cream gets to the top a lot faster now.
We're not building on WebObjects and you're not working with VB.NET, either.
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#67My startup is a BizSpark startup http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark so we're going to get tied up in the Microsoft stack pretty quickly. We just started a few months back and are working on our first project. I really like developing in .NET so this was a no brainer for me. Other people would disagree with me and want to focus on open source. Different strokes for different folks I suppose. Even with BizSpark the poin…
How much do you worry about Microsoft lock-in? And about them discontinuing tools you depend on?
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's just a matter of fashion. Only a handful of the startups we've funded use anything from Microsoft.
Perhaps then it's more of a mindset issue since .Net is used in a lot of traditional business - aka they already have SQL, Windows Server 2008 and Sharepoint running for example. .Net might just attract personality types that are more risk averse, aka programmers more interested in a steady paycheck than the ups/downs/stress of the startup life.
Its multi-faceted issue, partly based on a cultural bias in the Valley of using Unix on the web. There are also lower barriers for developers to pick up lamp, rails, etc than the Microsoft stack, which feeds into it. Hosting is also somewhat cheaper on unix stacks, especially when you add SQL server, which may influence people's choice.
Having said this, I find the Microsoft platform dead simple, the tools best of breed, and the new MVC framework to have opened up the platform considerably.
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#69When I last worked at a start-up, our product was built on the MS stack, and saved significant cash by allowing MS to author a white paper detailing how our product leveraged the .NET Framework and SQL Server. We still paid out some of the cost of an MSDN subscription, but our membership status was increased thanks to our "partner" status.
Re: Ask HN: (No) Microsoft based start-ups?
#70I use an almost entirely MS stack for my analytics platform: http://www.swfstats.com/ It's a number of applications ranging from windows services to command line utils and websites. Using .NET I'm able to do all of that in C# and not have to switch mindsets when I jump back and forth between all the different facets of it. I can also easily re-use code/classes between distinct applications. These days I can be found…
Which Mongo lib are you using?