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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?

#81

Post by world32 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #63
world32 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are clearly very bitter about this. > The C# compiler is free and OSS. Has this always been the case? > .Net Core is available for Linux and MacOS. A quick wikipedia search shows that .Net core was first released in June 2016, that only supports the view that microsoft has been very late to the game when it comes to open source languages and frameworks. The original comment that you disagreed with says "Yes, MS l…

> You are clearly very bitter about this. Being snarky and name calling against site guidelines. It is the first line: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Has this always been the case? Has this always been the case with Java? With C? With C++? It has been open standard since 2001 and the current compiler open source since 2014. So five or more years. Ten or more with Mono (part of .Net Core today). >…

> Being snarky and name calling against site guidelines.

Ha, OK.

> Has this always been the case with Java? With C? With C++?

Its funny to see all the logical fallacies being used to try and counter a perfectly valid argument! What does this have to do with Java, C or C++? But since you asked, there were always open source compilers for C and C++ (GCC and G++ for example). Java - I don't know, I suspect not, but is Java popular with startups anyway? Why mention it?

> It has been open standard since 2001 and the current compiler open source since 2014.

Not sure exactly what Open standard entails?

Essentially, the original argument said that the software ecosystem for .NET has mostly been non-free and non-opensource until very recently (2014 - 2016 as you mentioned), which has meant that for at least a decade startups have avoided it in favour of open source frameworks, so even though it is NOW open source, the damage has already been done. None of these counter-examples actually contradict that original statement. By 2016 open source frameworks like Django, Rails, Symfony had been around for more than a decade and were no longer the "shiny new toy" but generally accepted as mature, stable frameworks on which to build applications. So I think its fair to say that Microsoft's approach to open source has been too little and far far too late.

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

#84

Post by repolfx »

navd wrote: post #6

As someone who has done a lot of work with .NET in a past life, I think the main reason that more startups aren't using it are for culture reasons. .NET's move into open source is fairly recent and I'd expect more startups to use it (if it fits) in the future. Most startups are trying to build products with a low budget overhead and previously that was a lot harder to do in the .NET ecosystem.

Is it culture? Or is it just that the JVM does the same thing, but with a bigger and older ecosystem, with more experienced people etc. Lots of startups out there using Java or JVM languages.

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

#85

Post by GenericsMotors »

dmarlow wrote: post #78
fj39dkf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, seriously.

Care to elaborate? You already throw around blanket statements, it's not enough to just say "yes". What's your rationale?

He has no rationale. Doubt he even knows the scale at which MS' tech stack is used, especially outside of the USA's hipster bubbles.

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

#86

Post by jetti »

DarkStar851 wrote: post #54
pryelluw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has only been open source for a relative short amount of time when compared with other technologies like Node, RoR, etc. .Net has historically cost money while providing somewhat similar features as open source competitors. Its why MS was forced into open sourcing it. They could not compete anymore.

.NET itself has always been "free" (as in beer), it's just VS they made people pay for. They've had a community edition since VS2012 at least, possibly earlier but that's as far back as my brain goes. The Community edition is pretty full-featured, it's only missing some TFS integration stuff, some test suite stuff and advanced profiling. I'd compare it to IntelliJ's free/pro model.

Community Edition has restrictions on use for organizations.

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

#87

Post by jetti »

whb07 wrote: post #4

There has always been a dark horse OS within .NET its called F#. But what is sad about the state of the average C# dev is that when I ask them about their opinions on F#, they always respond with a "whats F#?" That's the problem with most .NET developers. They were fed straight from the MS spoon with blinders on, and never wondered what is out there. But to label oneself as a "I'm a .NET dev", and yet you don't know…

" But to label oneself as a "I'm a .NET dev", and yet you don't know that there is another language besides VB/C# it's just sad."

I mean, do you really expect people to know all the CLI languages? Would you expect them to know about Boo, Nemerle or the other handful of languages that target the CLI? Microsoft has also done a pretty poor job marketing F# to developers.

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

#88

Post by jetti »

whycombagator wrote: post #73
dmarlow wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"good engineers simply want nothing to do with the Microsoft ecosystem" Seriously? I guess the whole swath of .NET developers aren't good engineers...

I thought it was universal knowledge that everyone involved/working with the Microsoft ecosystem was automatically a bad engineer? Short list of awful engineers: Jon Skeet, Marc Gravell, Darin Dimitrov, Gordon Linoff, Hans Passant, Schabse Laks, Nick Craver, Jared Par, Eric Lippert, Anders Hejlsberg, etc. Good engineers also actively avoid using Stack Overflow - as it's based on Microsoft tech and good engineers want…

Not to mention all those devs who are putting a ton of effort into the .NET Core runtime and optimizations. They are just truly awful devs

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

#89

Post by jetti »

samfisher83 wrote: post #36
ykevinator wrote: post #11

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

Its a compiled language. Its going to be in the java level of speed. Its going to be faster than node, python, php, etc.

It is a little more nuanced that just being compiled as a poorly optimized compiler can generate slow code. That being said, there has been a ton of work on the .NET Runtime to increase speed. There is even more improvements coming out in .NET Core 3 as well

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

#90

Post by potta_coffee »

TobbenTM wrote: post #7
BrentOzar wrote: post #2

In the past, it's been about budgets: Microsoft has an aura of money about it. The OS cost money, the good developer tools cost money, the database cost (a lot of) money. Startups are by definition cash-strapped. Some of that is changing - the developer tooling is getting free/cheap - but the rest of the stack (OS, hosting, database) still isn't free. (I know, the MS folks are going to say SQL Server Express Edition…

But it is free though! With .Net Core being Cross platform, I've actually yet to run it on anything else than Linux in production environments! Hosting is the same as any other technology, you just need a host to either run containers or the .Net artifacts directly. Lastly, I think it's unfair to throw SQL server into this comparison, as MySQL and PostgreSQL are perfectly supported with entity framework.

Just because Microsoft has made some free stuff recently doesn't mean I'm going to switch stacks all of a sudden, when there are comparable frameworks I already know.
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