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

#1

Post by deadA1ias » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

As someone with a decade or more experience in the .NET Framework and now with .NET Core, and a healthy interest in startups, I find it frustrating I cannot apply my experience more widely.

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

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

#2

Post by BrentOzar » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

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 is free, but you rarely run a startup on that.)

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

#3

Post by anovikov » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

Paul Graham effectively invented startups as we know them. Back in about 2005 already, he just gave a piece of advice: everyone who tried to build using Microsoft technologies, failed. Maybe enough people listened?

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

#4

Post by whb07 » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

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 that there is another language besides VB/C# it's just sad.

But now that MSFT has turned things around, hopefully the F# community can get a bigger spotlight and bring a change about.

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

#5

Post by mattmanser » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

As far as I can tell as a programmer in the UK, with several startup clients, it's very popular in Europe, and generally replaces Java's equivalent position in the US market.

I guess there's only really a place for one strongly typed language.

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

#6

Post by navd » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

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.

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

#7

Post by TobbenTM » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

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.

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

#8

Post by vmurthy » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

Anecdata: I work in a healthcare startup where we need to interface our software with medical devices. We’ve found that nothing other than .NET works well with the device drivers. I’d wager that at least in some fields which require a lot of device integrations, you’ll find .NET

Update : forgot to mention. We use C# as the language.

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

#9

Post by mfatica » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #3

Paul Graham effectively invented startups as we know them. Back in about 2005 already, he just gave a piece of advice: everyone who tried to build using Microsoft technologies, failed. Maybe enough people listened?

I don't think there's a single factually correct statement in this comment from startups being invented in 2005 to no one succeeding with .Net

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

#10

Post by marsrover » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

I've worked at two startups that used .NET.

But, yeah, as other posters have mentioned, it comes down to budget. In the past .NET was expensive to use and created a lot of vendor lock-in. That's currently changing and I imagine you'll see more startups using .NET in the future.