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How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

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Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#41
post #11

I'm not an expert with the Microsoft stack, but aren't there ways to mitigate the costs? I've heard Mono supports (most of?) ASP.NET and you don't have to use SQL server either. What other costs are there specific to the Microsoft stack?

We didn't look at Mono because the amount of code we had was fairly trivial and rewriting it in Rails actually let us simply alot of it and write it better than we did before.

I love Mono though and I am actually using that on my other startup (http://adzerk.com) instead of rewriting since I have so much more code there.

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rob, I've always enjoyed reading your posts as I've personally been straddling the gap between the two worlds (MS and OSS) for a long time now. Primarily this is due to our local job market - there simply aren't any OSS jobs where I live, and Microsoft is very deeply embedded in the New Zealand marketplace. C# is a fine language, and ASP.Net MVC is a great framework, but I can't help but feel like the 'other kids' ar…

BDD on .NET? Check out the S#arp Architecture, it's designed to be the RoR of the .NET world, and it has some nice BDD tools, plus scaffolding for IoC, Unit Tests, Services, and MVC. http://wiki.sharparchitecture.net

SharpArchitecture, while swell and neat, doesn't scratch the itch of "this stuff really isn't that hard". There's a metric s* ton of concepts and code in there that are more suitable for a military defense system, let alone a startup.

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#43
I have learned Ruby on Rails and I am amazed that after three weeks with RoR I am more productive than after 10 years with .net

I reported my own experience moving from Asp.net to Ruby on Rails in my blog a few days ago:

"How an experienced developer multiplied his productivity tenfold" http://aymeric.gaurat.net/index.php/2010/how-an-experienced-...

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rob, I've always enjoyed reading your posts as I've personally been straddling the gap between the two worlds (MS and OSS) for a long time now. Primarily this is due to our local job market - there simply aren't any OSS jobs where I live, and Microsoft is very deeply embedded in the New Zealand marketplace. C# is a fine language, and ASP.Net MVC is a great framework, but I can't help but feel like the 'other kids' ar…

BDD on .NET? Check out the S#arp Architecture, it's designed to be the RoR of the .NET world, and it has some nice BDD tools, plus scaffolding for IoC, Unit Tests, Services, and MVC. http://wiki.sharparchitecture.net

I rarely seen any RoR clone took off. I don't mean to talk bad about them, but I'd be worried about the community and momentum behind them. I wouldn't want to use a niche technology to find out that I might have to extend or take ownership myself down the road when their leader decided to resign to pursue something else because they find their work no longer rewarding nor interesting (well, to begin with, they're cloning a popular framework instead of coming up with original ideas or being a visionary).

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#45
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of developers and managers I work with don't seem to realize that what's best for Microsoft isn't necessarily what's best for another company. Instead they get stuck in a cycle of adopting whatever MS throws down the channel (this week it's Entity Framework, last week SOA concepts, etc.). Good MS developers should learn to take what's best from the open source world and apply whatever is most useful behind the…

In fairness (and as the person who made the decision that forces Sam above to use .Net technology) there are reasons to use Microsoft technology even when it isn’t the best fit. Let’s be honest about technology for a second: Things go wrong. No matter what solution you use things go wrong and for the most part non-technical management doesn’t understand that. When something goes wrong they want someone to blame. If y…

Your assumption here is that the blame game somehow is the path to productivity and "the answer". This, to me, means you have a lot of other problems where you work - your platform doesn't matter at all.

You're very right, however in that no one gets fired for using Microsoft - but that's changing. Don't take my word for it - ask the guys in Building 42 - they know it too.

You touch on a very particular, hot topic in the IT world - that having a phone number to Microsoft will solve problems. Sometimes it does - but most often that comes at more than a bit of a price :).

On the flip side - my support channel is Google and I find my answers in about half the time as I would with a topic such as ASP.NET MVC. Rails is quite mature and people have tried everything with it - found where it's great and where it blows. I've had more to read on it than you can imagine.

Anyway - it is a sad truth and one that's about to change as the old guard at your company cycles out and are replace by people with knowledge and pedigree - namely people like me - who will systematically cull the policies that don't make business sense, and keep the ones that do :).

This doesn't mean "ax all things Microsoft" - it means "find the best value and leverage it". MS is changing its focus as it sees this - it knows this shift is coming - it's why ASP.NET MVC is Open Source and SQL Express is free, and more is on the way :).

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#46
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with the technology - it's good stuff and we could have made it work fine. The issue is we want to stay small and not take on the associated cost. I can see how it might come off like I'm damning the platform - that was hardly my intention. Rails has had 3+ years of Open Source contribution to build out the platform and make it do amazing things - ASP.NET MVC will (hopefully) grow in some of the…

My point really was only part technical though. To give an example you had to switch from Silverlight for a completely nontechnical reason. It wasn't even expense related. But you still had to switch and it still cost you time and money you wouldn't need to spend had you just gone with Flash in the first place. So the point to me is still "don't use Microsoft technology because you'll end up needing to switch"

But isn't that the case with virtually any technology? We've used C, C++, Java, C#, VB, ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Flash, etc... We always look at the stack and make a business and technical decision about what to keep and what to toss.

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#47
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SQL Server license: $7171 per processor - we have a single quad machine... which we'll likely need to split into two machines, incurring extra licensing fees. Our servers were hosted at MaximumASP and they gave us a bandwidth quote with additional servers that was 4 figures (remember, this is 3 years out). Visual Studio is $1200 a pop - this is for two people. I'm already at 5 figures and I didn't include Expression/…

So then why not just replace the database and keep the rest? Were you using Linq to SQL and hence tied to SQL Server? As far as VS I'm sure it would not have been a problem for you to get free versions. However, I suppose if you were to change the database portion, probably a sizable chunk of the application, you may as well replace the whole thing...

But why? My cost right now (aside from hardware, which is net even) is 0 - without the hoops. Also - the testing story is much better.

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#48
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would've loved to see a rough breakdown of how they got the the "5 figures" cost...

This article is pretty short on costing details. Silverlight encoding aside (because that's competely unrelated to asp.net mvc deployment) you can deploy web sites really cheap on the microsoft stack. Windows Web Server: $400 SQL Server Express: Free (Databases have a 4 GB maximum size) I can't image how it would cost them 5 figures to use asp.net mvc. I find the productivity of the MS development stack to be well wo…

Look a few comments up - also (from MS themselves) running a site on SQL Express is not a good idea. I would never do that. Once you leave express, you need to license (for the web) by the cpu - which means you're about to cough up a lung.

Ask Jeff and Joel how much they're going to owe - I think it's almost to 6 figures :).

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#49
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Jeff and Joel are still on Bizspark. StackOverflow is ~2 years old.

And after 3 years if they need to spend 10k on licensing for a very successful site that will be peanuts compared to their own time spent. Or do they value that at nothing? I think this is a bad article/interview because it gives the impression that you can't do websites in asp.net MVC on the cheap.

When is $10,000 peanuts? Seriously - I'd rather bonus a developer that money then hand it over for something I can get for free.

Re: How We Moved From Microsoft ASP.NET to Rails and NoSQL

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SQL Server licenses will get you there pretty quickly.

DB Servers are irrelevant when you are talking ASP.NET, so long as you use NHibernate.

Tell that to MySQL which runs like an ape through a mud bog on Windows.
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