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.NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

aaronstannard.com

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#31

As someone who has done both Enterprise .NET and startup work, I have to say that the reason we didn't use .NET is much the same as the reason you don't rent a 2-ton backhoe to dig up a flower bed: cost and overkill. Yes, the backhoe might dig the flower bed faster, but it costs $5,000.00 to rent, there's a one-week minimum rental, and its treads tear up your yard to get to the flower bed. On the other hand the shove…

The only thing you really need to pay for is the actual Windows 2000-whatever servers with IIS, everything else you can get for free. Visual Studio Express Edition is free, the .Net framework is free, and you can integrate with all sorts of popular open source products such as MySQL, Postgres, memcached, Cassandra, etc.

My time doing deployments and dealing with Windows Server issues is not free. Neither is the time lost using RDP instead of SSH, dealing with licenses, requiring much more HD space than the alternatives, and lacking real scripting solutions.

I have yet to hear anyone using LINQ on anything that's not SQL Server, and considering the NIH syndrome in Microsoft, I wouldn't recommend it.

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#32
post #13

To be brutally honest about .Net, and I use it and like it myself, the reason there's no startup market in it is because until MVC there was no point developing in it. ASP.Net controls, postbacks for everything, view state, a general hiding of the actual power of ajax and an obsession with using tables made .Net a terrible web development environment if you had any clue what you were doing. The html it spat out was a…

This is false because it relies on an incorrect assumption: that if you were using .NET to do web development prior to MVC, you had to use ASP.NET. When I was writing .NET web applications, the sum total of ASP.NET integration was implementing IHttpHandler and friends - not much more than access to the request and response streams. You can build your own lightweight framework, which, being lightweight, isn't a big de…

I use a similar strategy, avoiding the .Net web controls and viewstate entirely, instead opting for open standards on the front-end such as jQuery + html/css. I use c# for the plumbing and web-services to feed/consume from the Ui. Also makes it easier to create different Ui's depending on web or mobile, which is a big part of why I moved to this strategy.

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing you really need to pay for is the actual Windows 2000-whatever servers with IIS, everything else you can get for free. Visual Studio Express Edition is free, the .Net framework is free, and you can integrate with all sorts of popular open source products such as MySQL, Postgres, memcached, Cassandra, etc.

My time doing deployments and dealing with Windows Server issues is not free. Neither is the time lost using RDP instead of SSH, dealing with licenses, requiring much more HD space than the alternatives, and lacking real scripting solutions. I have yet to hear anyone using LINQ on anything that's not SQL Server, and considering the NIH syndrome in Microsoft, I wouldn't recommend it.

My time doing deployments and dealing with Windows Server issues is not free.

We don't have any issues with our Windows servers, but I guess the number of issues you run into is proportional to your experience. We would have a lot more problems dealing with Linux servers. YMMV.

Neither is the time lost using RDP instead of SSH

Practice makes perfect...

dealing with licenses

What? You buy it, you install it, done?

requiring much more HD space than the alternatives

Now you're just being silly. Are you worrying about HD space in this day and age? Seriously?

and lacking real scripting solutions.

I'll give you this, but I've yet to see the need for such an environment.

I have yet to hear anyone using LINQ on anything that's not SQL Server

Don't use it then? I think LINQ is a horrible idea, and horribly implemented, so I'm staying far, far away from it. I would never use it or SQL Server in a startup, that would be insane.

I see how you could accidentally recruit someone who thinks it's the best thing EVER and starts using it all over, but recruiting people addicted to the wrong bleeding-edge technologies is a hazard no matter which technology you use.

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your hate is completely misguided, the feature you are complaining about is Web Forms. .Net is a set of class libraries and a virtual machine, your rant would carry a bit more weight if you at least got the basic terminology right. (Although it has to be said that even Microsoft can't get it straight all the time either)

No, he's completely right. Regardless of what the framework may or may not allow, the fact of the matter is that most .NET web applications are using the full ASP.NET stack, which means that it's the place where most of the mindshare is, so for all practical purposes it would be more difficult to find people who aren't using it, and if you aren't using it then you're probably using another technology stack. For that…

Regardless of what the framework may or may not allow, the fact of the matter is that most .NET web applications are using the full ASP.NET stack

Yes, but that is not what he said. That the majority of .Net developers are completely hooked on the entire stack is a problem when it comes to recruiting people. That is not the same thing as claiming the .Net stack is rigid and inflexible.

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are addons to make Visual Studio editing just like vim. Or Emacs if you prefer that.

And the Vim plugin is an absolute failure, and the development enviroment takes 30 seconds to startup, 30 seconds to connect to a TFS server over the Internet, and stutter every 20 seconds whenever you want to switch windows. oh, and let's not forget the 15 second build time for debugging. Vim is here, now, the very second you need it, over an SSH connection, and far, far more customizable and with more useful plugin…

Are you using msbuild to build your project? I've figured that out and some of msdeploy so it seems like making the jump out of Visual Studio/Express should be straight forward (I came from Vim with PHP/Perl and often find Visual Studio/Express getting in the way more than it helps).

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#36

I've been to 2 dotNet local conferences already ... the presentations are centered around Office / Sharepoint integration, plus company-sponsored propaganda (also targeted at the enterprise) that made me wanna` puke out of boredom. Even the presentation on Silverlight was focused on data-binding and how easy it is to build boring forms out of clicky-clicky actions. This is especially telling considering I did work fo…

Have you taken a look at Mono? The Windows servers aren't always required. There are definitely some caveats but it might be an option.

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are addons to make Visual Studio editing just like vim. Or Emacs if you prefer that.

And the Vim plugin is an absolute failure, and the development enviroment takes 30 seconds to startup, 30 seconds to connect to a TFS server over the Internet, and stutter every 20 seconds whenever you want to switch windows. oh, and let's not forget the 15 second build time for debugging. Vim is here, now, the very second you need it, over an SSH connection, and far, far more customizable and with more useful plugin…

First, VS shouldn't take 20s to switch windows. I just did it and it happened instantly. And I have 60 open windows (not including tool windows).

Second, how is Vim more customizable than VS? I can't think of anything I can't do in VS. There's plenty I can't do in Vim.

Vim does load faster. Although single file load with VS isn't too bad, but certainly no Vim.

And don't use TFS... that's just bad mojo.

I say this as a person who spent 12 years of his life using Vi/Vim before touching VS for the first time.

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#39
post #36

I've been to 2 dotNet local conferences already ... the presentations are centered around Office / Sharepoint integration, plus company-sponsored propaganda (also targeted at the enterprise) that made me wanna` puke out of boredom. Even the presentation on Silverlight was focused on data-binding and how easy it is to build boring forms out of clicky-clicky actions. This is especially telling considering I did work fo…

Have you taken a look at Mono? The Windows servers aren't always required. There are definitely some caveats but it might be an option.

[deleted]

Re: .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

#40
post #36

I've been to 2 dotNet local conferences already ... the presentations are centered around Office / Sharepoint integration, plus company-sponsored propaganda (also targeted at the enterprise) that made me wanna` puke out of boredom. Even the presentation on Silverlight was focused on data-binding and how easy it is to build boring forms out of clicky-clicky actions. This is especially telling considering I did work fo…

Have you taken a look at Mono? The Windows servers aren't always required. There are definitely some caveats but it might be an option.

I was surprised to install PHDVirtual's backup software and it involves two linux virtual machines which run a web interface based on .aspx.

I think it's the first time I've met Mono in a product.

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