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Leaving .net

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Re: Leaving .net

#61

Post by mahmud »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #41
mahmud wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Microsoft's answer to Java, with hindsight 20/20. I wanted to see their take on portable bytecode, JIT techniques, security, distributed computing, performance, etc. Nearly everybody there was burned by MS's short attention span when it comes to system libraries (OLE, COM, DCOM, DCOM+ for one, and the mess that is data-access libraries, OLE-DB,MDAC, ODBC, ADO, Jet, etc.) We wanted closure, at least I knew I di…

No, wait a sec. A good share of people is complaining about the lack of Microsoft's willingness to push the new shiny stuff - how much time did it take for them to come up with a MVC framework? - the other share of people is complaining that Microsoft pushes too much of a new stuff. C'mon, people, give me a break - yes, there're lots of new frameworks coming from MS. Well, that's what I would expect the company to do…

Apples and oranges:

1) Microsoft is both the tool vendor and the platform vendor. The Ruby community can go ape-shit forking each other on github, but at least the underlying OS remains constant.

2) Microsoft tools cannibalized each other. There is nothing laissez-faire about its offerings: the new kills the old and the entire company, developers, reference materials, publications, marketing, and retail are in lock step. You just couldn't depend on using a disavowed infrastructure without fear of your bookmarks going stale, immediately.

3) They had no reason to phase out products and tools, at least no sensible reason. It's often to harm a competitor. Not only that, but they have sometimes pushed changes for the same of ill-advised aesthetic reasons. You had to be a C++ programmer 1997 - 200 to see how MS can bully. The push to COM and machine generated stub code. The fucked up pre-compilers. The weird new syntax. You could do everything with vanilla C++, but they were trying hard to keep Borland and other compiler vendors at bay, so you had to kowtow and come along with them.

Alright, this is seriously giving me flashbacks and might trigger PTSD.

Re: Leaving .net

#62

Post by gaius »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
lelele wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle. Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. Clojure is just a Jar, isn't it? Then you are just using a Java library, aren't you? Prototypes usually end up in production, don't they? Then develop such prototypes in an agile language and just make them follow th…

> Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. That would be lying though, and it could get you in to a whole pile of hot water. Such 'technical tricks' may work a few times but eventually you'll have a real problem.

It's a matter of semantics. "A Java application" is perfectly honest. Just like when someone says "a native application" it says nothing about if it was actually written in OCaml.

Re: Leaving .net

#63

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

sp332 wrote: post #13
shin_lao wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why making money with programming makes you feel dirty?

If I already have a full-time job, and I just want to hack around as a hobby in my spare time, I don't want the language features and runtime to be tied up in the same (probably more) red tape and politicking I have to deal with at my day job. I just want to relax and hack, and if there's money involved, that's a lot less likely to be enjoyable.

Then make it enjoyable: the last bit of code I hacked was "for profit" but I told the guy who wanted it to just pay me with a bottle of Patron.

He gets the code he wants, I get drunk on good tequila. What's not to love :-)

Re: Leaving .net

#64

Post by jiaaro »

cageface wrote: post #57
lelele wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle. Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. Clojure is just a Jar, isn't it? Then you are just using a Java library, aren't you? Prototypes usually end up in production, don't they? Then develop such prototypes in an agile language and just make them follow th…

What makes you say Python is more appropriate for greysuits? Ruby and Python seem very much alike to me.

Google makes him say it ;)

Re: Leaving .net

#65

Post by palish »

mahmud wrote: post #2

There were already open source MVC web frameworks and an army of .net developers who could have collaborated to make them great but nothing much happened. He is lamenting that the .NET community didn't embrace the pioneering MVC frameworks from the OS community, but waited for Microsoft to deliver its own "blessed" framework. Here is what he is forgetting: Economics. A good chunk of .NET developers are not using the…

Speaking of SBCL, I really wish someone would make SBCL stable on Windows. Please. (Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Don't even worry about 64-bit right now, just get 32-bit fully functional and stable.)

Re: Leaving .net

#66

Post by z92 »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
lelele wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle. Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. Clojure is just a Jar, isn't it? Then you are just using a Java library, aren't you? Prototypes usually end up in production, don't they? Then develop such prototypes in an agile language and just make them follow th…

> Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. That would be lying though, and it could get you in to a whole pile of hot water. Such 'technical tricks' may work a few times but eventually you'll have a real problem.

I personally don't think that will be lying. I built a Java app that sets up the environment, starts Rhino and executes the app from there. The Rhino then make calls into Java classes for DB, file access and low level stuff only.

What do I call that solution? "Developed in Java". Here Rhino is to Java what JavaScript is to a HTML web site.

Re: Leaving .net

#67

Post by twymer »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
lelele wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle. Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. Clojure is just a Jar, isn't it? Then you are just using a Java library, aren't you? Prototypes usually end up in production, don't they? Then develop such prototypes in an agile language and just make them follow th…

> Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. That would be lying though, and it could get you in to a whole pile of hot water. Such 'technical tricks' may work a few times but eventually you'll have a real problem.

I think the safe way, if you want to follow that policy, is to say you develop for the JRE or for the JVM. Neither of these are lies, but they keep with the original idea of keeping peoples focus on "Java".

Re: Leaving .net

#68

Post by lelele »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
lelele wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers will not worry about "alien" technologies, unless you sell the latter as such. This is a basic sales principle. Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. Clojure is just a Jar, isn't it? Then you are just using a Java library, aren't you? Prototypes usually end up in production, don't they? Then develop such prototypes in an agile language and just make them follow th…

> Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. That would be lying though, and it could get you in to a whole pile of hot water. Such 'technical tricks' may work a few times but eventually you'll have a real problem.

I understand your suspicions: switching perspective is something techies have a difficult time with. Is Arc a language or is it a bunch of macros on top of MzScheme? It depends on how you see it.

Clojure is 100% compatible with Java, both ways in a straightforward manner, so you can easily argue that it's still Java. That's been the smartest design decision ever by its designer.

You have to understand whether your clients are interested either in leveraging the Java technology or employing code-drones. In the former case, Clojure will be fine; in the latter one it will not.

Popular wisdom teaches that most people remember the result, not the way you got it. If you use Clojure and succeed, you'll have your own way.

Re: Leaving .net

#69

Post by jacquesm »

gaius wrote: post #62
jacquesm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't ever say you develop applications in Clojure, just say you develop in Java. That would be lying though, and it could get you in to a whole pile of hot water. Such 'technical tricks' may work a few times but eventually you'll have a real problem.

It's a matter of semantics. "A Java application" is perfectly honest. Just like when someone says "a native application" it says nothing about if it was actually written in OCaml.

Until the time that HR hires a person to collaborate on your project with 'java' experience and it turns out you wrote your code in clojure.

Stuff like that tends to have consequences, especially when there are contracts and liabilities involved.

Re: Leaving .net

#70

Post by jtdowney »

dangrossman wrote: post #58
ihumanable wrote: post #9

I can't agree more with the observations on MVC. It's really a symptom of .Net and Microsoft locking in the vast majority of inexperienced users with overly abstract components. Developers fresh out of college who were taught .Net in school and get a job in it become experts at Partial PostBacks and Code Behinds and binding data to the latest whiz-bang GridDataAwesomeControlForTheWin. The problem I've seen time and a…

There are colleges teaching .NET? I'd never heard of that.

It isn't the first thing they teach you at Purdue but a sizable chunk of CS and CIT students learn C#/.NET
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