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Leaving .net

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Re: Leaving .net

#121

Post by kenjackson »

pohl wrote: post #85
acabal wrote: post #8

A sizeable chunk of .NET development happens in the corporate/enterprise world. That sort of environment isn't interested in collaboration, open source, etc.--they're interested in the guaranteed support the MS stack provides, and the idiot-proof web basics provided by ASP/webforms/MVC. If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support…

If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support for their problem. That's the canard, but it has seldom worked out that way for me. Whenever I've encountered a problem that can be traced to a flaw in their products, the suggestion of calling for support is usually met with riotous laughter. (In other words, everybody says it's a selli…

How about one person? I recently had an issue with VS 2010 and long hangs in the editor for a specific type of file. I got a series of minidumps for them... we narrowed it down to an issue with type resolution.

They sent me a QFE drop and then incorporated the fix into a tools release they were doing.

I was acting as single dev, not even on a support contract.

Re: Leaving .net

#122

Post by regularfry »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #100
latch wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this often, but I don't buy it. The implications [seems] to be that most startups either succeed or fail within 3 years. Does anyone have proof of this? My personal observation is that most companies will still be around and they'll neither be millionaires nor broke. In such a situation, the bizspark bait-n-switch can be significant. Picking technology today on the basis that you'll either crash and burn or be…

My point is: if you're doing a startup, you want to have a business, not a hacking hobby. If three years down the road your business isn't generating enough profit one way or another, it's a "busyness" and you seriously should consider doing something else.

There's a lot of room in the gap between marginally profitable and exponential growth. Not every startup is necessarily going to end up making millions - not within 3 years, 10 years, maybe ever. That doesn't make it a "busyness," nor does it make it not worth doing.

Re: Leaving .net

#123

Post by herewego »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #76
herewego wrote: post #39

I work for a mid-size (read: 100+ employee) IT recruiting company and I have to tell you that this boils down to one thing and one thing only for most people that have chosen .NET: economics. If you want to be a developer and you're goal is to give your three kids a good life, drive that BMW 5 series, and own a $500k house, then you should be a .NET developer. The math is simple and I have a mountain of data that sup…

Your numbers must be pretty outdated for Rails people (or maybe you don't recruit into well-paying gigs) if you think those figures are well above what we're making. I'd say most salaries are comparable to that. And I think you're probably right for PHP and Java. The talent pool is saturated, so there's little "demand" for that sort of employee. "Oh you want $70k? Sorry, we've got 10 candidates who will take $40k. By…

Ruby in particular is hot right now and they're fetching higher salaries relative to other OS languages, you're correct about that. I clumped them all together in my query, and PHP (and Java to a lesser extent) pulled the average down.

Also, notice that I didn't specify junior developers on the salary scale - they're all over the place in terms of salary.

Government contract work is always the exception in any industry. I think that's a given.

Re: Leaving .net

#124

Post by mrj »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #53
konad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. That's why I bailed back in '99. You needed an MSDN subscription just so your apps could tread water. Phone rings "Hi, we upgraded our NT server and now your software is broken". Many hours later "Oh MS changed the DB connection pooling to OFF" Me: Hmm, this Personal Home Page things looks ok, I'll give that a try. And as horrible as PHP is, it behaves itself.

I don't see how this is any worse than trying to keep up with the latest version of some OSS library. Whether it's MS that's revving or open-source developers, changes happen, and if it's a breaking change in a shared library, sometimes you get hurt. Just yesterday there was a "goodbye python" article posted here, that blamed the fact that so many Linux installations have old installations of python, and so many thin…

Distributing software always sucks, on every OS. It wasn't the language he had a problem with, it was the platform quirks.

Re: Leaving .net

#125

Post by regularfry »

troels wrote: post #94
PonyGumbo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tools are great, and there are a variety of MS programs available to get you using them at low (and sometimes zero) cost - Websitespark and Dreamspark (for students) are both good. From my perspective, the major drawback is that hosting is more expensive.

Not merely playing the devils advocate here, but what exactly do you mean by "the tools are great"? I have heard that numerous times about MS stuff, but I don't really get it. I find that the oss/linux/socialist camp has some excellent tools available. But maybe you mean something different by "tools" than I do.

Visual Studio is excellent. I have my doubts about MSBuild, but the actual code-wrangling side is very good.

Doubly so if you plump for ReSharper.

Re: Leaving .net

#126

Post by jerf »

acabal wrote: post #112
pohl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support for their problem. That's the canard, but it has seldom worked out that way for me. Whenever I've encountered a problem that can be traced to a flaw in their products, the suggestion of calling for support is usually met with riotous laughter. (In other words, everybody says it's a selli…

A company I worked for in the past (MM pageviews a day, you've probably heard of them) was a big MS proponent and an early adopter of some of their new stuff, like--at the time--Silverlight. We had a fairly direct line to someone at MS if something crazy happened. It might not always get fixed right away (a bug that might need to wait for the next cycle), but MS was always on top of what needed fixing. Contrarily, we…

"MM pageviews a day, you've probably heard of them) was a big MS proponent and an early adopter of some of their new stuff, like--at the time--Silverlight."

Yes, and that's about what it takes to get attention. Especially the "early adopter of Silverlight", you probably had a dedicated team back at MS.

And there are other large companies that also rise to this size. What confuses me is the 30-person ISV that believes that they can get magical super awesome support from Microsoft. They can't, or at least nothing better than they can get from open source. And typically, I find they know it too; they know better than to try to contact Microsoft, yet they still hold the mythical ability to do so in their hands like a security blanket. That's what confuses and to some extent annoys me; saying "I can get support from MS" when it's true makes sense, but using that as a reason to use MS when it's not is just silly.

It's a big selling point and that's legitimately true, but unless you're absolutely huge it doesn't apply to you.

Re: Leaving .net

#127

Post by contextfree »

jcromartie wrote: post #101
sofuture wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" There are probably a lot of 9-5ers who could have that switch flipped and go from code monkey to craftsmen, but they are stuck doing WebForms and have never really got bitten by the curiosity bug " That's disingenuous bullshit. Hackers start a lot earlier than "fresh out of college". Disinterested coders aren't lost souls led astray by the ways of .Net, they're disinterested coders; they'd write Ruby with just as l…

LINQ to SQL was killed. IronRuby is terrible. Constantly evolving C# syntax is not inherently a good thing.

LINQ isn't the same as LINQ to SQL, which is an ORM written on top of the LINQ interfaces. Other ORMs like Entity Framework also use the LINQ interfaces.

Re: Leaving .net

#128

Post by PonyGumbo »

troels wrote: post #94
PonyGumbo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tools are great, and there are a variety of MS programs available to get you using them at low (and sometimes zero) cost - Websitespark and Dreamspark (for students) are both good. From my perspective, the major drawback is that hosting is more expensive.

Not merely playing the devils advocate here, but what exactly do you mean by "the tools are great"? I have heard that numerous times about MS stuff, but I don't really get it. I find that the oss/linux/socialist camp has some excellent tools available. But maybe you mean something different by "tools" than I do.

No hidden message - I just meant that from my perspective, the tools are really nice. I use Visual Studio 2010 with Resharper for .NET development. I use Red Gate's tools for database management.

There's plenty of great FOSS stuff. I didn't intend for my message to suggest otherwise.

Re: Leaving .net

#129

Post by jbarham »

d4nt wrote: post #51
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…

I agree, but would add this. Microsoft's (development) tools have never had any underlying principles other than: enabling people with minimal knowledge to get stuff done. Thinking back through MFC, COM, VB v1-6, Access, SharePoint, WebForms and ADO.NET, none of them were characterised by any particular architectural purity or design aesthetic. But they enabled a generation of corporate developers to hack stuff toget…

> ...hack together stuff that will be thrown away in 2 years

Hah! Just like those all those VB6 apps that have been thrown away?!

Re: Leaving .net

#130

Post by forgotAgain »

giardini wrote: post #116
jimbobimbo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's great. Get BizSpark or WebsiteSpark to cover your licensing costs during development; start with el-cheapo $20/mo hosting which gives you reasonable bandwidth and MS SQL option - and you are all set. If three years down the road (that's how long *Spark lasts) you will find yourself thinking about licensing costs - you aren't doing it right: in three years of startup it's either you're getting enough prof…

"Get BizSpark or WebsiteSpark to cover your licensing costs during development..." Like offering free crack to drug addicts! No wonder .NET continues to exist.

More like pushers giving free dope out at grade schools. Get them while they're young and you'll have them till they die.
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