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Leaving .net

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Re: Leaving .net

#171

Post by squidsoup »

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.

Massey University's (massey.ac.nz) introductory computer science papers are all in C#/.Net. I found this surprising as well.

Re: Leaving .net

#172

Post by berntb »

acabal wrote: post #168
aarongough wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't the first rule of writing good software be "nothing is a black box"? At some point something in that box is not going to work how you expect it to, regardless of who makes it.

Too bad most mega-corporations aren't as concerned with writing good software as they are with staying on budget, meeting deadlines, and making money. Not to say the two are mutually exclusive, but BigCorp isn't going to want to pay for your time to learn how Apache's threading model works so that you can beat a race-condition bug in PHP's IMAP library (or whatever).

OK, a reality check.

First, threading problems in Apache? That is something you report on a mailing list and it gets fixed fast. It is an actively developed application (-: at least last I looked, lots of years ago :-).

Second, I am a consultant that do work for a mega corporation, which builds large systems. At least thousands or developers. I don't know (and am too lazy to Google.)

I don't know because I work in a small group of developers and seldom interact with large groups of others. Most other developers I interact with in this mega corp also work in quite small groups. Big groups often seems to consist of small groups.

When I run into bugs/limitations in an open source library and write a work around (and send in the fix), the manager of my group in Big Corp is happy with me, since I fixed a problem. (His managers probably only hears from him "I'm happy with that consultant despite his humor and personality, keep him".)

Now, all this might be different in the Windows world. But when I was there a bit, ten++ years ago, you could find competent people.

(Have I been trolled?)

Re: Leaving .net

#173

Post by nlawalker »

pilif wrote: post #75

in the very early PHP3 days (around 1998), on the official german PHP mailing list, somebody once was comparing the ASP (no .NET back then) and PHP communities. He said that if he needs help in PHP, somebody will explain the issue and solve it with them. If he needs help in ASP, he'll get back a price list. It feels like this hasn't changed over the years. While I agree that it's nice (and necessary) to be paid for y…

Who is "somebody," and where do they come from?

.Net has tons of community support. The MSDN boards and the blogosphere are thriving and StackOverflow is extremely .NET friendly. Microsoft sponsors MVPs and provides tons of free training content and solid (in most cases) documentation. Product teams and individual architects and developers inside and outside MS publish blogs, videos, tutorials etc. out the wazoo.

Microsoft charges money for its products and development tools, but their goal is to get people using their software, and that means getting people to create software running on their platform. Supporting developers who want to write software in .NET is in their best interest.

Re: Leaving .net

#174

Post by rbanffy »

dangrossman wrote: post #118
jtdowney wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting. In my CS degree ('08) the languages used in the few classes that involved actual programming were: C++, Scheme, Prolog, Python and Java. Never anything that would require proprietary software like Visual Studio.

Consider yourself lucky.

A CS degree is not where you learn "market skills". It's where you learn to build the stuff that will define what "market skills" are.

Re: Leaving .net

#175

Post by bmelton »

batasrki wrote: post #99
lelele wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Google, for the most part. You are not using an agile language, you are using some of the technology Google relies on, aren't you? ;-) Google, and beyond it. You could easily have a case for Python: Nokia has made it available for Symbian, Microsoft endorses it via ActiveState, and so on. My friends, if we want to be effective entrepreneurs, we must learn how to repackage things in a way customers will find att…

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. There is no reason why my customers need to know in what language the solution is developed in. Besides, Ruby powers many highly visible websites and web apps. If I'd be losing a sale because I develop in Ruby and NOT Python, chances are I don't want that sale in the first place.

I don't know what your business is, but if it's consulting or custom development, then you may be wrong. It matters very much to me if I buy something from you that is written in some esoteric language that only a few people can develop for.

Obscure languages are a form of vendor lock-in, in that sense.

if you're developing SAAS or something, then I'm sure you're right, but that argument doesn't apply to everybody.

Re: Leaving .net

#176

Post by msbarnett »

ryanhuff wrote: post #165
herewego wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indust…

Is Ruby "hot" anywhere besides the valley? I haven't seen the significant uptick in socal, but perhaps I'm missing it.

It seems to have a lot of traction in the Silicon Forest

Re: Leaving .net

#177

Post by contextfree »

thebigshane wrote: post #160
jbarham wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...hack together stuff that will be thrown away in 2 years Hah! Just like those all those VB6 apps that have been thrown away?!

So true, but I think he meant "hack stuff together with the intention it will be thrown away in 2 years"

More like "hack stuff together because if we don't get more business quickly we won't be around in 2 years anyway"

Re: Leaving .net

#178

Post by gamble »

st3fan wrote: post #30

What do people here think of .Net as a choice of platform for startups?

I've always suspected that it would discourage some OSS-focused companies from acquiring you, but I don't have any proof. It would be interesting to hear if there are any startups that had difficulty finding an exit because their product was built in .net.

Re: Leaving .net

#179

Post by dschobel »

lelele wrote: post #38
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, if you are a startup that wants to do b2b and you want to sell a product in to that market that will have a tight connection to stuff your clients already run you will be required to use .NET by your customers. Unless you like uphill battles that's the way you'll go eventually. It sucks, but it is the reality of the business environment, web side stuff that is abstracted through some HTTP interface you…

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…

When I was at my last company we encountered many a client which considered Java the "alien technology". I remember particularly one of the five largest banks in the world absolutely would not allow the JVM in their data center even if it was on our box. (This was the type of place where it took about a month and 3 or 4 signatures to get a port opened in the local network).

Re: Leaving .net

#180

Post by mgkimsal »

MikeMacMan wrote: post #21

My buddy and I are starting a web project (a Q&A site for translations) and have chosen ASP.NET MVC. It doesn't abstract away the innards of the web like WebForms did. It has no more magic than RoR. Why are we using .NET instead of something like RoR or (my framework of choice) Grails? Because my buddy knows it inside and out, the tools are great, and we'd like to minimize the number of unknowns in our project. We're…

Sorry to hear you didn't go with Grails (my framework of choice too). Sounds like the .Net choice was based on his skills, and not yours. The domain-first approach of Grails, especially with greenfield projects, is so tempting that it'd be really hard for me not to choose it for something these days. I have chosen non-Grails tech in the last year, but it's been a tough choice in those cases. :)

How's the project site coming along?

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