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The dying platform: .Net

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Re: The dying platform: .Net

#31

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Microsoft has too many developers and not enough innovation. They encourage a design attitude that everything has to operate like the flight deck of a 747. Their culture has been incestuous so long that any change is terribly unlikely.

There are some really, really sharp guys at Microsoft. Not only does the community deserve better products from such a great company, the developers in many cases have an very unpleasant work experience.

Google is not too far behind. I think they're pushing a lot of the things they are simply to keep momentum building. In another 20 years, unless they start building time machines, it'll catch up to them, too.

Apple is a strange case. They passed the "I wouldn't work for them for a million bucks" point many years ago, but they're just better at slapping a better marketing image on it than the rest of them.

Having said all of that, I like .NET, and I think combining it with Mono makes probably the most full-featured free platform for development anywhere in the world. The effective targeting of the business market by .NET may be waning, but the platform is nowhere near dying off.

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#32

Post by gregd »

patrickaljord wrote: post #25
gregd wrote: post #17

One of the things that I've often thought MS could do to attract more developers to this platform, is to release the brilliant piece of software that is Visual Studio, for FREE. Not just the "Express" edition...the full blown "Ultimate" edition. They should also buy Red Gate and Jet Brains and bake their products into VS and SSMS themselves, while happily releasing updates and enhancements for FREE. Bah...what do I k…

The problem is Microsoft is into the business of selling software licenses to make their billions. They don't have a billion dollar hardware business like Apple or a billion dollar ad business like Google that allows them to license their software for free/cheap. So if MS start licensing their software for free, they would stop making money (they do have the xbox and a few services but they're not enoough).

Well the issue that I see is that Microsoft has to attract more people to their platforms because their platforms are their "billion dollar" business.

I fail to see a better way of increasing the number of users of their platforms, then to release the entry point for free.

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#33

Post by virmundi »

patrickaljord wrote: post #25
gregd wrote: post #17

One of the things that I've often thought MS could do to attract more developers to this platform, is to release the brilliant piece of software that is Visual Studio, for FREE. Not just the "Express" edition...the full blown "Ultimate" edition. They should also buy Red Gate and Jet Brains and bake their products into VS and SSMS themselves, while happily releasing updates and enhancements for FREE. Bah...what do I k…

The problem is Microsoft is into the business of selling software licenses to make their billions. They don't have a billion dollar hardware business like Apple or a billion dollar ad business like Google that allows them to license their software for free/cheap. So if MS start licensing their software for free, they would stop making money (they do have the xbox and a few services but they're not enoough).

I think the middle ground would be to give away Professional. This would cost them 1.5k or so in license, but would get a lot of people in the door. The fact that I can't easily unit test in an integrated way with Express makes me not use .NET even though C#/F# are better languages than Java.

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#34

Post by krobertson »

rubinelli wrote: post #16

Java isn't looking too good, either, at least in the desktop. You know your platform has jumped the shark when it comes bundled with a toolbar. The question is, where to next? I've been watching Go for a while, but it looks like a tool from Googlers, for Googlers. Pulling all my dependencies from HEAD? No, thank you. Ironically, Javascript looks very promising right now, compared with the alternatives.

The remote package importing is quiet easy to work around and to lock on things. It actually forces you to think about the process and tracking more. But also, dismissing Go solely because if that doesnt do it justice. Same as any language...

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#35

Post by exch »

cypher543 wrote: post #26
rubinelli wrote: post #16

Java isn't looking too good, either, at least in the desktop. You know your platform has jumped the shark when it comes bundled with a toolbar. The question is, where to next? I've been watching Go for a while, but it looks like a tool from Googlers, for Googlers. Pulling all my dependencies from HEAD? No, thank you. Ironically, Javascript looks very promising right now, compared with the alternatives.

I find it strange that people are hung up on this remote dependency "issue." It's a convenience for small projects and quick samples. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from checking out a Go package locally and importing it just like any other dependency in any other language.

I'd have to agree here. There is no difference between Go's way of managing external dependencies, compared to any other language/platform where you use external packages. Whether they are manually downloaded and built, or pulled from some kind of source-control repo. The `go get ...` approach is just a convenience tool you can use /IF/ you want to.

I get the impression that much of the complaints stem from not really understanding what is actually happening. It's a shame really. People taking a first look at Go, and running into these kind of rants will get an entirely incorrect impression of the Go tool chain.

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#37

Post by Egregore »

rubinelli wrote: post #16

Java isn't looking too good, either, at least in the desktop. You know your platform has jumped the shark when it comes bundled with a toolbar. The question is, where to next? I've been watching Go for a while, but it looks like a tool from Googlers, for Googlers. Pulling all my dependencies from HEAD? No, thank you. Ironically, Javascript looks very promising right now, compared with the alternatives.

I like Haxe as a Java replacement.

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#38

Post by monstrado »

A few weeks back I spent a weekend playing around with .NET and Visual Studio, I was very surprised by how pleasant the language (C#) and the IDE was to use. Also, I went into it with virtually no C# experience (only Java), and I pretty much picked it up immediately, I'm sure there are many differences but I was able to figure out the syntax immediately.

I found the IDE really nice, and the debugging tools really powerful...Also desktop app creation felt super easy. I probably won't use C# for prime time since I develop almost exclusively for Linux, but it's always nice to peek over the fence :)

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#39

Post by mhd »

MichaelAza wrote: post #7

.NET, like practically all tolls by Microsoft, is good for one thing - Large scale enterprise development for Windows. It plays well with Office, Access, Sharepoint, Active Directory, IIS etc. and it's the best around at what it's doing. You can also do webdev or solve highly concurrent problems with .NET and it's great at that as well (I'm very fond of the Nancy framework and C#'s async/await are a godsend) but it's…

Don't forget the desktop sector, which isn't entirely dead yet. Pretty much everything is better than MFC, and with Delphi going nowhere (for obvious reasons), a lot of people writing relatively small custom software apps transitioned to .NET, either with C# or VB. Don't think that will change that much with WinRT. (JavaScript seems mostly an angle to get some web developers to do small Metro apps)

Re: The dying platform: .Net

#40

Post by crag »

MichaelAza wrote: post #7

.NET, like practically all tolls by Microsoft, is good for one thing - Large scale enterprise development for Windows. It plays well with Office, Access, Sharepoint, Active Directory, IIS etc. and it's the best around at what it's doing. You can also do webdev or solve highly concurrent problems with .NET and it's great at that as well (I'm very fond of the Nancy framework and C#'s async/await are a godsend) but it's…

QFT. It will stay on the enterprise market for years to come. In fact, that's where I see MS going. Sort of the path CA has taken with mid/main frames.

MS has to come to the conclusion that it is not a consumer tend setter any longer. Consumers only use Windows because it came on their PC. And as more and more of the consumer market goes mobile, Windows becomes irrelevant. And (sadly for MS) they were too late to the mobile market so their devices (phone and tablet) are going nowhere. I got a friend who works at Best Buy who told me no one is buying the Windows phones. And few are buying the tablet. It's IOS and Android all the way.

MS should focus all it's eggs on enterprise. Plenty of cash to be made in that market.

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