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Where Is .Net Headed?

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21–30 of 107 posts

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#22

Great, another .NET is dying post voted up on HN. Didn't we have one of those just this morning? Meanwhile, in the real world, Microsoft posted these earnings: "Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, up 11% from last year" Inspite of competing products like Linux, Apache, Eclipse, Ruby, Java being given away for free, people are willing to pay for Windows Server, Visual Studio and IIS. Does anyone…

You couldn't buy the VS licenses + SQL Server + Windows Server with the money YCombinator provides you. So, yes, most microsoft products are incredibly damaging for a startup.

You don't need to buy them: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx

Prime example: Stackoverflow/StackExchange is built on the Microsoft stack.

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#23
post #14
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm wondering what you see as viable open source alternatives to the .Net platform. Mono? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software) Or going in a different direction with similar goals, Qt.

If you think Mono is a viable alternative to the .NET platform, you don't understand why people choose .NET. Don't get me wrong, Mono is awesome. But it's not about to be adopted by Fortune 500 companies across the world.

To someone with very little understanding of these technologies, could you give a quick word on what the problem is with Mono? Are we talking about performance, completeness, support or something else?

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#24

Great, another .NET is dying post voted up on HN. Didn't we have one of those just this morning? Meanwhile, in the real world, Microsoft posted these earnings: "Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, up 11% from last year" Inspite of competing products like Linux, Apache, Eclipse, Ruby, Java being given away for free, people are willing to pay for Windows Server, Visual Studio and IIS. Does anyone…

You couldn't buy the VS licenses + SQL Server + Windows Server with the money YCombinator provides you. So, yes, most microsoft products are incredibly damaging for a startup.

[deleted]

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn't buy the VS licenses + SQL Server + Windows Server with the money YCombinator provides you. So, yes, most microsoft products are incredibly damaging for a startup.

You don't need to buy them: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/default.aspx Prime example: Stackoverflow/StackExchange is built on the Microsoft stack.

BizSpark has rules many startups cannot follow and is only valid for 3 years. This is the same selling scheme used by drug dealers.

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#26

Great, another .NET is dying post voted up on HN. Didn't we have one of those just this morning? Meanwhile, in the real world, Microsoft posted these earnings: "Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, up 11% from last year" Inspite of competing products like Linux, Apache, Eclipse, Ruby, Java being given away for free, people are willing to pay for Windows Server, Visual Studio and IIS. Does anyone…

Quite a few people are locked into that toolchain and don't have a choice but to continue buying what Microsoft is selling.

And I think that is one of the main reasons that many .NET developers who are a little bit familiar with open source and non-Microsoft technologies are starting to wonder if its worthwhile paying all of that money to have Microsoft make all of those architectural decisions for them.

Just start with the name, ".NET". What were they referencing there? The network. The web. Especially if you interpret that to mean the web, which I think it really is referring to, you have to ask yourself, is Microsoft or ANY one particular company really leading the way on the web? I think the answer is no. The leaders may be employed by some particular companies like Google, but they are mainly organizing projects on their own through things like github.

They chose that name for a reason. They knew if they wanted to stay relevant, they needed to focus on the web.

Does web development need Microsoft? Ask the average web developer. Personally, I don't think I can ever forgive them for what they have done (and continue to do) to Internet Explorer.

Does Microsoft need web development? Actually they are opposing forces when it comes right down to it. Microsoft makes too many billions of dollars through Windows-related products to really push the web platform forward. So they have actively been working to impede it by pushing out incompatible and underpowered browsers.

Can Microsoft's traditional licensing revenue streams survive a real conversion to open-source? LOL.

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#27

Great, another .NET is dying post voted up on HN. Didn't we have one of those just this morning? Meanwhile, in the real world, Microsoft posted these earnings: "Server & Tools business reported $5.04 billion of revenue, up 11% from last year" Inspite of competing products like Linux, Apache, Eclipse, Ruby, Java being given away for free, people are willing to pay for Windows Server, Visual Studio and IIS. Does anyone…

You couldn't buy the VS licenses + SQL Server + Windows Server with the money YCombinator provides you. So, yes, most microsoft products are incredibly damaging for a startup.

Somehow I doubt anyone really joins a programme like YC's for the money.

In any case, if you want to work with the best tools, sometimes you have to pay a premium to get them. That's either damaging to people who can't/won't pay the money or it's an advantage for those with enough confidence in what they're doing to make the investment, depending on which side of the line you're on.

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#28
post #11
post #4

I have moved everything that I host for myself or my clients to Azure. Low cost, rock solid reliability, incredible speed and easy to administer. CPU, memory and disk really are a commodity at this point. I loved Amazon EC2 too but Azure was far cheaper for high use Windows VMs.

EC2 is indeed very expensive for Windows hosting. A c1.medium instance on EC2 reserved for 3 years is $42/mo Linux and $116/mo Windows - that's nearly triple the cost for the same hardware! Another option is to switch to mono and run your .net apps with EC2's Linux prices. Then it's even cheaper than Azure. This is what I did for my current project.

Right so who makes Mono? Is it primarily Microsoft developers? No. Of course not.

So where does that leave Windows for internet servers?

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#29
post #21

I had to stop at the "1. The success of Windows Azure" part. Will get back to the article as soon as I stop laughing...

Laugh if you want to, but the point is pretty serious. Azure supposedly racked up more than $1 billion in revenue in 2012 (http://www.zdnet.com/windows-azure-joins-microsofts-billion-...).

Amazon's AWS, on the other hand, is estimated to have brought in between $1.5 and $2 billion (http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-deals/2013-03-07-what-if-amazon..., http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructur...) during the same period.

So while Azure is still booking less business than AWS is, it's definitely a major competitor. Maybe the major competitor. And since the market for virtualized platforms is still in early days, there's lots of room for that revenue figure to grow substantially even if Azure ends up stuck at #2 behind AWS forever.

Re: Where Is .Net Headed?

#30

I've been away from .Net for a while. How has it improved? How is the market for programmers in it? For freelancers?

ASP.net MVC is pretty awesome, there are some good open source projects like Nancy for more lightweight stuff, Entity Framework isn't great but it's pretty mature and fast for an ORM. Visual Studio continues to be the best IDE on the market.
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