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My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

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Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#91

Post by ebbv »

I don't see what the anecdote about the other person has to do with your story. It seems like you're citing it to try to imply that Linux can be expensive, but that's not really a valid point based on that anecdote. Their software costs were $0/mo of that $3000/mo. Linux has nothing to do with whatever reasons they had for such expensive server costs. There is no question that whatever their server costs, they would have been even higher if they had been Microsoft based.

Secondly, I'd disagree with your assertion that the customer doesn't matter. Customers may not care when they're using your SaaS product, but my company is in the market for new support software and we looked at yours but because yours is Microsoft based, it's disqualified. We are looking for a self hosted solution. So you lost at least one customer right here. I'm not making this up, this all happened a couple weeks ago prior to this blog post.

EDIT:

PS - I liked your previous blog post about A/B testing, so it's nothing personal I just think this one is kinda bogus.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#92

Post by twic »

bstar77 wrote: post #56
mbesto wrote: post #11

All our stuff runs on one (1) server This has nothing to do with MS, but why would you set up such an architecture? If one of the apps hits a memory leak (their HeatTest project did), than all of your other critical services/apps are interrupted. That costs us about $200 a month. By the way, that's Amazon What Amazon configuration gets you 8GB or RAM for $200/month?? Am I missing something? Database servers for all o…

I'm not sure why anyone, with the technology options available today, would choose a single monolithic server approach and scale that vertically. I think this is just poor design and probably not an MS stack issue. But could this be an MS community thing, where they generally prefer proven technical solutions from 2001?

Possibly because it's actually pretty cost-effective. You need at least two machines for availability. But you get more bang per buck by making those two machines bigger than by adding a third.

Until you hit the limit of what you can do on commodity-ish x86 servers, and would need to start buying Gucci kit from Sunacle or IBM or whoever, at which point your CFO is going to start crying like a baby.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#93

Post by boothead »

endeavour wrote: post #58

Don't forget about Mono. You can write code in your favourite MS language (F#, in my case) and have all the benefits of cheap linux hosting and your favourite SQL database/NoSQL solution. http://thecodedecanter.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/hosting-webs...

How do you find integrating mono hosted apps with the Linux toolset. Do you use anything like chef/puppet/ansible?

(Sorry If you've answered in the article - I can't read stuff on WP at work)

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#94

Post by twistedpair »

hapless wrote: post #85
sljd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, AFAIK he can easily switch to MySQL for instance, under the same ORM.

MySQL is possibly the single hardest database to port to/from, because it supports nothing .

In that case porting FROM it should be simple. TO it would be hard if you're using all those fancy features of your current DB. That's why I eschew all the sirens from Oracle DBA's of "oh... but Oracle can do that too!" Keep database activities in the database and application activities in the app.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#95

Post by icefox »

The final paragraph seems to answers his question with the statement that it is simply "what he knows best". And in fact the rest of the article backs that up with his lack of information about alternatives (as many of the comments here point out). There is nothing wrong with going with a solution because it makes you more productive for your small problem, but trying to make any conclusions beyond that seems forced. I am 100% sure that there is someone who could write the exact same article, but instead they use a single Linux box with PostgreSQL, emacs, etc because it is simply what they are comfortable with.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#96

Post by free652 »

pmelendez wrote: post #84
dkhenry wrote: post #10

While Microsoft might be a good solution for many people (Use what get the job done), this specific article has absolutely no real reasons why you _should_ use Microsoft. The truth is if One 8-gig windows server is what he needed for his start up he could get by with one 8-gig Linux server and save a couple of bucks a month. While that might not be a big deal now, if he ever wants to get big, those little costs start…

>"this specific article has absolutely no real reasons why you _should_ use Microsoft" He does give some reasons, which might not apply to everyone is another thing: (from the article) Because I love C#. Because "MS is expensive" is a myth. Because of Visual Studio Of all the three I am very agreed with the third one. I wish it would be different but I haven't used a better alternative to VS so far (XCode, Eclipse, N…

Wow I hate VS so much, Eclipse is so much better! I guess it's just personal preference.

I like C# a little more than Java, but I cant stand assemblies. Jars are much easier to handle.

edit:

Troll? Not.

Like a very simple thing: quick watch in debug blocks the edit window? Really WTF?! I have to move it the second screen to see the actual code. I can name a lot of these small annoyances.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#97

Post by anthemcg »

dkhenry wrote: post #10

While Microsoft might be a good solution for many people (Use what get the job done), this specific article has absolutely no real reasons why you _should_ use Microsoft. The truth is if One 8-gig windows server is what he needed for his start up he could get by with one 8-gig Linux server and save a couple of bucks a month. While that might not be a big deal now, if he ever wants to get big, those little costs start…

To be fair, the post is titled "My start-up is Microsoft-based..." not "Here's why your start-up should be..." I feel like he just wanted to make a fair case that Microsoft isn't impossible to deploy as a viable solution for a start-up. In start-ups versus say...a corporation , there is a write-off of Microsoft pretty much out of the gate. I agree with most companies, there are certainly a stack of reason why not to use it. But, its nice to see someone putting some personal reasons out there why Microsoft tech isn't useless to a new, fledgling company.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#98

Post by bayesianhorse »

statictype wrote: post #25
maxhowell wrote: post #8

I'd consider Windows more readily, but you are a bit screwed if you do decide you want to dip in the Open Source pool. You can dip there, but it's harder and less well supported, and some things simply don't work. So you are tying yourself to Windows, and often, Microsoft tools. Fine if you're sure it'll work, but I would feel like I was gambling.

We're building a web-based saas on a Microsoft stack. We use coffeescript, sass, compass in our development environment and it works really well. There are open source libraries for doing REST, unit testing, performance testing and they work pretty well. Node.js and npm run on Windows. Mercurial always has and git now works as well. What are the components that you miss?

It does sound a bit as if you were using a node.js stack on top of a Windows operating system, which I wouldn't exactly call a Microsoft stack. In which case there is really just the question of what you know better, linux ecosystem or Microsoft...

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#100

Post by hackinthebochs »

free652 wrote: post #96
pmelendez wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"this specific article has absolutely no real reasons why you _should_ use Microsoft" He does give some reasons, which might not apply to everyone is another thing: (from the article) Because I love C#. Because "MS is expensive" is a myth. Because of Visual Studio Of all the three I am very agreed with the third one. I wish it would be different but I haven't used a better alternative to VS so far (XCode, Eclipse, N…

Wow I hate VS so much, Eclipse is so much better! I guess it's just personal preference. I like C# a little more than Java, but I cant stand assemblies. Jars are much easier to handle. edit: Troll? Not. Like a very simple thing: quick watch in debug blocks the edit window? Really WTF?! I have to move it the second screen to see the actual code. I can name a lot of these small annoyances.

I can't help but feel like you're trolling. Eclipse is a slow, bloated, feature-laking pile of crap. I honestly can't believe anyone would prefer it to, well, just about anything else. I've used it and I get by on it when necessary, but in terms of preference its at the bottom of my list.
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