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My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

jitbit.com

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

#101

Post by TheAnimus »

petercooper wrote: post #2

The guy behind PlentyOfFish (the dating site) has written similar things in the past. Various links and tech info: http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture It seems a lot of MS stuff, used properly, scale well and easily , making it particularly suitable for single founders or small teams where they don't want to devote a lot of time to ops (while still keeping it in-house). Becoming a member of their "Bi…

>It seems a lot of MS stuff, used properly, scale well and easily, making it particularly suitable for single founders or small teams where they don't want to devote a lot of time to ops (while still keeping it in-house).

This is the thing, I've regularly scaled MS, almost RAD tool technologies to multi-thousand request per second scenarios. Normally for in house things, so I've had the benefit of warning for demand.

But it gives me the nicety of fast to dev tools, the fact maintaining C# code is almost pleasurable at times, with good performance.

Sure some custom C in Linux kernel land system will be faster, but the price performance is really good.

Comparing MVC 4 to Ruby on Rails and Django for a new project, the performance of MVC4 was an order of magnitude better under load.

But at the last HN meetup I went to in London they were taking an informal survey of languages. Despite having Erland and Lisp mentioned, the hosts didn't ask about C# or F#, despite my knowledge of at least 10 people there heavily in to it, I'd have guessed at least 30 people must have been.

You also get some bizarre comments, a friend of mine who spends most of his time in just one nameless language, half ask/told some people that Asp.Net doesn't scale... Some people have a religious zeal against it I think. Which is a shame, C# is a great language, and if people want to 'stick it to MS' go contribute on mono instead of bitching about MS!

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

#102

Post by toomuchtodo »

soundgecko wrote: post #88
toomuchtodo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in IT for 12 years. Microsoft server stuff never just works . I'm in the process of replacing a $1 MM video asset management system that sits on top of Windows Server with OpenStack/Debian precisely because of this. Microsoft server just works . Hah!

Meanwhile millions of businesses are able to get it to work quite well. Ever use StackOverflow? NewEgg? Their server and tools revenue continues to increase by double digits. You think that's all media manipulation? Go search Dice for for the number of openings. Just because someone was not able use the right tool for the right job in your instance doesn't prove anything. One of my friends used Windows Server to stre…

Wow, great. Stackoverflow and Newegg.

Amazon? Linux. Google? Linux. Apple? Linux. Large Hadron Collider? All. Linux.

Using Microsoft server in a production environment? Gonna have a bad time. There's a reason most sane people don't use it in important places.

I don't hate on Microsoft server products because its in fashion. Its because I like to sleep at night.

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

#103

Post by circuiter »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #100
free652 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Eclipse is a slow, bloated, feature-laking pile of crap."

You should try Kepler. Some amazing performance improvements out of the box.

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

#104

Post by bstar77 »

twic wrote: post #92
bstar77 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This may be cheaper up-front, but scales terribly which will increase costs exponentially whenever there is a need for growth.

Additionally, like others have mentioned, a simple memory leak from one app will affect every other app on this box. Also, it doesn't sound like there's any redundancy. What happens when the HD blows up?

If they fired these app up as separate VMs, they could at least scale each to what their needs are and only pay for what they are using.

I manage an app architecture that consists of several Heroku apps along with a couple DBs at mongoHQ for under $100/month. Heroku definitely isn't the cheapest solution, but it allows me to scale horizontally and takes the massive load of sysadmin tasks off my back so I can focus on development.

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

#105

Post by codeulike »

ebbv wrote: post #91

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…

Linux has nothing to do with whatever reasons they had for such expensive server costs.

It might do. The point is that Node/Ruby etc aren't particularly efficient compared to C# and the CLR, so you need more Server power for a given application.

For example StackOverflow ran from a single windows server in the early days, they didn't add a second one till Oct 2008 http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/10/adde-a-second-server/

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

#106

Post by TheAnimus »

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.

>Troll? Not.

If you had said IntelliJ I might have believed it.

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

#109

Post by brianpgordon »

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…

Excuse me sir or ma'am, do you have a moment to talk about the Good News that is IntelliJ? :)

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

#110

Post by Encosia »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #36

This article could really do with a disclaimer at the top. I got about 25% in before i realised there was more than meets the eye (i didn't previously know who jitbit were, i had no idea of their Microsoft relationship). Something like "we're a member of Microsoft's BizSpark program and you can find out what that means for us here: http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/About/Default.aspx"

Anyone can get into BizSpark. It's not a special relationship. It basically just requires that you have a company of some kind formed and ostensibly are building some kind of software targeting the Microsoft ecosystem.
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