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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

#161

Post by TheAnimus »

bhauer wrote: post #146
TheAnimus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Edit: FWIW it doesn't test Microsoft SQL Server. Still, for most simple-ish web applications I can't imagine MSSQL server being significantly faster than Postgres or MySQL. Its selling point is really its feature set as opposed to its performance anyway. More than just that, they tested mono, which sadly is often very slow, and didn't test on IIS.

The ASP.NET tests run on Windows (EC2) used IIS. We have a SQL Server pull request [1] but haven't been able to incorporate it yet and this will not be included in the upcoming Round 6. https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/pull/336

The problem is the comparisons are a bit tricky.

For instance why is the performance in the Fortune example so good, yet so bad in the simple multirequest response.

Ultimately, I think people have to bench with something in mind for their intended usages.

If someone (as in this thread) is doing some massive data gathering with 6000+ nodes, well windows licenses will be prohibitive against any dev time saving, and ultimately, performance is going to be optimised so heavily a 'thinner' OS is obviously going to be a possible better choice.

This isn't always the case, for us the agile nature of what we are doing, the fact it's only a couple of hundread nodes means that we will have different demands.

Platform Performance, Platform Cost, Platform Dev Costs.

It is just an exercise between those three. Looking at some of the comparisons there, it reminds me of the whole BSD vs Linux thing that was so 2004. Oh BSD takes a few extra op codes to do hello world....

The problem is some people never include the use of say MVC4 or C#. It isn't that they are missing out, it is that they are so vocal about how bad the platform they have never used is.

The last HTML site I delivered, I could have done in about a third of the time, with much more reliable user experience if we had used Silverlight. It was an internal project too. Yet someone who had never even used anything but HTML decided it had to be a website.

I think people are just trying to rally against that cry. All I was trying to do is point out that those simple number comparisons are not only flawed / unfair but also irrelevant.

There isn't a one size fits all technology, there never will be.

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

#162

Post by microcolonel »

Another opinionated, lame IDE addict thinks that his stupid little startup is an example for others, wow HN, didn't see that coming.

“I found an expensive hosting package, and compared it to a less expensive one from another provider running Microsoft Windows” is a really compelling argument.

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

#163

Post by smanuel »

venomsnake wrote: post #70
growt wrote: post #13

I don't want to bash microsoft or anything. But 2.5 daily visitors and 1.5k new tickets daily can probably be served by nginx, a raspberry pi and a potato.

They give 1.6 volts each. So you will need 3 of them for the power source and you may have a problem with amperage. But yeah - people seem to gravely underestimate the power of the current hardware and how much of it is wasted currently.

I would rather use a lemon battery. It lasts longer and I won't have to think about redundancy for a few... seconds.

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

#164

Post by adventured »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #75
jasonkester wrote: post #19

I'll pluralize this anecdote. Every bit of my little software empire runs on a single Windows box. That includes my 3 main money-making products, a couple dozen smaller sites being hosted for consulting clients and my partner's businesses, and the Expat blog. Lots of steady-state traffic to lots of sites, several Techcrunch, Reddit and HN poundings, nothing to write home about as far as downtime or drama in the 6 yea…

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!

It does just work, very well in fact. I've run a 1.3 million uniques / month site on a $150 / month Windows 2008 server. Zero downtime. Zero crashes. Zero maintenance. Zero effort at all really.

MySQL + IIS + Win2008. The server was cheap, fast, and trivial to set up and operate. I'd have no concerns about using Windows Server again.

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

#165

Post by throwit1979 »

TheAnimus wrote: post #124
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 I think it is not about Linux in isolation, but about the fancy, over hyped tech stacks you see people using. About 6 months ago I was having a few days off, out in the wilderness so to speak, I decided to try this whole Go thing. When reading about it, I thought nice I like the actor paradigm, I was doing a prime solver from someone's tutorial, and... It was slow. Not…

Go was about 20% of the speed of the java one

You're probably doing something wrong.

Go tops the techempower benchmarks for concurrent db access and page rendering, and for pure math performance, it has an average case performance of 17% slower than Java( highly dependent on problem chosen of course )

refs:

http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?t...

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

#166

Post by toomuchtodo »

dragontamer wrote: post #144
jmj42 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in IT for more than 15 years. More often than not, Microsoft's enterprise products do "just work." In fact, due do volume pricing (making server 2008/2012 licenses very cheap), around here I recommend Server 2012 w/ standalone LDAP role when people need an LDAP server. Why? Because it just works. An a related note, I, too, am in the process of building a new video management system based on windows (why a…

Agree'd. Anyone who doesn't agree, hasn't tried to setup the Kerboros LDAP crap on Linux.

Kerberos and LDAP are two different things. You are aware Active Directory is just LDAP with extensions, correct?

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

#167

Post by regularfry »

sixothree wrote: post #127
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…

And the list seems to be missing the most important point. The .Net Framework is extremely powerful and extensive. The number of problems the framework has prevented me from needing to solve is staggering. We get work done here, fast. Eg. Recently I had to convert times from any random time zone into another random timezone accounting for daylight savings etc. I cannot imagine having to solve that problem in just abo…

Anything with access to jodatime (or nodatime, for that matter) would find that a pretty trivial problem.

In my experience you get more built-in with .net, but richer third-party ecosystems elsewhere.

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

#169

Post by dawkins »

I switched from windows/.net/SqlServer to linux/mono/MySQL two years ago and in a single server I handle among many many other things 10k-20k reservations/day.

The server is a small dedicated machine with 8 cores and 16GB ram but never goes beyond 30-40% cpu and 2GB ram. This in Hetzner for about 60€/month.

So I don't understand what the author finds so amazing about the numbers he posted.

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

#170

Post by RyanZAG »

moskie wrote: post #83
RyanZAG wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You're basing your business continuity on a corporation creating a special 'free pass' for you every 3 years explicitly? Because they've done it once before? This seems like a terrible idea. Godspeed man, godspeed.

One could just as easily scoff at someone for basing their business off of "open source community supported" tools. But, instead, the realistic position is to understand Microsoft's tools and programs will be a decent choice for years to come, just as using FOSS would be.

How is that even remotely comparable? I'm not saying anything about the quality of using MS tools - they're great - but they have a fee attached. They specifically say you will need to pay that fee within X years. Pretending the fee doesn't exist because you don't have to pay it until next year is what I'm scoffing at. Not the tools, the idea that MS will continue to make their expensive tools free when they have put an expiry date on that free license already.

Open source community supported tools are completely different. The price and license are very clear - $0 up front, pay for support if you need it. Don't want to pay for support? No problem. Need a new feature? No problem, pay someone regular rates to add it. You can't lose access to anything because you already have everything. You can't be sued into paying because the GPL specially disallows the creator from suing you.

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