381–390 of 556 posts
I'll tell you the story of my friend Greg. Greg has been a believer in Microsoft. He went to all the Tech-Ed conferences, attended every MSDN event he could. Conferences are grand stages that leave an impression. He drank all the cool-aid that was served at these conferences. Things were really good early on, this was the last decade. The computing scene at that time revolved around Microsoft like the many moons of J…
I'll tell you the story of my friend Greg. Greg has been a believer in Microsoft. He went to all the Tech-Ed conferences, attended every MSDN event he could. Conferences are grand stages that leave an impression. He drank all the cool-aid that was served at these conferences. Things were really good early on, this was the last decade. The computing scene at that time revolved around Microsoft like the many moons of J…
Whenever i hear somebody talking MS down for not going with "standards" i have to look at the keyboard layout of my mac and start to laugh. Seriously, this is my biggest pain when changing between OSes.
Latest reason...if you run Windows server in a VM cluster you have to buy a OS license for each VM for EACH POTENTIAL VM HOST. Read that again... The vm is only ever running on one host at one time, but you have to license it for every host. BS
That said, I think most businesses where this really matters have an Enterprise Agreement with a yearly true-up. We're mid sized (I guess the OS licensing is really one of the bigger annoyances though. All these guys waxing poetic about how great Visual Studio and C# and MVC.NET and whatever are, might not be singing the same tune if those products weren't being subsidized by the other components they rarely have to think about.
I'll ask a question, serious for me: Mostly you guys are way ahead of me in knowledge of current software tools, especially on Linux and 'open source software' (OSS -- I had to look up that one!). But I'm doing a startup the center of which is a Web site. If people like the site, a huge if, then it could grow to be a big thing around the world. Did I mention if people like the site? People might not like the site. Bu…
Novell will sell you SuSE with support if that's what you want. No doubt there are other options. You're right that MS are probably the biggest, most obvious OS vendor that sell straight to customers.
> Sure, Linux and Unix have a long and powerful background back through Sun, Silicon Graphics, BSD, AT&T, etc. But for my time on x86 I went from PC/DOS to OS/2 to Windows XP, and along that path, each year, I thought that the OS I was using was likely the most suitable for me on x86. E.g., instead of PC/DOS or OS/2 on x86, I was not going to buy a Sun or SGI workstation at several times higher price.
Modern computers (even desktop/laptop) are much more similar to those workstations than to DOS-era consumer PCs.
> As of now, as a desktop OS on x86, 32 and/or 64 bit addressing, as far as I can tell, XP and/or Windows 7 look okay with Linux and OSS without huge advantages. Where am I going wrong here?
There's the customizability side. You say that you're not in the business of tools, but if you're in the business of making something that almost inherently becomes the business of making tools, because existing tools never fit exactly to your needs. Every serious programmer I've known customizes their environment, and linux makes this easier.
But you're right that most of the value in linux comes from using it on the server. Once you've made the decision to run linux on the server it makes a lot of sense to run the same thing on your desktop.
> (4) There are a lot of developers writing for Microsoft, and just what the 'platform' is is fairly clear, e.g., the .NET Framework of some version 2, 3, 4, 4.5 on Windows XP, 7, or Server. So there is some definiteness to the platform. On Linux I would have to learn about the versions of the different 'distributions'. I don't even know what would be involved.
I think this is a red herring. Pick a reasonably popular linux platform at random, or pick a hosting service and go with their default / what they recommend. The fact that you've got a choice shouldn't be a downside.
> Due to the definiteness and the large number of developers, on the Internet it should be relatively easy to get answer to questions for the Windows platform. Is this roughly correct?
IME no. Open source platforms have a much stronger culture of mailing lists, IRC channels etc. because it's how the platforms themselves were developed. While there are probably more developers "out there" who know how to solve a particular problem in .net, the information is probably locked away in their heads or on internal-corporation servers. You've got better odds of finding someone to talk to on IRC or getting a question answered on StackOverflow with an OSS platform.
> E.g., for serious questions, maybe commonly the solutions is just to read the code. Is this roughly correct?
I won't say it doesn't happen, but my experience is that you've got a better chance of finding a high-quality, well-documented library with OSS - I think for the same reasons. There's a thriving community of open-source libraries for java/python/ruby/etc., and - very importantly - a global index for each of them, so it's easy to search for a library for your problem, and the popular ones tend to be well-documented. Whereas for .net there doesn't seem to be that culture.
If you're talking about the languages themselves, again people seem much more willing to publish their own tutorials/guides when we're talking about an open source language. And IMO the official documentation for e.g. python or ruby is much clearer than MS'.
> But in the future I anticipate questions, from me and/or my staff (if my site is successful enough for me to have staff), and then I will want the option of getting high quality paid support for serious questions. So, maybe my site is crashing; I don't know why; and I want to call for serious help. I suspect that I can get such help from Microsoft (even if I have to pay) but am unsure just what the situation is for Linux and OSS where, e.g., where's the company with account executives?
Shrug. There are any number of consultancies. My experience is that the free support on the internet available for OSS is vastly superior to paid support. In fact, the free support available on the internet even for proprietary technologies is vastly superior to the paid support. But if this is what matters to you then you're making the correct choice.
> as far as I can tell C# offers little or nothing more but has just a different flavor of syntactic sugar, one related to C and that I don't like. I believe that, compared with C#, Visual Basic .NET is easier to read on the page, is less prone to bugs due to being more verbose, and will be easier to teach to new staff. Where am I going wrong?
VB.NET suffers somewhat from the poor reputation of previous variants; it is probably not as bad as all that. That said, more verbose code tends to be more prone to bugs, not less, and I imagine it's a less structured language. Less structure makes it easier to start a program but harder to maintain and develop it - for a maintainable program you need a language that enforces separation between different layers and makes it very clear which parts of the program can and can't affect other parts of the program. Whereas in the early stages it's very convenient if you can just change everything from everywhere.
At a meta level, you're presumably not going to be writing all the code for long (at least if it's successful), and it sounds like you're not a programming expert yourself. So I think unless you're going to put a lot of effort into learning technical skills (which is probably not the best use of your time), you should probably accept that highly skilled programmers have particular preferences even if you don't understand them yourself (ideally you should find a CTO/cofounder you trust to make technical decisions, and then, well, trust them to make technical decisions). Hopefully you can at least see the value in using a language for which it is easy to hire skilled programmers; IMO VB.NET is not such a language, though you should of course use your own judgement.
> For the world of Linux and OSS, I don't know what programming language I would use that I would like as well as Visual Basic .NET. What would the options be?
Ruby or Python. They're pretty similar, so don't sweat the decision too much, it doesn't make much difference which you pick.
> From some of what I've seen of high end server farms on the Microsoft platform, the automation of system installation, configuration, monitoring, and management is excellent, but my view has been only from, say, 1000 feet up. If this is so, then I'm impressed. Where am I going wrong?
Some of MS' reputation is legacy, but what's impressive to one person may not be impressive to another. How easy would it be under this stack to e.g. automatically bring up another server whenever load rose above a certain threshold?
Also, how well do the server automation tools interact with the other tools programmers like to use? Can I check my server automation into the same VCS I use for my code? Can I use the same toolkit to monitor the server itself and my application? Can I write my server definitions in the same IDE as my program?
(This is why programmers are deeply mistrustful of GUIs; we have a lot of powerful tools for working very effectively with text formats and command lines, and these tend to work with any program. Whereas GUIs, when automatable at all, seem to each have their own macro language that doesn't work with any other tools).
So you work for Microsoft and your wife is from a company that is being bought by Microsoft, so everything in your life is Microsoft. That's ok, great, you are totally biased in favor of this company. So you can't understand or respect other people opinions. "hate" is a very strong term for not caring enough, or not caring as much as some family with all members working for the company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, this submission is at #8 even though it has 290 points and was submitted just 4 hours ago Meanwhile the #2 item was submitted 5 hours and it only has 90 points. IMO anyone who observes HN reaction to any Microsoft topic (that isn't a virulently anti-Microsoft submission) knows that these topics will get pushed down to the back pages. In some cases, the reason may be flagging, in other cases, it may be the…
> it is unfortunate that pg is unwilling to admit that this is a problem I think pg thinks there is a problem, and is almost surely willing to admit it. I think he just doesn't see a way of solving it that doesn't involve the discussions here on HN becoming flamewars... Which is also a serious problem... This looks to me very much like a doctor prescribing a drug with unfortunate side effects. You still do it, but yo…
Nowadays they're fairly tame, however. It's time to treat them as any other tech company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes he/she/they would use multiple, separate accounts in the same thread. Is it possible they post from work, and hence share the same IP address with other HN posters? Microsoft is a big place.
While I can see how that would explain separate IPs, I do not see how it would explain separate accounts posting agreement with themselves and it would certainly create an appearance of sockpuppetry.
If you see the pattern of adoption by developers, I see more developers walking around with Macs, and linux boxes and running VMs to test out IE compat than anything else.
So, MS has become another OS to work with than the OS to develop on. imo.
I had been in MS ecosystem for 10+ years before moving to other technologies and it has taught me more about concepts of distributed computing (dos and donts) than anything else. I can apply those to any problems i see today. But, I will likely not not develop another asmx and aspx page.. :(
If you see the pattern of adoption by developers, I see more developers walking around with Macs, and linux boxes and running VMs to test out IE compat than anything else.
So, MS has become another OS to work with than the OS to develop on. imo.
I had been in MS ecosystem for 10+ years before moving to other technologies and it has taught me more about concepts of distributed computing (dos and donts) than anything else. I can apply those to any problems i see today. But, I will likely not not develop another asmx and aspx page.. :(