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Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

sirchristian.net

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Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#131

Post by HarshaThota »

skrebbel wrote: post #62
royjacobs wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't ServiceStack(.OrmLite) a commercial product nowadays? Did this affect your choice in any way?

v3 is still pretty good though. I was hoping that some eager people would fork it to keep it going, but it looks like the interest is smaller than I hoped. Maybe I'll pick it up myself one day. The core of ServiceStack (services, messages, routes; that part) is so well designed that I simply refuse giving up on it. I think that if I were to use a different language for whatever project, I'd probably rather spend many…

There is a fairly active fork of ServiceStack v3 at: https://github.com/NServiceKit/NServiceKit

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#132

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

pionar wrote: post #109
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse and IntelliJ - the thought that Visual Studio is the unchallenged king of them all never crossed my mind. Honestly curious - what makes it the best in our opinion?

I've used XCode and Eclipse before, so I have nothing to compare IntelliJ against. The debugging experience is the key. The best thing a VS user can do to boost productivity substantially is learn how to use the debugging tools (navigating the stack, using Debug output messages, conditional breakpoints, the immediate window, autos and locals, etc.) The plugin and extension community is awesome. There are two extensio…

Thanks for the detailed reply. One nitpick though: I've recently learned that .NET apps created for version 1.1 - 3.5 do not run on .NET v. 4.0+ - as a Java developer that was kind of surprising. You have to install a separate runtime, which affects Windows 8+ I think, since only v. 4.0/4.5 is installed.

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#133

Post by jtseng »

sirchristian wrote: post #33
skrebbel wrote: post #12

I strongly agree with the author's conclusion, but I strongly disagree with many of his points. Notably, with his recommendation to consciously go all the way with the Microsoft vendor lock in. Our startup's backend is made in C#, and we're very happy with the choice. We use Postgres, we host it on Docker containers on Linux, and our devs are equally spread over Windows, OSX and Linux. MonoDevelop is a remarkably gre…

I agree "get all the free Microsoft goodies when you start, and once you really need the paid versions you're probably successful enough that the cost doesn't matter much" is one fair conclusion to the article. However I don't believe that's the only conclusion. Mostly I want .NET to be a consideration as an option when building out the technology in a startup. I'm concerned about vender lock-in as well, just less co…

We've recently started down this C#/Postgres route. One of the main decisions to use C# was static typing, so I wanted to keep this with the data access layer as well. I've decided to use dotConnect for PostgreSQL so I can use EF. I figure I can use dapper or another micro ORM after I get into performance issues.

Our biggest problem with Postgres is actually the lack of a good GUI. I'm using 0xDBE for the amazing auto complete and PgAdmin for everything else.

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#134

Post by jtseng »

CmonDev wrote: post #87
ryanmim wrote: post #13

There are two people talking in my head while I read this post. One says : Too many people obsess about backends. Yes, build your startup in C# and a .NET stack if that's what your familiar with. The backend ultimately doesn't matter, and the faster you can create and then iterate on your product, the better off you'll be. The primary factor that will decide whether your startup is successful or not is if people like…

"but almost any OSS Framework" - are there real choices that do not involve the dynamic typing maintenance nightmare while giving you a C#-quality language? Maybe just Scala + Play.

I really wanted to use Scala+Play to get away from the MS stack, but the documentation for Play was pretty hard to navigate due to the volume of documentation and the breaking changes in 2.

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#135

Post by ksm »

skrebbel wrote: post #12

I strongly agree with the author's conclusion, but I strongly disagree with many of his points. Notably, with his recommendation to consciously go all the way with the Microsoft vendor lock in. Our startup's backend is made in C#, and we're very happy with the choice. We use Postgres, we host it on Docker containers on Linux, and our devs are equally spread over Windows, OSX and Linux. MonoDevelop is a remarkably gre…

Likewise, we are running our SaaS product's backend with full C# -based stack (built from scratch without using any PaaS specific technologies for IPC/RPC etc.etc. so can be run on any provider) on top of Windows VMs, but database is running in Postgres. The licensing being one of the major reasons for that and avoiding SQL Server, even though it was a technology I had lot of experience from before when I was doing IT administration in MS environments. But Postgres is not that dissimilar, at least when you tend to do lots of operations in the code and not inside the DB as storprocs..

Our client/agent piece is also written fully in C# (we support only Windows workstations at the moment so it was no-brainer decision) and recently I have been looking into Xamarin to leverage that investment when moving into other client platforms.

This has worked great as I have a history purely in Microsoft technologies so the administration is lot less of a burden compared to trying to figure out everything for some other stack. If you are fluent in one technology, why not use it, right? And besides, with Mono there's at least theoretical path for running parts of the backend on Linux, but in the big picture the licensing costs for Windows vs. Linux in managed hosting is peanuts.

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#136

Post by DonnyV »

I'm currently working on my own startup. But didn't go the full Microsoft stack route.

I use C# and Visual Studio for development. I think right now nothing beats VS for pure production output. I do all development on a Windows box.

All frameworks work on Windows and Linux.

  Nancyfx - web framework   
  Cassette - asset optimization   
  Mongodb - database

  Production server uses Ubuntu + Mono + Nginx.  
  $20 VM on Digital Ocean.
Provides a nice balance of best of bread tooling and cheap production costs.

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#137

Post by knocte »

royjacobs wrote: post #21

I work at a company where we have built one of our products (a large distributed system that tracks television content worldwide) completely on .NET. I love C#, it's a very decent blend between a whole lot of languages and additions of LINQ and async/await kept it relevant. Visual Studio is the best IDE I've worked with, not because it's such a good editor but because it has a sane debugger that is actually helpful.…

> This isn't a dealbreaker, but it is pretty annoying especially since debugging these kinds of problems are of precisely the kind that I don't want to debug.

It's understandable that you don't want to (or don't have time to) debug them. But filing bug reports in Mono's bugzilla is appreciated, at least (maybe the Mono team can debug the problems for you).

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#138

Post by [deleted] »

royjacobs wrote: post #21

I work at a company where we have built one of our products (a large distributed system that tracks television content worldwide) completely on .NET. I love C#, it's a very decent blend between a whole lot of languages and additions of LINQ and async/await kept it relevant. Visual Studio is the best IDE I've worked with, not because it's such a good editor but because it has a sane debugger that is actually helpful.…

[deleted]

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#139

Post by knocte »

xtracto wrote: post #116
royjacobs wrote: post #21

I work at a company where we have built one of our products (a large distributed system that tracks television content worldwide) completely on .NET. I love C#, it's a very decent blend between a whole lot of languages and additions of LINQ and async/await kept it relevant. Visual Studio is the best IDE I've worked with, not because it's such a good editor but because it has a sane debugger that is actually helpful.…

> Mono simply isn't there yet. Code that works fine on Windows mysteriously stops working on Mono due to threading or GC vagaries (yes, even in the latest version). I remember having to maintain a small C# SDK in my previous work. That was a bit of a headache given that we were a 100% OSX shop. I installed MonoDevelop and libraries in my Mac to try to make some changes there, just to find out that Mono has not implem…

> Mono has not implemented some .NET standard encryption libraries.

Good find! Did you file a bug report?

Re: Unapologetically build your startup technology in C#

#140

Post by knocte »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #44

I always wondered why computer languages and economy becomes religion and dogma. We use multiple languages and multiple OS in my company. When you have a company you have your own interest and your customers interest in mind. Some times those interest are not the same of Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM or Oracle. Just developing on a single proprietary language from a single company on a single OS (and yes I know Mono…

> I know Mono and I don't have a good opinion on it

Can you add the URL of the bugs you found, to backup your statement? Thanks

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