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Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

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Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#61

Post by bad_user »

DrJokepu wrote: post #27
StrawberryFrog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones do you think is one a par with it, and why? "vastly" may be an overstatement, but it's very good. The only issue is that for simple designs a smaller, free product (e.g. postgreSQL) may have all that you need. A lot of the new stuff in SQL server seems to be Business Intelligence tools, which I don't pay much attention too. the SQL stuff where you "select * from ...." seems to be much the same for several…

Well, while SQL Server has its merits, I wouldn't consider it vastly superior (or superior at all) to Oracle or IBM DB2, although SQL Server 2008 is indeed getting very close. Of course it depends on your requirements; for most purposes MSSQL is perhaps a better choice but if I needed an enterprisey-schwenterprisey zero downtime database server no matter what it costs, then of course I would go for Oracle or DB2.

Do you have bad experiences with MSSQL (or any other popular RDBMS) in an enterprisey environment ?

The only RDBMS I worked with that was too limited for the enterprise ... is MySql. But that's because when you have a "Big Ball of Mud" it is easier to patch many things in the data-store and MySql has bad support for stored procedures / triggers / views and I also wouldn't trust it to store a data warehouse. But Postgresql was more than suitable for such a scenario.

MSSQL is also more than adequate for any task you might have.

I've seen this argument many times before ... that Oracle is more reliable. But with Oracle unless you have a DBA with years of experience to administer it, you're pretty much screwed. And a RDBMS that requires so much tweaking and maintenance just to keep it working doesn't seem so reliable to me.

True story ... while working at Adobe I participated in meetings about the future of Oracle at the company. Long story short: the company holds much of its data on 2 big Oracle servers and the problem with the setup is that it doesn't scale horizontally. And many newer projects are using Mysql, because it has a good-enough replication system and it also has a hidden gem (mysql proxy).

It seems to me (at least as an outside observer ... I'm not a professional DBA) that these are just effects of marketing campaigns.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#62

Post by bad_user »

rbanffy wrote: post #33
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the research I've seen shows Microsoft consistently in the top three as far as sales, and in the top two as far as sales on the windows platform. This has held true over many, many years. Got some points you'd like to make that amount to something?

1: inertia It took a long time to displace COBOL. Microsoft's technology is not superior. Their main advantage is the shady deals they have with computer manufacturers that push their software to people who don't know they do have options. Oh... and BTW, where are the sales figures for all the people who download, say, Debian or CentOS or *BSD or OpenSolaris and just go about doing their business without showing in a…

> Their main advantage is the shady deals they have with computer manufacturers that push their software to people who don't know they do have options.

Well, to be fair, Windows is still the best OS choice for consumers.

I don't use it myself, as I've got Debian/Ubuntu on my workstations, and Debian on the servers. I used to have a Mac, which is user-friendly and decent for all kinds of users.

But Windows is friendly to consumers, it has the best application support, and it does install on commodity hardware. I tortured my wife at some point with Ubuntu on her home computer, but it really didn't work out. I mean, even I have a laptop with a dysfunctional wireless, and just yesterday Debian-testing broke my Gnome setup.

If you want to help out Linux/BSD to gain more market-share, it doesn't help pretending it's a good choice and that Windows is used because of "inertia". The way I see it, Linux/BSD missed their opportunity a long time ago.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#63

Post by Flow »

mr_luc wrote: post #53
jasonkester wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your chosen stack slows you down by being more painful/cumbersome to develop on, set up and maintain, then it's costing you money. The fact that it's lost income rather than extra outflow doesn't change the fact that it's a cost. Compared to PHP or Django (which we also do consulting in), ASP.NET is just plain faster to develop in. I can get my own stuff out the door quicker, which means that I can bill more of my…

I'm no PHP hacker, nor (sadly) am I unfamiliar with ASP.NET. I was stuck at an "agile", highly "successful" .NET shop for 2 years. Client-corporate-intranet-land is completely divorced from the realm of what is possible . That entire world enforces such silly requirements on you that, well, maybe it is better to use .NET. But who wants to work in that kind of an environment? Who wants to use the MS tools to manage th…

This sounds cool, could you please describe what you use to achieve all this?

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#64

Post by windsurfer »

steverb wrote: post #49
windsurfer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have student pricing for microsoft server and sql?

Yes. They are both free under the dream spark program. To be clear, it's SQL Server express or developer edition, but if your goal is just learning the stack then it's enough. https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

What restrictions are there, exactly? I'm not familiar with licensing of these products, as I mainly use open source stuff at the moment.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#65

Post by Novash »

Flow wrote: post #63
mr_luc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no PHP hacker, nor (sadly) am I unfamiliar with ASP.NET. I was stuck at an "agile", highly "successful" .NET shop for 2 years. Client-corporate-intranet-land is completely divorced from the realm of what is possible . That entire world enforces such silly requirements on you that, well, maybe it is better to use .NET. But who wants to work in that kind of an environment? Who wants to use the MS tools to manage th…

This sounds cool, could you please describe what you use to achieve all this?

REPL in eMacs? Looks like Lisp to me.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#66

Post by Novash »

windsurfer wrote: post #64
steverb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They are both free under the dream spark program. To be clear, it's SQL Server express or developer edition, but if your goal is just learning the stack then it's enough. https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

What restrictions are there, exactly? I'm not familiar with licensing of these products, as I mainly use open source stuff at the moment.

Simply put, the restriction is that you cannot profit from it. I use all the 'Express' stack to develop at home. All free. Including the XNA lib.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#67

Post by windsurfer »

Novash wrote: post #66
windsurfer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What restrictions are there, exactly? I'm not familiar with licensing of these products, as I mainly use open source stuff at the moment.

Simply put, the restriction is that you cannot profit from it. I use all the 'Express' stack to develop at home. All free. Including the XNA lib.

Do they have an express version of windows I can hack on?

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#68

Post by etherael »

jasonkester wrote: post #38
tvon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to PHP or Django (which we also do consulting in), ASP.NET is just plain faster to develop in. I'd love to see any info backing this up.

It's all subjective. Naturally, I've done my share of development across a wide range of frameworks and languages, and I've made my choice. The best advice I can give would be to do so as well. Personally, I consider it a slight competitive advantage that so many shops avoid Microsoft stuff on ideological grounds. If they never try it, they'll never know. And we'll have that slight edge in getting things to market fa…

Uhh, just finished a week's intensive training in a supposed to make stuff more rapid .net based framework, and coming from a Django / Code igniter / Ruby on Rails / Grails background I'm utterly stunned that anyone would claim that the basic asp.net environment is a productivity boost over a top of the line MVC framework like Django?

Maybe the problem is your competence rather than your tools? I don't mean to be blatantly offensive, but wow, asp.net > django? Really? ... Man..

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#69

Post by jasonkester »

etherael wrote: post #68
jasonkester wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all subjective. Naturally, I've done my share of development across a wide range of frameworks and languages, and I've made my choice. The best advice I can give would be to do so as well. Personally, I consider it a slight competitive advantage that so many shops avoid Microsoft stuff on ideological grounds. If they never try it, they'll never know. And we'll have that slight edge in getting things to market fa…

Uhh, just finished a week's intensive training in a supposed to make stuff more rapid .net based framework, and coming from a Django / Code igniter / Ruby on Rails / Grails background I'm utterly stunned that anyone would claim that the basic asp.net environment is a productivity boost over a top of the line MVC framework like Django? Maybe the problem is your competence rather than your tools? I don't mean to be bla…

Always be careful when talking about something that you only have one day's exposure to. I was pretty slow my first day of writing Django/Python too, but I stuck with it.

6 months later I was quite fast, and could compare apples-apples the things that Django doesn't quite do as quickly or elegantly as our home-rolled ASP.NET framework (which, to be fair, has been in development a lot longer than Django.)

So yes, having given both sides a decent shot, I went back to ASP.NET. As I said above, your mileage may vary. But until you've put in the time to build something big with .NET and get fully up to speed, you'll never know if you're right.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#70

Post by etherael »

jasonkester wrote: post #69
etherael wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, just finished a week's intensive training in a supposed to make stuff more rapid .net based framework, and coming from a Django / Code igniter / Ruby on Rails / Grails background I'm utterly stunned that anyone would claim that the basic asp.net environment is a productivity boost over a top of the line MVC framework like Django? Maybe the problem is your competence rather than your tools? I don't mean to be bla…

Always be careful when talking about something that you only have one day's exposure to. I was pretty slow my first day of writing Django/Python too, but I stuck with it. 6 months later I was quite fast, and could compare apples-apples the things that Django doesn't quite do as quickly or elegantly as our home-rolled ASP.NET framework (which, to be fair, has been in development a lot longer than Django.) So yes, havi…

Ah, so you actually built some other framework on top of ASP.net and that's homegrown and that might be better for your purposes than something like django, that's a fair bit more believable.

You make cool stuff, I wish you all the best with it, catch you at a beach retreat some day. :)

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