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Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

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Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#71

Post by JoeAltmaier »

personZ wrote: post #70

Quite a few of the replies are practical, but unfortunately reality isn't always practical. Instead we often use technology for signaling, and the truth remains that the Microsoft stack (even if you talk up open source equivalents like mono) is an anti-quality signal. This is not judgmental (I have used and abused the MS stack for years), but is observational. And that tendency is often based upon experience -- the b…

I'd suggest that since the .NET hiring pool is vast, then you see lots of programmers of every quality? It could be sampling bias.

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#72

Post by bjorg »

scotu wrote: post #20
pionar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mono is, yes. If you use a non-Microsoft stack to host an ASP.NET site (OWIN, Nancy on OWIN), then even more so. Nancy+OWIN+Mono+nginx is a very good stack.

I'd like to know some performance and language/standard library differences between mono+linux and .NET+Windows (e.g. support for entity framework was not even planned for mono last time I used .NET, which is a lot of time ago). I always liked C# but windows server for me is a complete showstopper, I'm too comfortable in unix envs for sysadmin/devops. Well also for desktop actually :)

Mono is about 25 to 50% slower on computational stuff, which is negligible in almost any business application that has a multi-server topology.

We use C# for business logic (API). One of the first building blocks was to create an open framework for defining and running services that both compatible with .Net and Mono. We've been using that now for a quite a while. While VS is still our primary dev environment for the API, Xamarin Studio is becoming more and more appealing. One of the obstacles when developing with mono is that not all functionality is available or identical. It's of course always possible to contribute a fix or missing code, but sometimes it's just easier to work around it (once you know where the hole is). In production, everything runs on Linux and we use vagrant provisioned VMs to replicate the latest release locally. It works quite well for us now, but it took some effort.

That said, we chose this setup because we liked C#, not because we wanted WCF or ASP.Net. We actually don't like most of the heavy frameworks, including ORMs. Instead, use rely on HttpListener for web-services, PHP for HTML page composition in-front of the API and straight-up MySQL queries for all DB-related stuff. It makes it much easier to evolve a running system when you know what the bits do all the way down! Just my $0.02 cents.

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#74

Post by zbowling »

wes-exp wrote: post #66
sheetjs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a .NET stack may put off early employees. Any choice may put off early employees. By sheer numbers, choosing .NET gives you a much larger hiring pool than, say, Haskell or NodeJS.

The sheer numbers are for the legions of ho-hum programmers building CRUD data-entry systems for e.g. aluminum can factories. The majority of startup-oriented engineers are a different group and I agree that .Net may be off-putting to them.

I disagree on the numbers you mention. There a amazing number of .NET engineers not writing CRUD apps. That is an over generalization. Take a look at the Unity crowd.

Also the vast majority of startups not building tech can get by with basic CRUD like apps for most of their business processes. Whatever gets you to market fastest. You will end up rewriting everything 3 times over probably in your company's life as I've learned but you won't get to do that unless you ship something.

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#76

Post by tinco »

allegory wrote: post #47
stirno wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've tied your entire response to SQL Server rather than the .NET stack so I'll do the same from an ASP.NET aspect.. ASP.NET is moving at an incredible pace, the new vNext bits are planned to be officially cross-platform and you can support any number of database backends from a .NET codebase. I also challenge your assertion that better people seem to use other platforms. You can find people marketing thems…

SQL server is pretty much inevitable otherwise you have to deploy on Linux (don't get me started on pgsql/mysql on windows). Then you have two disparate skill sets to maintain at great cost. Startups need to stick to heterogeneous platforms to keep costs low. Asp.net v.next is currently a bag of promises. I wouldn't put a product near it for a long time. I back this assertion up with the promises of Velocity, EF4, Si…

Why is deploying psql on linux a problem when running an ASP.Net service? Are you avoiding to manage different operating systems?

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#77

Post by sourc3 »

Build with what you know while understanding the operating costs.

I am currently working on a start-up where we started with .NET running on Azure and SQL server with Android and iOS clients.

After going through some realistic usage patterns and the cost of licensing, we ended up deciding to switch over to MongoDB/Python and Linux VMs.

It was painful to do the switch and the time we lost was not insignificant. However, in our case the time lost was a fraction of the future operating costs so we bit the bullet.

The stack you know is the best stack to use. After that, the stack that costs you the least is the best one to use :)

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#78

Post by teapartyBS »

No, but that's not going to stop everyone here rehashing everything you have ever heard about lock-in, licensing costs, and how bad all .Net programmers are.

Businesses actually look at business. They would see licensing as one factor among many. If you have a good business it wont matter. People on HN will tell you it does, but it doesn't.

Why is that you may ask? Because people still feel like they need to advocate for linux, node, go, ruby etc...they are raging against the machine. It's not enough to be interested in technology and coding... You have to be invested in their mindset and believe in their superiority. For some reason it requires constant affirmation... Which is weird seeing as how it's so superior.

The people on this site will always tell you something that justifies the geek chic zeitgeist.

Asking the opinions of the masses has one problem though... Most of them aren't successful and never will be no matter how "pure" their technology choices were. (At the startup game. Maybe they will successfully peddle their brand of bullshit from place to place but it sure seems like all these guys know an awful lot about startups. It's enough to make you question the statistics about startups failing.)

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#79

Post by allegory »

tinco wrote: post #76
allegory wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SQL server is pretty much inevitable otherwise you have to deploy on Linux (don't get me started on pgsql/mysql on windows). Then you have two disparate skill sets to maintain at great cost. Startups need to stick to heterogeneous platforms to keep costs low. Asp.net v.next is currently a bag of promises. I wouldn't put a product near it for a long time. I back this assertion up with the promises of Velocity, EF4, Si…

Why is deploying psql on linux a problem when running an ASP.Net service? Are you avoiding to manage different operating systems?

It isn't and we do that but its not desirable for a startup to do that. Someone with tangible expertise on both platforms is hard to find and expensive (me :-)

Re: Ask HN: Would a .Net back-end put off potential acquisitors?

#80

Post by tinco »

dennybritz wrote: post #62
sheetjs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a .NET stack may put off early employees. Any choice may put off early employees. By sheer numbers, choosing .NET gives you a much larger hiring pool than, say, Haskell or NodeJS.

Yes, but it's not about the size of the hiring pool. It's about the "quality" of the hiring pool (HN likes to call them 10x engineers). I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, but based on personal experience almost exclusively all of the best engineers I have worked with prefer to work with open source technologies and would not touch .NET. One can think of several reasons for this correlation that make intui…

There's a reverse of this going on as well. I really like the C# programming language, and I'd rather work with it than with Node.js. But if I look around what kind of companies hire .net developers, and the sort of products they build, I get the feeling I'm very lucky to have joined the Ruby community early and have a nice spot in a cool company in which engineers are king and the tech is bleeding edge.

If pressed for work I'd even work sooner in a Node.JS shop, even if I feel that Node.js is attracting the sort of developers the Ruby community tries to break away from (i.e. the PHP and Java guys)

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