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Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

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Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#741

Post by ams6110 »

Pxtl wrote: post #316
jpgvm wrote: post #61

I'm a hardcore *nix guy but boy do I love me some C#. Up until now it's been the best language I have worked with but the worst platform due to it's lack of 'nice things' that we just expect from languages/ecosystems these days. Where 'nice things' is defined as being open-source, having open-source ecosystem of developer tools etc. This isn't so much the beginning (as good stuff has been happening for a couple of ye…

Microsoft has been playing catch-up on developing that "nice things" like trying to build an open-source community. NuGet, open-sourcing the ASP.Net and EF stacks, etc. A long way to go, but they've recognized their big failing and are moving on it. MS makes some great technology and some terrible tech... but the problem is the terrible tech gets the same blessing as the great tech. An open-source community is the be…

I'm not so sure I believe that they're trying to do a "nice thing" out of the goodness of their hearts. They've held pretty tightly to .NET because in order to deploy anything developed in .NET you needed to buy Windows licenses. Recently that hasn't played out so well. Software developers look to minimize costs and overhead that doesn't contribute to their mission (e.g. licenses and license compliance). There's just zero reason to pay for operating systems in 2014 when there are such capable free alternatives.

So if people won't pay for operating systems what will they pay for? Stuff that still costs them money, i.e. hardware infrastructure and attendant maintenance and administration. Hello cloud. Development shops are happily sending Amazon millions of dollars a month so they don't have to buy servers, set up server rooms, hire system administrators, and worry about things like air conditioning, big UPS systems and emergency power generators, etc.

Alongside Amazon, Microsoft is doing pretty well with Azure. And you can run free operating systems on Azure, and .NET is already well supported on Azure. So what will sell more Azure? Make .NET run on the free operating systems. Now all the developers who like the free OSs on their personal dev systems are suddenly able to develop stuff they can deploy on Azure. What about all the devs that like Macs? No problem, make .NET run on Mac OS X as well.

I think this is all about making Azure services more compelling and more able to compete with Amazon than it is wanting to do "nice things" for the open source community.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#742

Post by general_failure »

curveship wrote: post #499
general_failure wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand what open source programmer means :) You have to actually contribute to opensource projects to become one. Just using them means nothing.

What makes you think I haven't :) I spent several years as a Debian package maintainer, plus the usual mix of patches and bug reports to several projects.

Ah, ok :) I didn't mean to offend you (if you took any!)

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#743

Post by nocman »

freehunter wrote: post #708
srean wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't want to hear about it. ... and therefore people should curtail their speech ? stop talking about relevant things that transpired ? May be you are a tad shaky on the concept, lets burn all the existing history books and those about to be written. > They've had exceptional evidence and time That is your opinion. The way it works is that you dont get to decide for someone else who has lost the trust wheth…

> The waiter at a restaurant chews on the serving and says this food is perfectly fine and you must push it down your throat isnt a very solid defense of the food. The buck stops at the desk of the restaurant patron. If I order steak at a restaurant and they bring me fish, I'm within my rights to complain. If they bring me out the fish and give my meal to me for free, that's great. But if I'm still complaining about…

IMHO the long list of items you added to the restaurant analogy does not make the analogy a more accurrate representation of the relationship of Microsoft to the users of their products.

In fact (again IMHO) your description is laughable if it is intended to accurately represent Microsofts's efforts to reconcile with users it has wronged in the past.

Microsoft simply hasn't put in anything like that kind of effort to instill confindence in their good will toward their customers. Obviously srean probably agrees with me on that point.

> So please just go away.

Telling srean to go away is just not in the spirit of this site. He/she (I honestly don't know which it is) has been reasonably civil, and did not attack you personally. You simply don't agree with him/her. He/she has contributed reasonably to the conversation, so you have no valid reason to ask him/her to stop commenting on the topic.

And lastly (again, IMHO) your comments appear to be much more troll-like than his/hers. You have been much less civil in this conversation than srean.

And I'm not going to ask you to "go away" :-D

(edited for a typo and a missed "/her" )

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#744

Post by tkubacki »

jpgvm wrote: post #327
aerique wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What languages have you got experience with that you feel C# is the best language you have worked with? And what makes it such a good language for you?

Generics, Partial Classes, awesome Reflection API, Lambda syntax, LINQ, C/C++ compatibility, async/await, concurrency primitives, etc. I have worked with prettier languages, for instance I have picked up Haskell recently, I have also worked with faster languages, C was my forte for many years and I have worked with languages in the GSD category like Ruby and Python. C# is appealing not because of some feature that it…

Dartlang also will get C# style await async (as of 1.8) and has very similiar syntax. Additionaly it has more CLI oriented tools (eg. pub) and Google ecosystem integration (recent app engine managed vms integration)

I'm happy .NET is going open source path but still think we need others to compete.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#745

Post by tkubacki »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #736
com2kid wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just a low level drone here at MS, and I obviously am not involved in any important decisions, but I'd like to add that all the above things happened back when the current generation that works here was growing up. We were all on Slashdot, being outraged and angry 13 year olds. Except now my generation works here, and I think the changes (such as all the ones announced today!) are a good sign of that. At least si…

Patent threats and lawsuits against Android OEMs. Locking down computers using UEFI Secure Boot and taking control away from the owners of the machine. Sabotaging the office document standard process at ISO. Corruption in cases where governments explored switching to alternative operating systems. Supporting software patents. All these happened within last 5 years (and continue to happen).

"Corruption in cases where governments explored switching to alternative operating systems."

huh? I'm not MS lover but can you prove this ?

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#746

Post by skeletonjelly »

sytelus wrote: post #655

Here's Github repo: https://github.com/dotnet . Wow, these things are being released under MIT licence - who would have thought .Net would be more "free-er" than Java? In other news: * Visual Studio 2015 and ASP.NET 5 will support gulp, grunt, bower and npm for front end developers. * OmniSharp is a family of Open Source projects, each with one goal - To enable great .NET development in YOUR editor of choice - http:/…

> Visual Studio 2015 and ASP.NET 5 will support gulp, grunt, bower and npm for front end developers.

Holy Gates! It's like they're listening or something. Can't wait.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#747

Post by francesca »

Pxtl wrote: post #316
jpgvm wrote: post #61

I'm a hardcore *nix guy but boy do I love me some C#. Up until now it's been the best language I have worked with but the worst platform due to it's lack of 'nice things' that we just expect from languages/ecosystems these days. Where 'nice things' is defined as being open-source, having open-source ecosystem of developer tools etc. This isn't so much the beginning (as good stuff has been happening for a couple of ye…

Microsoft has been playing catch-up on developing that "nice things" like trying to build an open-source community. NuGet, open-sourcing the ASP.Net and EF stacks, etc. A long way to go, but they've recognized their big failing and are moving on it. MS makes some great technology and some terrible tech... but the problem is the terrible tech gets the same blessing as the great tech. An open-source community is the be…

While I do think this move is a valiant one, I don't believe that it will, in and of itself, build better practices and help Microsoft build better software. Open source is very hard to do right, and if you're a company that doesn't have open source in their DNA it could pose a huge challenge to building positive relationships with your developer community. If you're a big corporation like Microsoft, you have tons of people with their eyes on you at all times. Everyone can read and criticize your code.

Also, being open source means being open and transparent about release cycles and roadmaps, which takes a lot of effort and initiative. I do think Microsoft can do that if they build a solid team of technical community evangelists, but otherwise, they will be swimming against the stream.

Re: Microsoft takes .NET open source and cross-platform

#748

Post by addicted44 »

eloisant wrote: post #186
jpgvm wrote: post #61

I'm a hardcore *nix guy but boy do I love me some C#. Up until now it's been the best language I have worked with but the worst platform due to it's lack of 'nice things' that we just expect from languages/ecosystems these days. Where 'nice things' is defined as being open-source, having open-source ecosystem of developer tools etc. This isn't so much the beginning (as good stuff has been happening for a couple of ye…

C# as a language is better than Java, but not as good as Scala.

Why would you compare C# (although they keep adding functional programming concepts to it) to Scala, instead of comparing F# (which can commingle with C# wherever you need it) with Scala?

I haven't looked into F# or Scala too much, but I bet F# comes out looking far better, because it was so deeply inspired by Haskell (but made practical).

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