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Leaving .net

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Re: Leaving .net

#111

Post by jacquesm »

batasrki wrote: post #99
lelele wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Google, for the most part. You are not using an agile language, you are using some of the technology Google relies on, aren't you? ;-) Google, and beyond it. You could easily have a case for Python: Nokia has made it available for Symbian, Microsoft endorses it via ActiveState, and so on. My friends, if we want to be effective entrepreneurs, we must learn how to repackage things in a way customers will find att…

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. There is no reason why my customers need to know in what language the solution is developed in. Besides, Ruby powers many highly visible websites and web apps. If I'd be losing a sale because I develop in Ruby and NOT Python, chances are I don't want that sale in the first place.

> There is no reason why my customers need to know in what language the solution is developed in.

Business continuity.

Re: Leaving .net

#112

Post by acabal »

pohl wrote: post #85
acabal wrote: post #8

A sizeable chunk of .NET development happens in the corporate/enterprise world. That sort of environment isn't interested in collaboration, open source, etc.--they're interested in the guaranteed support the MS stack provides, and the idiot-proof web basics provided by ASP/webforms/MVC. If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support…

If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support for their problem. That's the canard, but it has seldom worked out that way for me. Whenever I've encountered a problem that can be traced to a flaw in their products, the suggestion of calling for support is usually met with riotous laughter. (In other words, everybody says it's a selli…

A company I worked for in the past (MM pageviews a day, you've probably heard of them) was a big MS proponent and an early adopter of some of their new stuff, like--at the time--Silverlight. We had a fairly direct line to someone at MS if something crazy happened. It might not always get fixed right away (a bug that might need to wait for the next cycle), but MS was always on top of what needed fixing.

Contrarily, we had one guy working on some OSS stuff in a corner of the office--Apache, PHP, Rails, stuff like that. Whenever he ran into a problem that needed to be solved yesterday, he had to find and call a $100/hour consultant who may or may not even be able to solve the problem, or even guarantee that it would be patched at a later date. That's the big MS selling point.

Re: Leaving .net

#113

Post by mahmud »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #63
sp332 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I already have a full-time job, and I just want to hack around as a hobby in my spare time, I don't want the language features and runtime to be tied up in the same (probably more) red tape and politicking I have to deal with at my day job. I just want to relax and hack, and if there's money involved, that's a lot less likely to be enjoyable.

Then make it enjoyable: the last bit of code I hacked was "for profit" but I told the guy who wanted it to just pay me with a bottle of Patron. He gets the code he wants, I get drunk on good tequila. What's not to love :-)

How well do you code? I know of a few startups that will happily send you to AA.

Re: Leaving .net

#114

Post by bl4k »

acabal wrote: post #8

A sizeable chunk of .NET development happens in the corporate/enterprise world. That sort of environment isn't interested in collaboration, open source, etc.--they're interested in the guaranteed support the MS stack provides, and the idiot-proof web basics provided by ASP/webforms/MVC. If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support…

Yes. This is what the open source world doesn't understand. You can't just copy a commercial product feature-for-feature, open source it and then scratch your head wondering why it isn't gaining adoption.

When a corporate pays for software, they are paying for peace-of-mind and assurance more than the bits that make up the app.

Re: Leaving .net

#115

Post by mahmud »

gaius wrote: post #89
jacquesm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the time that HR hires a person to collaborate on your project with 'java' experience and it turns out you wrote your code in clojure. Stuff like that tends to have consequences, especially when there are contracts and liabilities involved.

We used to say that Tcl/Tk was a C library with a very complex configuration file ;-)

Excellent!

Re: Leaving .net

#116

Post by giardini »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #46
st3fan wrote: post #30

What do people here think of .Net as a choice of platform for startups?

I think it's great. Get BizSpark or WebsiteSpark to cover your licensing costs during development; start with el-cheapo $20/mo hosting which gives you reasonable bandwidth and MS SQL option - and you are all set. If three years down the road (that's how long *Spark lasts) you will find yourself thinking about licensing costs - you aren't doing it right: in three years of startup it's either you're getting enough prof…

"Get BizSpark or WebsiteSpark to cover your licensing costs during development..."

Like offering free crack to drug addicts! No wonder .NET continues to exist.

Re: Leaving .net

#117

Post by kenjackson »

mahmud wrote: post #77
shoover wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you HAVE to chase every new API as soon as they came out? Did MFC suddenly stop working? Did the Win32 API go away? Why couldn't you just keep going as you were until you really wanted to rewrite to new APIs?

Yes, if you want your corporate productivity app to be Office certified. The UI guidelines are pretty clear about how it should look and behave. First MS pushed the new CommonControls from IE on us, then there was an Office update, then XP came out with new UI elements, like rebars. With every new release of Windows, Office or IE, the UI got tweaked. Pretty quickly you couldn't even use vanilla C++ anymore to embed t…

And why is that mahmud? Because most developers, by a HUGE margin, wanted to this in VB. And in VB hosting COM controls in your app was super simple.

What I send to see are two classes of MS developers: 1) Those who use the MS stack, but realize they're using tools that they build with and on. 2) Those who use the MS stack, but get stuck thinking that it is the only tool available, period.

The second group of developers sometimes gets an epiphany when they change to a non-MS stack, because its so clearly obvious in the non-MS world that there is no stack that is convincingly better than any other. Group two expresses their outrage at the MS stack. While group one is mystified that they ever thought the MS stack is the end all be all.

Here's a hint as to how to find them ahead of time. Go talk to the guy who does .NET development today and ask what his favorite third-party controls are. If he has none and says, "I only use MS out the box controls" then this person will eventually become part of second group.

Re: Leaving .net

#118

Post by dangrossman »

jtdowney wrote: post #70
dangrossman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are colleges teaching .NET? I'd never heard of that.

It isn't the first thing they teach you at Purdue but a sizable chunk of CS and CIT students learn C#/.NET

Interesting. In my CS degree ('08) the languages used in the few classes that involved actual programming were: C++, Scheme, Prolog, Python and Java. Never anything that would require proprietary software like Visual Studio.

Re: Leaving .net

#119

Post by acabal »

berntb wrote: post #31
acabal wrote: post #8

A sizeable chunk of .NET development happens in the corporate/enterprise world. That sort of environment isn't interested in collaboration, open source, etc.--they're interested in the guaranteed support the MS stack provides, and the idiot-proof web basics provided by ASP/webforms/MVC. If shit hits the fan in the .NET stack for a big enough corporate project, someone in the office can phone/email MS and get support…

>> If a bug is found in the stack itself, it won't languish unsolved in bug trackers for years, like many OSS bugs do. Oh, please... Over the years, I've personally fixed bugs. And sent in fixes. (Stop complaining -- I promise to send tests too, next time!) If I run into one that I am unable to grok in a reasonable time, there are always job boards and money. Bugs -- not to be confused with full sized features -- are…

>>Over the years, I've personally fixed bugs. And sent in fixes. (Stop complaining -- I promise to send tests too, next time!) >>If I run into one that I am unable to grok in a reasonable time, there are always job boards and money.

That's fine for a smaller shop, or even a medium-sized shop. But when you enter a true corporate behemoth type company, you don't have the option of posting an ad on the 37signals job board and hoping a dev cowboy will show up the very next morning and fix your problem. There's HR hoops to jump through, budgets to watch, schedules to keep, managers and colleagues to keep appeased--that's the kind of red-tape stuff that makes hiring anyone, even a short-term freelancer, enough of a PITA to not bother.

And as a corporate dev, you have better things to do than waste time hunting, fixing, merging, and patching a piece of software that should really only be a black-box cog in your greater machine.

Re: Leaving .net

#120

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

mahmud wrote: post #113
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then make it enjoyable: the last bit of code I hacked was "for profit" but I told the guy who wanted it to just pay me with a bottle of Patron. He gets the code he wants, I get drunk on good tequila. What's not to love :-)

How well do you code? I know of a few startups that will happily send you to AA.

Ha! Thanks, that made my morning :-)

Seriously though, he was willing to pay me, but I wasn't comfortable taking money for something I had zero experience with (this was my first time using a Web API). And I could tell he didn't want to feel like he was ripping me off by getting my work (all 45 minutes of it) for free, so we met in the middle and both parties were happy.

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