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Leaving .net

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181–190 of 221 posts

Re: Leaving .net

#181

"Real open source isn’t submitting a patch and waiting/hoping that one day it might be accepted and merged into the main line." So the Linux kernel isn't REAL open source then?

OSS projects cannot guarantee to merge any patch they receive, that would mean disaster. The difference between Linux and MS Codeplex is that if you submit a patch to the former, it will be discussed in the open and it will be judged on its technical merit.

You don't submit patches for Codeplex - you submit patches to projects hosted on Codeplex. Some project managers and devs using Codeplex are better than others at reviewing and taking patches and involvement. So what? Most projects on Sourceforge are just plain dead, but everything there is 'open source'.

Re: Leaving .net

#182

I work for a mid-size (read: 100+ employee) IT recruiting company and I have to tell you that this boils down to one thing and one thing only for most people that have chosen .NET: economics. If you want to be a developer and you're goal is to give your three kids a good life, drive that BMW 5 series, and own a $500k house, then you should be a .NET developer. The math is simple and I have a mountain of data that sup…

As a counterpoint to your figures: this side of the ocean, senior Java contractors make EUR 90-100 while most .NET jobs hover around EUR 65-80.

As to why this is, I can only guess. It appears the pool of .NET developers is larger, keeping the prices down, and most jobs are at a medior level, not senior.

Re: Leaving .net

#183
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Microsoft's answer to Java, with hindsight 20/20. I wanted to see their take on portable bytecode, JIT techniques, security, distributed computing, performance, etc. Nearly everybody there was burned by MS's short attention span when it comes to system libraries (OLE, COM, DCOM, DCOM+ for one, and the mess that is data-access libraries, OLE-DB,MDAC, ODBC, ADO, Jet, etc.) We wanted closure, at least I knew I di…

Perl? You serious? Are you developing text-based system?

The only major failing of Perl is that its error handling facilities just flat out suck. Outside of that, it's a very modern language, albeit a little esoteric at times, and writing maintainable systems with it is possible with some discipline and common sense.

To boot, Perl natively supports modules written in C, and by way of DynaLoader.pm, a programmer can do fun things with exported symbols from object code. I wouldn't go as far as to call DynaLoader.pm a proper FFI, but it definitely gets the job done a lot of the time.

Re: Leaving .net

#184
post #48
post #2

There were already open source MVC web frameworks and an army of .net developers who could have collaborated to make them great but nothing much happened. He is lamenting that the .NET community didn't embrace the pioneering MVC frameworks from the OS community, but waited for Microsoft to deliver its own "blessed" framework. Here is what he is forgetting: Economics. A good chunk of .NET developers are not using the…

Borland was (almost) killed by its own stupidity. Their RAD tools were miles ahead of anything that MS had, but they got buggier and buggier with each version and their C++ compiler had and still has poor standards compliance. I felt like I had taken a step back productivity-wise with VC++6, but it was solid compared to BCB.

There's a special place reserved in Hell for the management of Borland, right next to the management of Commodore

A large part of their demise was due to their constantly pursuing the enterprise market (they even changed their name to Inprise for a few years) where they were largely ignored and unwanted, while ignoring the indie devs and smaller shops who loved them.

In the end their developer tools went from best in class (by a very large margin) to an embarrassing copy of Visual Studio, but not quite as good and a hell of a lot more expensive.

Kylix was a bold move though, and could have been something good (it wasn't). For anyone interested, Lazarus is still going; it's a cross platform open source ide heavily inspired by Delphi (version http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/

Re: Leaving .net

#185
There always seems to be some sort of article that is negative towards such and such programming language/framework on hacker news, I wonder why that is?

eg, Java is dead Django sucks Leaving .NET

Re: Leaving .net

#186
Seems like this is the trend nowadays around the world. Corporate developers with experience in .NET/Java start doing Python/Ruby or other open source stuffs. Some of them start learning iOS or Android platform just to start their own starup.

Re: Leaving .net

#187
Perhaps off topic, but I've never understood the draw of Microsoft's implementation of MVC. I've watched a few video tutorials and stepped through several articles and my initial impressions are that it seems like you're mixing a lot of code in with the presentation layer, almost like going back to classic ASP.

We use WinForms at work, and did so at my previous job as well. Perhaps I defend them because that's what I'm used to and they pay the bills, but I would argue that their not just for inexperienced guys fresh out of school that don't understand how the "magic" works. Sure, you can get far with them without really pulling back the curtain, but use them long enough and delve deep enough and you get a pretty decent understanding. Or maybe I'm the living proof of "you don't know, what you don't know".

Re: Leaving .net

#188
post #7

Out of curiosity, are people building their own for-fun-projects using .net or even Java? All I seem to hear are people using Python, Ruby and Javascript.

I do both for fun and for profit stuff in .net. I recently put together my first Silverlight app and I found the platform to be wholly underrated.

Re: Leaving .net

#189
post #88
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but would add this. Microsoft's (development) tools have never had any underlying principles other than: enabling people with minimal knowledge to get stuff done. Thinking back through MFC, COM, VB v1-6, Access, SharePoint, WebForms and ADO.NET, none of them were characterised by any particular architectural purity or design aesthetic. But they enabled a generation of corporate developers to hack stuff toget…

This. Right now, as a .NET developer myself, it is impossible to keep up with all the new frameworks that Microsoft are releasing.

Hint: you don't need to. Use what works for you.

Re: Leaving .net

#190
post #2

There were already open source MVC web frameworks and an army of .net developers who could have collaborated to make them great but nothing much happened. He is lamenting that the .NET community didn't embrace the pioneering MVC frameworks from the OS community, but waited for Microsoft to deliver its own "blessed" framework. Here is what he is forgetting: Economics. A good chunk of .NET developers are not using the…

Actually, quite a few Haskell folks work for Microsoft Research. So it's more like the well-paid Microsoft employees are out there hacking on GHC. The broke mofos are the ones that are working on all that .NET stuff. Working for the government as a low-level programmer is not where the money is at.

  > Actually, quite a few Haskell folks work for Microsoft Research
What is up with that, anyway? Three of the most important people in Haskell -- the originators of the language and primary developers of GHC, and the foremost researchers in functional programming as I've experienced it who aren't employed by universities, Galois or wherever the fuck okmij works -- are employed by Microsoft Research [0]

Seems like a very odd place for them to be. Microsoft has absolutely no official relationship with Haskell, but it is the closest thing Haskell has to a patron.

I suppose bits of their work are trickling down into C#/LINQ (and VB) at as fast a pace as the ecosystem can absorb it, and it would be unthinkable, inappropriate, and probably disastrous in sociologically interesting ways, for Microsoft to try to push direct Haskell on conservative enterprise. I suppose "they" view it as an obscure research tool, by and for the top talent they retain, granted apparent freedom in their research, to keep a strategic reserve of deep magic. It's more likely that "they" don't think of Haskell at all.

-----

Also, while I don't think this strange relationship could be credibly attributed to any calculation of PR or prestige, I'll admit that noticing a sizeable chunk of the best stuff I've read in the field is written by known Microsoft employees has done as much to salve my personal opinion of the brand as their fall from threatening malevolence. It would be interesting to see what it would look like for Microsoft to officially recognize Haskell.

  [0]  http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/simonpj/
       http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/simonmar/
       http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/emeijer/
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