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ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

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Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#21

Post by artmageddon »

rbanffy wrote: post #3

It seems the number of startups using .NET is increasing, or, at least, the interest on it by the HN community is growing. I'm curious, so: AskHN: Are you using .NET on your startup and why did you chose it?

Not a startup but I'm using it. I was doing Java for awhile but we started getting into .Net at work. I happen to like it a lot better, and it works nicely for me. The only problem I have with Microsoft stuff is that it's so damn hard to keep up with the curve. I'm still learning parts from the .Net 3.5 framework and 4.0 has been out for nearly a year already...

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#22

Post by Shanewho »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #7
jeroen wrote: post #6

august 2008: "Our commitment is to maintain an amazing free tool ..." http://www.red-gate.com/our-company/about/news/net-reflector february 2011: "Red Gate has announced that it will charge $35 for version 7 of .NET Reflector upon its release in early March" http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflecto...

From the second link: "As many of you know, our original intention was to maintain .NET Reflector as a free tool. But, after two-and-a-half years of providing it without charge, we realized that we could not make the free model work. We know that this will cause pain for some people in the .NET community, and we apologize for the change in policy. As a commercial company, we need to charge at least a nominal amount t…

The money grubbing part is that the existing free version will expire and you will no longer be able to use it. So even if you are willing to use the existing product (which doesn't require a "dedicated team of developers"), you are out of luck.

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#23

Post by tedunangst »

jacabado wrote: post #20
JonoW wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in a startup or anything, but consider this; cloud computing is gaining momentum fast, and lots of startups will use cloud platforms like EC2, AppEngine, Azure etc. The one thing about this change is that traditional licensing concerns go away. If you use Azure, you are paying by usage, so Windows licenses aren't in play. I guess my point is that the fear of launching a startup and having to face spirling lic…

Plus: If you go Azure where will you develop? Will some nice M$ guy install Visual Studio in the cloud and you will use remote desktop? Where will you test? No local dev servers, really? Besides that, Azure is NOT usage payed, Azure is an approximation to that I would call scalable server rental. You pay by time and size, not by use. Maybe that explains Azure's momentum, they're getting things right and discouraging…

I'm still waiting for some nice L1nux dude to come setup all my free linux servers for testing...

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#24

Post by mkr-hn »

rbanffy wrote: post #3

It seems the number of startups using .NET is increasing, or, at least, the interest on it by the HN community is growing. I'm curious, so: AskHN: Are you using .NET on your startup and why did you chose it?

MS has managed to recover a lot of good will in the last half decade. That probably accounts for quite a bit of it. I know I've dropped a large part of my criticisms. I'm even using Office and looking forward to my next laptop and Win 7.

And 99% of what I do is simple tools that can be done in .NET with a few libraries from Codeplex and a little UI work.

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#25

Post by JonoW »

jacabado wrote: post #20
JonoW wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in a startup or anything, but consider this; cloud computing is gaining momentum fast, and lots of startups will use cloud platforms like EC2, AppEngine, Azure etc. The one thing about this change is that traditional licensing concerns go away. If you use Azure, you are paying by usage, so Windows licenses aren't in play. I guess my point is that the fear of launching a startup and having to face spirling lic…

Plus: If you go Azure where will you develop? Will some nice M$ guy install Visual Studio in the cloud and you will use remote desktop? Where will you test? No local dev servers, really? Besides that, Azure is NOT usage payed, Azure is an approximation to that I would call scalable server rental. You pay by time and size, not by use. Maybe that explains Azure's momentum, they're getting things right and discouraging…

I would imagine the license costs for dev tools for a startup are neglible. If you run Azure you would setup test/staging instances and tear them down when not in use, again because of scale, I would imagine that cost is negligible.

As for usage costs, doesn't Azure use the same model as all the others, e.g. EC2, in that cost = compute hours (i.e. instance running) + data transfer + storage? So if by usage you mean ultra accurate per CPU millisecond billing, then I don't anyone does that? Would be great though. Happy to be proved wrong though, I'm no expert on this...

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#26

Post by mariusmg »

profquail wrote: post #17
mariusmg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If RedGate weren't confident in maintaining a free version why the fuck they got Reflector from Lutz ?! As long as is no free version it is money grubbing. RedGate makes some lovely tools but they fucked up royally with Reflector.

There were confident they could maintain a free version; they tried (really hard, I might add) to make the freemium business model work with Reflector, but in the end, they just couldn't. BTW, have you ever considered that if Red Gate didn't buy Reflector from Lutz, he might've stopped maintaining it for free on into perpetuity? That at some point, he might've realized that he was giving away something that people fo…

Yes. Free and unmaintained from Lutz would have been better. There are A LOT of free plugins for Reflector out. Everyone is thinking about Reflector itself and ignore the work of plugin authors who extended Reflector because it WAS a GREAT FREE TOOL for the .net community. Without a free version all those plugins are useless. I see no problem if Lutz tried to monetize. I would have bought a license first and foremost as "thank you".

Also, how the fuck they tried "really hard" to maintain freemium ? Since they brought Reflector they basically added the VS debugger integration FOR MONEY. How is that trying really hard for the free version ?!

Just to be understood correctly. I don't have anything against RedGate. In fact , as i said, they made some great tools. But grabbing one of the best FREE tools in the .net world and trying to monetize (after pledging for a free version) just makes them seem assholes.

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#28

Post by jswinghammer »

rbanffy wrote: post #3

It seems the number of startups using .NET is increasing, or, at least, the interest on it by the HN community is growing. I'm curious, so: AskHN: Are you using .NET on your startup and why did you chose it?

I'm using it and like it a lot here are my reasons:

- I like C# as a language. It's easy to work with and the compiler catches a lot of things that would be runtime errors in php or python.

- I like Visual Studio a lot. I'm far more productive in that environment than anything else I've tried in other languages.

- For what I'm doing the cost of Windows is far less than the lost productivity working in another environment would give me.

- SQL Server 2008 is just awesome.

- Using LINQ to SQL has saved me a ton of time.

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#29

Post by jacabado »

JonoW wrote: post #25
jacabado wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus: If you go Azure where will you develop? Will some nice M$ guy install Visual Studio in the cloud and you will use remote desktop? Where will you test? No local dev servers, really? Besides that, Azure is NOT usage payed, Azure is an approximation to that I would call scalable server rental. You pay by time and size, not by use. Maybe that explains Azure's momentum, they're getting things right and discouraging…

I would imagine the license costs for dev tools for a startup are neglible. If you run Azure you would setup test/staging instances and tear them down when not in use, again because of scale, I would imagine that cost is negligible. As for usage costs, doesn't Azure use the same model as all the others, e.g. EC2, in that cost = compute hours (i.e. instance running) + data transfer + storage? So if by usage you mean u…

I agree that the dev tools license costs for a startup are/should be negligible, I was just pointing that Azure isn't a substitute for a dev environment (and it's licensing costs).

I also think that the problem of the production environment costs is a good one to have, nobody should fear to start a business because of them. If you can't solve that problem it means you have the wrong business model or really bad engineers.

Oops my bad, I tought others did the billing by CPU load instead of by hour.

Re: ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

#30

Post by mahmud »

Shanewho wrote: post #22
InclinedPlane wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the second link: "As many of you know, our original intention was to maintain .NET Reflector as a free tool. But, after two-and-a-half years of providing it without charge, we realized that we could not make the free model work. We know that this will cause pain for some people in the .NET community, and we apologize for the change in policy. As a commercial company, we need to charge at least a nominal amount t…

The money grubbing part is that the existing free version will expire and you will no longer be able to use it. So even if you are willing to use the existing product (which doesn't require a "dedicated team of developers"), you are out of luck.

If they allowed this old version to float-around, it might tarnish the brand.

Also, what stops people from saying "it's money grubbing to have a crippled freebie like this and demand $35 for full version".

$35 is nothing. I wrote decompilers and they're pretty damn hard and require constant upkeep and testing.

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