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Leaving .net

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Re: Leaving .net

#211

Post by berntb »

acabal wrote: post #207
berntb wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, a reality check. First, threading problems in Apache? That is something you report on a mailing list and it gets fixed fast . It is an actively developed application (-: at least last I looked, lots of years ago :-). Second, I am a consultant that do work for a mega corporation, which builds large systems. At least thousands or developers. I don't know (and am too lazy to Google.) I don't know because I work in a…

To be clear, the threading example was just something off the top of my head, not an actual real-life example. Though the PHP IMAP library is not thread-safe, so the problem would be fixing that library (or learning the guts of it to work around it in certain cases), not Apache. The point is that the example itself doesn't matter. Finally, all of the big companies I've worked for have been MS shops for the reasons I'…

If you're not trolling me and are generally confused, here is where I'm coming from.

I think the confusion is that I work for a big corp that do software as a central part of their business -- I'm not writing applications with shiny buttons on administrative applications (desktop or web) ordered by monkeys in suits.

I'm here to write lots of functionality and teach people. For that, we use scripting, open systems that are flexible -- and pluggable. I can always change what I plug in, with the limitation of having to teach people.

If it was the best solution, we would e.g. add a Windows machine and script Excel. The main problem would be that stuff in Microsoft applications tend to work badly in the next version and it is a f-ing pain and waste of money to rewrite stuff you implemented well a couple of years ago.

(Lots of other people here work as army ants on big projects where they should be replaceable. They use Java or C++, deploying little to Windows. I do server apps, not embeddable here, since I love the speed of creating functionality with Lisp, scripting languages etc.)

Re: Leaving .net

#212

Post by joubert »

jacquesm wrote: post #69
gaius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of semantics. "A Java application" is perfectly honest. Just like when someone says "a native application" it says nothing about if it was actually written in OCaml.

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.

You could quote Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming, and say therefor you skipped the error-prone process of increasing complexity-building.

Re: Leaving .net

#213

Post by nkohari »

phaedrus wrote: post #192
nkohari wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I disagree. Or at least, you will cause problems for other people. One of my coworkers was delivered a Windows app by a third party - it was written using MFC. I said, "Seriously? In 2010, MFC? MFC was bad even before it became obsolete." My coworker said, "They used it once before and decided it works for them, so that's what they use." Here's the thing: part of being a developer is keeping up to date. If you find o…

There are definitely limits. I'm not suggesting you use a 20 year old technology like MFC. However, using .NET 3.5 instead of 4.0? Just fine.

Re: Leaving .net

#214

Post by MikeMacMan »

mgkimsal wrote: post #180
MikeMacMan wrote: post #21

My buddy and I are starting a web project (a Q&A site for translations) and have chosen ASP.NET MVC. It doesn't abstract away the innards of the web like WebForms did. It has no more magic than RoR. Why are we using .NET instead of something like RoR or (my framework of choice) Grails? Because my buddy knows it inside and out, the tools are great, and we'd like to minimize the number of unknowns in our project. We're…

Sorry to hear you didn't go with Grails (my framework of choice too). Sounds like the .Net choice was based on his skills, and not yours. The domain-first approach of Grails, especially with greenfield projects, is so tempting that it'd be really hard for me not to choose it for something these days. I have chosen non-Grails tech in the last year, but it's been a tough choice in those cases. :) How's the project site…

Yes, choosing .NET was based on his skills, but also the fact that I'll be focusing on product design and development of the front-end. That work is mostly platform independent. I have another startup project that I'm building in Grails, and I love it, but MVC with Fluent nHibernate doesn't feel that different, lemme tell ya.

We just started building the site. We have our ORM, authentication, and DI all setup. I've created some mockups using Balsamiq and we're going to try to use Rally's product to keep us focused and on track.

Re: Leaving .net

#215

Post by rizal »

herewego wrote: post #39

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…

In Malaysia, life is currently very good for .NET (and specifically C#) developers. If you have more than 3 years experience, headhunters will call/email you almost every day and try to poach you from your current company. The talent pool is not that big but demand for .NET developers is steadily increasing; and so is their median pay. It's definitely enough to be quite comfortable. As an indication, the salary of .NET developers with 5 years experience is on par with that of managers.

In general, "offshore" software companies (e.g. Monster has a dev center here) use .NET and can afford to pay well. For them it's a simple matter of currency arbitrage. Local startups, on the other hand, tend to choose PHP because PHP programmers are plentiful and inexpensive.

Re: Leaving .net

#216

Post by dawkins »

bad_user wrote: post #198
arethuza wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stopping you using another database - I've started using CouchDB with an ASP.Net MVC application and it all hangs together pretty well. You could use MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite etc. just as easily.

The drivers for MySQL / PostgreSQL are very slow, not to mention stuff like LINQ / Visual Studio integration which are piss-poor, making you wish for SQL Server. People are used to throw such examples in the air, like you forgot "hey, there's Mono if you want Linux" ... but how many real apps used by actual people diverge from the MS stack? Hint: it's not ignorance.

I switched to Mono & MySql & Linux a year ago for my startup and in my experience performance is the same or even faster than .Net & SQL Server & Windows.

A couple of complex queries not optimized at all where slow in MySql and very fast in SQL Server but I think that that is because of the database engine itself and not because of the driver.

Re: Leaving .net

#217

Post by herewego »

bnoordhuis wrote: post #182
herewego wrote: post #39

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.

Interesting. I should have been more explicit - my figures are for the U.S. only.

Re: Leaving .net

#218

Post by shoover »

kenjackson wrote: post #121
pohl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How about one person? I recently had an issue with VS 2010 and long hangs in the editor for a specific type of file. I got a series of minidumps for them... we narrowed it down to an issue with type resolution. They sent me a QFE drop and then incorporated the fix into a tools release they were doing. I was acting as single dev, not even on a support contract.

I think I need that fix. Thanks for reporting it!

Re: Leaving .net

#219

Post by PandaWood »

braddunbar wrote: post #17

I can't up-vote this enough. I started out as a .net developer. I didn't know anything else so I thought that's all there was. I was very wrong. I'm trying to get out as fast as possible, but applying for a job as a python developer with 4 years of asp.net experience isn't easy.

Maybe there's something to be said for those too lazy to get involved or to try and make a difference. Dave suggested he did get involved, he turned up to usergroups, created new GitHub projects in C#, what did you do?

I'm hanging around because while I don't seem to need the extreme, passionate, awesome, 5-million committer projects to keep me happy, I still contribute something.

http://forgivingworm.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/dotnet-zombies...

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